Fostering Participation and Co-Evolution in Sentient Multimedia Systems

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Journal of Visual Languages and Computing

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Fostering participation and co-evolution in sentientmultimedia systems$

Federico Cabitza a, Daniela Fogli b,n, Antonio Piccinno c

a Dip. di Informatica Università di Milano-Bicocca Milano, Italyb Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione Università di Brescia Brescia, Italyc Dip. di Informatica Università di Bari “Aldo Moro” Bari, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 19 September 2014Received in revised form2 October 2014Accepted 5 October 2014

Keywords:End-user developmentCultures of participationCo-evolutionMetadesignerMaieuta designer

x.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2014.10.0146X/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

paper has been recommended for acceptanesponding author.ail addresses: [email protected] (F. Cabg.unibs.it (D. Fogli), antonio.piccinno@uniba

e cite this article as: F. Cabitza, etal of Visual Languages and Compu

a b s t r a c t

User diversity and co-evolution of users and systems are two important phenomenausually observed in the design and use of IT artifacts. In recent years, End-UserDevelopment (EUD) has been proposed to take into account these phenomena, byproviding mechanisms that support people, who are not software professionals, tomodify, adapt, and even create IT artifacts according to their specific evolving needs. Thisis particularly true in the case of sentient multimedia systems, in which the system iscalled on to interact with multiple sensors and multiple human actors. However, tomotivate and sustain these people, a culture of participation is necessary, as well as propermetadesign activities that may promote and maintain it. To this aim, this article firstproposes a model for describing interaction and co-evolution in sentient multimediasystems enhanced by EUD features. Then it presents four main roles involved ininteraction and co-evolution, including that of maieuta designer, as the “social counter-part” of the metadesigner. Finally, it describes how the maieuta designer is in charge ofcarrying out all those activities that are necessary to cultivate a culture of participation, bymeans of proper ways that are briefly introduced in the article.

& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Sentient multimedia systems are distributed systemsthat actively interact with the environment through theexchange of multimedia information with many kinds ofinformation sources, such as sensors, robots, actuators,websites and others. End users also belong to such sourcesof information, since they are called on to communicateand express their feelings, evolving needs and requests tothis web of computational nodes. Accordingly, the overall

ce by Shi Kho Chang.

itza),.it (A. Piccinno).

al., Fostering participting (2014), http://dx.d

system has to take into account this information flowcoming from humans. If we take this stance, a sentientmultimedia system can also be seen as a sociotechnicalsystem, which encompasses people (rather than justusers) that are bound together by social ties and personalrelations of acquaintance and that are also linked witheach other and with personal devices and other machines.The latter are able to perceive the environment in whichpeople interact, also by considering the capability ofpeople to feel a situation besides perceiving it (e.g.,through the issue of a preference, “likes,” and emoticonsin tweets), and interpret situations to give people multi-media and multichannel means to act accordingly.

In many IT domains, IT artifacts are usually developedas commodities rather than as ad hoc projects, that is more

ation and co-evolution in sentient multimedia systems,oi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2014.10.014i

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for uniform populations of consumers rather than formembers of different communities that exhibit local needsand perform situated practices to achieve their goals [1].Moreover, each end-user community is often character-ized by user diversity, due to users’ different physical and/or cognitive abilities, past experiences, roles, responsibil-ities and work contexts. To this end, in today's competitiveglobal market, the adoption of product configuration soft-ware has recently helped to increasingly speed up theunderstanding of the customers’ needs for a successfuldesign and implementation of customized products [2–5].In fact, product configuration is the activity of customizinga product, in order to better meet the needs of a particularend user more quickly. However, fulfilling the needs of endusers is a “moving target” [6], since they evolve (e.g.,regarding their proficiency of use, skills, expectations,needs, wishes and domain knowledge) by using softwaresystems, and they can also change their practices (toaccommodate the new artifact [7]). Acknowledging thistwofold evolution (i.e., of users and their tasks) entails therequirement that IT artifacts should be designed to be veryflexible, in order to be easily adapted to the specific needsof the user communities and, hopefully, to be personalizedby the individual users to better fit their own evolvingneeds. This overall phenomenon has been called co-evolution of users and systems, to denote the variety ofsituations where users and their systems must co-evolvein a continuously self-adapting mutual fit [8].

End-User Development (EUD) has been proposed asone possible solution to cope with the challenges posed byuser diversity and co-evolution, since it encompassestechniques that allow end users to modify and extendtheir own IT artifacts without necessarily delegating thesemodifications to software professional developers. Takingco-evolution seriously sheds light on the fact that con-tinuously relying on professional actors for these inter-ventions would not be feasible in the long run. Indeed, onekind of unintended consequence related to IT artifactdeployment, which is reported most frequently in thespecialist literature, regards the never-ending request formodifications, corrections and evolution of artifacts by theusers [9]. In other words, in an EUD perspective, softwaresystems are viewed as “continuously evolving sociotech-nical systems driven by design activities of both profes-sional software engineers and users” [10].

For the particular human-oriented extension of the tradi-tional definition of sentient multimedia systems (see above)proposed by us, we uphold that an EUD approach is necessaryalso for the design and continuous evolution of this novelclass of applications. In particular, through the use of EUDmethods and techniques, a sentient multimedia system canresemble a living system, with some degree of intelligence,that reacts to the end-users’ evolution through the consequentself-adaptation and in turn favors the adaptation of end usersto the evolution of the system. In this way, the word “sentient”would also imply “alive” and “intelligent,” as this kind ofemergent behavior is what characterizes many complexsystems, like sociotechnical systems, that do have feedbackloops between perception and action.

However, this far-reaching objective also requires the“cultivation” of a culture of participation, in order to

Please cite this article as: F. Cabitza, et al., Fostering participJournal of Visual Languages and Computing (2014), http://dx.d

motivate and sustain end users in their contribution tosystem evolution. This avoids the risk of participationinequality [11] and of replicating the current gap betweenIT professionals and end users at the shop floor level. Themetadesign framework, which aims to help “users tobecome co-designers at use time,” has been proposed tothis latter aim [12]. However, this framework seems tohave neglected some important aspects that might make itmore operative in real settings, like its relationship withactivities promoting a culture of participation. Therefore,in this article, we would like to investigate how to extendthe original proposal of metadesign with mechanisms thatare more specifically aimed at cultivating a culture ofparticipation and thus enabling a suitable environmentfor the sustainable co-evolution of users and their systems.

To this end, we draw on our research experience in avariety of application domains (e.g., medicine, mechanicalengineering, e-government and others) and on the analy-sis of the existing literature about a variety of EUDprojects. We first propose a model for interaction and co-evolution that aims at clarifying the dynamics occurring inEUD settings among the different professionals involved,their tasks and the systems they use. In particular, weexpand the technical activities a metadesigner shouldperform to support system adaptation and growth overtime, and then provide indications about the activities ofhis/her “social counterpart,” namely the maieuta designer,who is in charge of activating all the necessary socialmechanisms that may sustain the co-evolution phenomenon.

The article is organized as follows: Section 2 presentsthe related works; Section 3 describes the proposed modelfor interaction and co-evolution between users and sys-tems, by clarifying in particular the role played by eachdifferent professional; Section 4 expands the role of themaieuta designer and proposes a framework for support-ing his/her activities and Section 5 concludes the article.

2. Related works

Since the eighties, the human computer interaction(HCI) literature has proposed different techniques for thedesign of interactive systems. They start from user-centered methods [13] – including field studies, inter-views, task analysis, usability testing – and move on toparticipatory design techniques [14], where users aredirectly involved in the creation of interaction scenarios [15]and/or static and semi-static prototypes [16].

However, while HCI scholars have been consideringuser-centered and participatory design approaches asconsolidated and successful practices for interactive sys-tem development, only in recent years the need forcontinuous system development with the participation ofend users also at use time has received adequate attention.Consequently, end-user programming (EUP) techniqueshave been embedded in commercial software, such asmacro recording in word processors, formula compositionin spread sheets or filter definition in e-mail clients. EUP isdefined in [17] as “programming to achieve the result of aprogram primarily for personal, rather than public use.”However, as highlighted in [18], the problem with end-user programming is that the programs created by end





F. Cabitza et al. / Journal of Visual Languages and Computing ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] 3

users are often of too low quality in terms of efficiency andmaintainability. To cope with this problem, the End-UserSoftware Engineering (EUSE) research area has emerged,which studies EUP practices and proposes new kinds oftechnologies that help end users improve software quality[17]. Software engineering activities, such as specification,reuse, testing, and debugging, are the primary focus of thisresearch area, and therefore attention is put on the soft-ware code created by end users.

Recently, the term “end-user programming” has beengradually replaced with the term “end-user development”[19], in order to give user involvement in system design abroader perspective, with respect to mere code develop-ment for personal goals. Indeed, EUD denotes any kind ofactive participation of end users in the software designand development process, ranging from requirement spe-cification through domain-specific modeling (cfr. [20]) tomore advanced activities, such as system personalizationand modification, or even creation of new software arti-facts [21]. Therefore, contrary to participatory design, EUDresearch advocates end-user participation not only duringthe design phase, but also during system usage. Bothresearch lines are currently very active: on the one hand,new methods and techniques are being studied to bettercapture and satisfy user requirements; on the other, avariety of mechanisms are being proposed to allow run-time system modifications with increasing complexity andexpression power [22] and possible creation of new soft-ware artifacts to be used by (or also by) other people [23].

This has led to the conception of a new design paradigmfor systems that support EUD activities, namely metadesign.In [10], metadesign is regarded as a framework for creating“sociotechnical environments that empower domain expertsto engage actively in the continuous development of sys-tems.” Conversely, in [8] Costabile et al. view metadesign as“a design paradigm that includes end users as active mem-bers of the design team and provides all the stakeholders inthe team with suitable languages and tools to foster theirpersonal and common reasoning about the development ofinteractive software systems that support end users’ work.”The two proposals focus on different but complementaryaspects of metadesign: the former stresses the social as wellas the technical nature of the software environment thatshould foster users’ involvement; the latter highlights theimportance of defining proper languages and tools to ade-quately support different stakeholders’ participation in sys-tem development.

In both cases, metadesign is regarded in the widerperspective of cultures of participation [12,24]. Indeed,cultures of participation open up new opportunities andchallenges for the design of innovative interactive systems,whose users “are provided with the means to participateand to contribute actively in personally meaningful pro-blems” [12]. With respect to EUSE, cultures of participationthus pay more attention to interaction design and con-ceptual modeling of EUD environments, cooperationamong users and impact on work organizations. Particu-larly, beyond metadesign, Fischer proposes two othercomponents for establishing a culture of participation[12] that we think are fundamental also in the conceptionand design of sentient multimedia systems: (1) social


creativity, in order to allow all possible contributions tobe considered to solve a complex problem and to supportpeople interacting with each other and through sharedhardware and software artifacts; (2) richer ecologies ofparticipation, in order to obtain different levels of partici-pation on the basis of the different roles that people andtheir devices can play or would like to play.

The importance of cultures of participation has beendemonstrated in the literature with reference to a varietyof application domains [12]. However, one aspect has beenneglected till now, that is how to enable users to appro-priate such a culture, in order to obtain software artifactsthat successfully evolve in user's hands and co-evolve withusers’ tasks, abilities, skills, and preferences. This is parti-cularly true for sentient multimedia systems, as they arebound to the environment and the people living in it, andthus this requires users to be even more engaged in theirshaping over time. In our view, this requires propermechanisms and tools that allow the nurturing andcultivation of cultures of participation within organiza-tional settings. To this end, in the following we propose ananalysis of the activities a metadesigner should performthroughout the software life cycle. In particular, we sug-gest refining the metadesigner role, by splitting andspecializing it into two main subroles – a more technicalrole and a more social one – which, according to thesituation, domain, and budget constraints, can be playedby the same person or by different professionals.

3. Ecology of participants in co-evolution of users andsystems

This section is aimed at proposing a model for interac-tion and co-evolution in complex settings, including sen-tient multimedia systems. To this end, it first presents thetraditional view on the interaction and co-evolutionbetween users and systems, and then extends this viewto the case of EUD settings. In particular, it focuses on theroles played by different stakeholders in EUD practice, andthen clarifies how co-evolution may be sustained techni-cally and socially.

3.1. Interaction and co-evolution of end users and systems

The interaction and co-evolution model proposed in [25]describes three types of mutual influence between end usersand systems, which give rise to three different cycles (seeFig. 1). The most internal one is the interaction cycle, namelya short-term cycle emerging from the exchange of visual,aural, haptic or multimodal messages between a user and asystem during interaction. This cycle has been modeled inthe literature in a variety of ways [26–28]. The intermediarycycle is what Carroll and Rosson call the task-artifact cycle[7]. It is a midterm cycle that highlights how the softwareartifacts created to support some user's tasks usually suggestnew possible tasks and, to support these new tasks, newartifacts must be created. Finally, the external cycle is a long-term cycle that concerns the mutual influence between thetechnology used for artifact implementation and the userorganization (technology - end user organization cycle). Sincetechnological advances give software developers new





materialization

materialization interpretation

interpretation

task artifact

organization technology

Interaction cycle

Task-artifact cycle

Organization-technology cycle

End user

System

Software developer

Fig. 1. The traditional interaction and co-evolution model.


possibilities for improving interactive systems once they arealready in use, new interaction possibilities occur that mightchange users’ working habits, thus facilitating evolution ofusers’ social and work organization [8,29]. This co-evolutionphenomenon thus encompasses all the three cycles whichaffect each other as described in [25].

Fig. 1 also highlights the two roles involved in thistraditional view on interaction and co-evolution: the enduser and the software developer. The end user is considereda passive user of an interactive system and consumer of itsproducts and services. The software developer is thecreator of the system and, during its life cycle, he/shemay be called on to modify and extend it for adaptation tothe emerging needs and requests of end users.

3.2. Four main roles in EUD practice

In EUD literature, a new role is considered: metade-signer. Thus, the two main roles other than the softwaredeveloper are end user and metadesigner. End users areincreasingly required to act as active contributors duringusage of the software, thus becoming “producers” ofcontents and functionalities, like in Wikipedia, Scratch,SketchUp, and many others [12]. In literature such an “active”end user is called in different ways: “power user” [30], “localdeveloper” [31], “gardener” [32], “end-user developer” [33],“bricolant bricoleur” [34].

To disentangle this variability of names, we haveproposed to refer to such a figure with the term domaindeveloper [23]. This term has been chosen because thisperson is always an expert of the domain in which he/sheworks, and her/his main goal is more the development ofthe capabilities available in her/his setting than just soft-ware code (software is never an end in itself, but always ameans). Thus, the domain developer subsumes all thoseroles denoting people in charge of carrying out softwaredevelopment activities (namely, actual EUD activities)without being professional software developers. In some


cases, end user and domain developer roles are played bythe same person, as in the case described in [10], where ageoscientist decided to spend three months in acquiringprogramming knowledge, in order to be able to developsoftware for himself to analyze the data he collected.However, in the majority of situations they are played bydifferent groups of people, who may also belong todifferent communities, like in multi-tiered proxy designproblems [33], i.e. in all those situations where end userscannot or are not willing to act as developers. A typicalexample is the case of e-government, where citizens usinge-government services constitute the community of endusers, whilst civil servants called on to develop services forcitizens belong to the community of experts in govern-ment issues [35], and thus may become domain devel-opers. Another example is the system described in [36],which provides an editing tool that allows caregivers(domain developers) to customize a simple, wirelessprompting system for individuals with cognitive disabil-ities (end users).

The role of metadesigner, on the other hand, isintended for all professionals who are in charge of creating“sociotechnical environments that empower users toengage actively in the continuous development of systemsrather than being restricted to the use of existing systems”[37]. In other words, a metadesigner “creates open systemsat design time that can be modified by their users, actingas co-designers, requiring and supporting more complexinteractions at use time” [12].

Given these definitions, which do not completely clarifythe activities a metadesigner should actually perform, wealso consider the role of maiueta designer (the term ispronounced just like that of metadesigner, but with a ju inthe middle: ˈmɛtə designer vs. meɪˈju:tə designer). Like themetadesigner, also the maieuta designer can be consideredas someone in charge of designing the EUD enablingenvironment, by which domain developers can build andadapt the artifacts to be used by end users. The role of the






maieuta designer encompasses activities that are involvedin the task of supporting the metatask of the domaindevelopers, namely creating the sociotechnical precondi-tions for: (a) having the domain experts appropriate thedesign culture and technical notions necessary for themetatask of artifact development and (b) involving asmany end users as possible in the process of continuousrefinement of the artifact, by improving participation and“produsage” [38]. For this reason we call such a designer a“maieuta.” This is partly in analogy with the Socraticmethod of making people acquire notions, motivationsand self-confidence to undertake challenging tasks andpartly in clear assonance with the term “metadesigner,” ofwhich it is a specialization more oriented to the socialaspects of EUD practice than to the technical ones [34].

3.3. Co-evolution of end users and systems through EUD

The four roles described above – end user, domaindeveloper, metadesigner and maieuta designer – interactwith each other and with the IT artifact and EUD tools, andeach contributes to the co-evolution phenomenon. Fig. 2presents an extended version of the Interaction andCo-evolution (ICE) model previously described, whichencompasses all the four roles.

In EUD practice, the traditional co-evolution process (left-hand side of the figure) is sustained by the right-hand side co-evolution process, which involves domain developers (seeFig. 2). Indeed, requests for system evolution coming fromend users reach domain developers, who may directlyoperate on the system through EUD tools or, if necessary,may in turn ask metadesigners for the evolution of their owntools (by means of the most internal cycle, i.e., the interaction

artifac

technolo

organization

End user

System

Metadesigner

Maieuta des

task

Migration p

Fig. 2. Interaction and co-evo


cycle). In particular, the task-artifact cycle that involves endusers affects the metatask-artifact cycle of domain developers.For example, in the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) projectdescribed in [39], ward physicians can be aware that newdata are needed (for example, in the case of specific pathol-ogies), but they cannot find the related module in the EPR.Thus, they have to ask for a new specific module from thehead physician, who, using EUD tools, will evolve the currentEPR accordingly or request metadesigners to create the newtype of module. The most external cycle is also in this case along term cycle that regards the mutual influence betweenthe technology used for artifact implementation and theorganization of the community of the domain developers(technology - domain developer organization cycle). Technologyadvances give metadesigners new possibilities for improvinginteractive systems used by domain developers to evolve thesystem, resulting in new interaction possibilities that mightalso change users’ work habits.

Thanks to the powerfulness of the current technology,even accessible through the Internet, users have thepossibility of increasingly taking an active role in thedevelopment of software tools suited to their needs. Thishas led from a strong dichotomy between the end user andthe domain developer to a continuum of roles that con-stitutes a rich ecology of participants [12,40] with differentskills toward development, responsibility, appropriationand contribution in the whole social system. This is truealso in the case in which the same person is and wants tobe just a “consumer” (i.e., only a user) in some situationsand a “producer” (i.e., domain developer) in others. There-fore, “end user/domain developer” is not an attribute of aperson, but a role assumed in a specific context. As we willdiscuss in the following, the maieuta designer is in charge

t

gy

organization

Domain developer

igner

metatask

ath

lution in EUD settings.






of fostering and favoring the migration path from the roleof end user to that of domain developer.

The artifact in Fig. 2 is an intermediary object betweenthe two co-evolution processes, which can be regarded asbeing composed of two parts: (1) the software systemdevoted to the end user and (2) the EUD tools (includingthe EUD environment and/or software components asbuilding blocks of the software system being developed)that are used by the domain developer to generate and/oradapt the software system for end users.

An intermediary object is usually an object that isshared, exchanged and circulated among members of net-works and communities to mediate their interactions [41].In [23], we have further distinguished intermediary objectsas boundary objects and knowledge artifacts to better char-acterize their role in EUD contexts. The notion of boundaryobjects has been introduced by Bowker and Star [42] toaccount for those artifacts that enable a sort of standardizedand effectively simplified communication and coordinationbetween members of different communities of practice. Forexample, in the e-government project described in [43], acivil servant may generate the XML description of an e-government service through a suitable EUD environment,and this description gives rise to the automatic creation ofthe web pages to be used by citizens who will apply for theservice. Therefore, the XML description and the correspond-ing web pages can be regarded as a boundary objectbetween the civil servant and the citizen communities.Knowledge artifacts, on the other hand, are artifacts thatenable and support learning and innovation within aspecific community of practice (what in [44] has beencalled a “knowing community”), namely processes ofknowledge acquisition, accumulation and sharing amongits members [45]. For example, the Electronic PatientRecord [39,46,47] represents a knowledge artifact usedwithin a hospital ward and among different wards foraccumulating and sharing knowledge about patients.

3.4. Supporting co-evolution in EUD settings: themetadesigner and maieuta designer roles

Fisher et al. have proposed a set of metadesign guide-lines [10], namely indications at a high level of abstraction,on how to carry out a metadesign project. Assuming thevalidity of such guidelines, we propose here to make afurther step, by identifying some more operational indica-tions, in order to make the metadesign activities concrete.In particular, splitting the social activities and technicalactivities that the metadesigner and maieuta designer arecalled on to carry out respectively is done to take intoaccount the sociotechnical gap, that is the divide betweenwhat is known that should be supported socially and whatcan actually be technically supported [48].

To this aim, we suggest that the metadesigner be incharge of designing and providing the most effective EUDtools that may sustain the co-evolution between end users,domain developers and IT artifacts. In this way, themetadesigner is not just a software developer playingthe role described in Fig. 1 (system development and itspossible evolution over time, on the basis of the users’requests); but he/she must possess a set of skills that


allows him/her to understand the users’ potential forparticipation in software co-creation, in order to supportthem with suitable technical tools. Thus he/she must havecompetencies in human computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, interaction design, knowl-edge management, multimedia and even semiotics [49].

A variety of EUD solutions have been proposed in theliterature over the years, from script creation [36] tocomponent-based approaches [50,51] and from meta-modelinstantiation [52,53] to visual programming [8,54,55]. Themetadesigner is thus called on to choose the most suitableparadigm for the case in hand, and tailor it to the applicationdomain, namely to its habits and users’ characteristics andpreferences. Furthermore, a metadesigner is requested todevelop the infrastructures for communication among endusers and between end users and domain developers [56].

The maieuta designer, on the other hand, is not only afacilitator [57], that is, the role responsible for facilitatingthe adoption of an IT artifact within a certain community.Rather, the maieuta designer is a person who facilitatesappropriation [58], i.e., the process by which end usersmigrate from their initial role to that of domain developeralong the continuum of roles discussed in [40] or, at least,to enable and empower end users to appropriate andcontribute to their IT artifacts. Therefore, end users cancommit themselves to improving the artifacts as a way tomake them more effective and their work more efficient.Whenever an end user is not capable of, or not interestedin, becoming a domain developer, the maieuta designermight favor her/his participation in system evolution, e.g.,by simply guiding her/him to report perceived shortcom-ings and system faults, and suggesting due modificationsand appreciated improvements. Moreover, the maieutadesigner is also in charge of reducing the sociotechnicalgap, by creating the conditions and making feasible theuse of the IT artifacts and lowering the tendency of theusers to just give up using them, especially if they do nothave any technical support from IT professional people.

The clarification provided here of the roles of metade-signer and maiueta designer is based on a critical reflectionon the authors’ experience in a variety of EUD projects.Actually, in these projects they have often been engaged inplaying both roles, at different stages of the system life cycle.As metadesigners, they have studied and proposed differentinteraction metaphors and environments, to support domaindevelopers in carrying out EUD activities; whereas, asmaieuta designers they have realized that, besides askingusers the right questions as any good business analyst does, itis even more important that the users themselves areinduced to think about their answers and build their ownawareness on how to deal with issues through the system.Thus, the aim of this article is to shed light on the techniquesthat could be adopted to sustain system appropriation, byunderlying the need for transferring this capability to some-one inside the organization who could reiterate the aware-ness process and make it sustainable.

4. Helping end users help themselves

This section provides some further hints on how thetasks of the maieuta designer could be performed.





1 http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/google-house-in-dubai-the-home-of-the-future-now.


4.1. Identifying the maieuta designers and their tasks

As has been outlined above, the concept of maieutadesigner means identifying someone who could make thecommunity gathering around an EUD platform progres-sively more independent of the IT professionals. To someextent, he/she is the person who guarantees the long-termsustainability of the EUD project. Therefore, this can be anIT professional with an educational curriculum that isquite different from the one traditionally proposed forthe common software analyst or engineer. This agendawould encompass, for instance, teaching the basics ofsocial informatics and some qualitative research methodsadapted to the IT domain [59], like focus groups [60],insights on current theories on IT impact and risk manage-ment [61], as well as notions of socially informed history oftechnological evolution [62].

The person playing this role must also train on the jobone or more “insiders” of the community of end users thatwill continue his/her work of facilitation. The latter shouldbe endorsed by the sponsors of the IT project and theorganization's top managers, and also be chosen on avoluntarily basis according to their ability and will toencourage colleagues to take part in the developmentprocess. The term “designer” is not out of place here forat least two reasons: first, the maieuta designer would be aclear example of a critical designer, i.e., someone “who askscarefully crafted questions and makes [people] think” [63],instead of focusing on solving problems and findinganswers. Moreover, one of the main tasks of the maieutadesigner would be to “design” (or better “co-design”)initiatives in which to promote the EUD project, dis-seminate the underlying values and concepts (i.e., empow-erment, co-production, appropriation, co-evolution,produsage, equipotentiality [38], etc.) and enroll the mostexpert and enthusiastic end users. Then the maieutadesigner should give due visibility of the end-users’ con-tributions, and devise simple mechanisms to foster parti-cipation and build a real culture of participation. This canbe done in many ways: for instance by applying blendedgamification, within a competition among colleagues,possibly associated with some reward or compensationpolicy, e.g., a mechanism by which “the more contribu-tions produced, the higher the rank achieved.” Moreover,this can be done by setting up a social media associatedwith the IT project, e.g., a forum, a blog, a wiki, orsomething that integrates all of these simpler components,in which to ask for content and contributions and moder-ate communication within these ad hoc means. In sodoing, such a Web resource would flank the EUD platformas an additional “resource for action” [64] and a virtualmeeting place where tasks are coordinated upon the EUDartifacts and the related procedures, FAQs and userinstructions are documented/discussed.

4.2. The Google example

Over the years, Google software developers have pro-duced a set of apps and gadgets, technologies for voicerecognition, home appliances and entertaining devices.Many of them are smartphone-based and thus accessible


and widely used by end users, as well as most of thetechnologies developed so far by Google. However, eventhough the specific functionality of each application isusually known, the possibility of connecting or usingtogether different applications, as parts of a unique ubi-quitous system, is rarely considered by end users. Indeed,Google apps and technologies are thought to also interactwith each other, in order to provide a more pervasive andubiquitous experience. For example, “Chromecast” donglecan be connected to TV and exchange data with tablet orphone, while “Google Now” can exchange data withGoogle platform, in order to suggest personalized hints.Actually, all these applications can be considered as partsof a pervasive multimedia system surrounding us.

Since people might not be immediately aware of thispossibility, Google has set up a team whose aim is toadvertise the “hidden” sentient multimedia systemalready available in our pocket. The team has thus createdthe “Google House” project, an itinerant house touredthrough New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Dubai andmany other important cities all around the world.1 Thehouse is split into five rooms: kitchen, living room, study,travel room and fashion room, with a sixth environmentoutside to try out “Google Glass,” the company's latestwearable device (Fig. 3). The majority of technologiesavailable in the house are smartphone-based, linked upto huge displays scattered around the home via Wi-Fi.

In such a setting, tablets or phones can be used in thekitchen to look for recipes, by using voice commands, orrun a Google-owned “YouTube” channel with millions ofsubscribers while cooking, or have the system convertdoses from grams to ounces. In the living room you can use“Google Nav” to plan your day's journey or use “GoogleChromecast” dongle. The “Chromecast” dongle is poppedinto the back of the television and then connects wire-lessly with any tablet or smartphone to stream yourfavorite movie or, even, use the new photo app “AutoAwesome.” This application is able to automaticallyexclude duplicates and duds from a gallery of holidaypictures and take the smiles from a series of photos of thesame people, in order to pool them into one, perfect shot.In the fashion room, a girl can use “Hangout” to talk withher friends about choices of dress or to access “GoogleTrends” to identify the most popular fashion styles whilegetting dressed.

In short, Google has created over the years a variety ofapplications and devices, which have been put in thehands of the users, in order to allow them to provide theirfeedback, try different usages, contribute their contents(e.g., in “Google Maps” or “Google Sketchup”), and even-tually become part of the world wide Google community.Then, Google developers (we can call them metadesignersin this case) have offered the possibility of combiningthese pieces of technology in different ways and accordingto user's preferences, in order to obtain a low-cost,sentient multimedia system. However, most end users,even though they are perfectly able to exploit existing


http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/google-house-in-dubai-the-home-of-the-future-now

http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/google-house-in-dubai-the-home-of-the-future-now




outside environment

kitchen

living-room

study travel-room

fashion-room

Fig. 3. The Google house idea.


applications and devices in this new way, without theintervention of computer experts, were not aware of thispossibility. Hence, Google had the idea of “advertising” itthrough a widely understandable example: a real andtangible house. Indeed, the team of researchers welcomingand hosting visitors to try out the Google experience (themaieuta designers in this case), aimed to make usersconscious of the possibility to create their own sentientmultimedia system, and thus actually carry out a form ofEUD. Furthermore, the “Google House” project allows endusers to appreciate the different usages of each applica-tion. For example, the use of “Hangout” is shown in thefashion room, but nothing prevents a scientist fromdeciding to use it in his study, to keep in touch with her/his foreign colleagues.

In other words, the task of maieuta designers has beenaccomplished in this case by creating a real house andexploiting the resonance that the Google name may haveall over the world. Like a bait and switch, this has enableda limited number of users to actually visit the house andtry its gadgets, but it has allowed millions of users tobecome aware of the nearly infinite scope of sentientmultimedia systems and of the ever-expanding catalog ofavailable applications which can be combined, accordingto one's preferences.

Obviously, this approach can rarely be followed inmedium and small organizations, and thus other waysshould be identified to make users more confident in


adopting tools and their capabilities, in order to put themin a position to exploit customization and extensionpossibilities, for a better fit with their needs. Furthermore,a true maieutic approach would also entail challengingreal users, visiting the house, with Cedric Price's provoca-tive question: “if Google [Technology] is the answer, whatis your question?” In looking for possible answers, the endusers could also appropriate the underlying idea of such anaugmented shelter and could make the best out of it intheir situated lives and homes. For these reasons, thefollowing subsection delineates a more scalable approachthat, capitalizing on the experience gained so far indifferent IT projects, is built around the idea of askingusers questions.

4.3. The maieutic approach

A maieutic approach is mainly characterized by the factthat it “brings others to conceive ‘thoughts or ideas’” withquestioning [65], that is by helping others actively under-stand by themselves how they could make a worthycontribution to the project. To contextualize this approachin EUD settings, we propose a tentative list of items (seeTable 1). Each item in the second column of Table 1 is aquestion that the maieuta designer could ask (or speakabout with) his/her colleagues to address a broader themeor topic regarding the process of digitization of the worksetting or the related changes. This can be done in either





Table 1Macro areas of concerns and list of questions.

Macro areas of concern Sample questions

Psychological ownership and changemanagement

What's the system for you, and why has it been produced and its adoption encouragedwithin the organization?Do you think that communication within your team, or with the other teams, has changed lately,and if this is the case, has it been for the better or for the worse?How long have you been using the new system, do you think your work load has changed,that is increased, reduced, or it is just the same?

Work process redesign and adjustment(i.e., fit to task)

To what extent do you think you can exploit the system's full potential? How much do you think thesystem fits your specific needs currently?Do you still use paper and office applications that you believe the new system will (or should)substitute sooner or later?

Usability shortcomings and room forimprovement

Have you found using the system easy so far?Have you realized you have made errors in the process of either entering or retrieving informationfrom the system?

Lack, redundancy or overload of datastructures and functionalities

Do you think the system is requiring you to fill in too many data that are not really necessary toproceed in your tasks?Do you think the system provides too many functionalities among which you need to find the rightone for your tasks?

Anomaly detection, bug reporting andevolution traceability

Have you found any errors or something you've considered a fault of the system while using it lately?Have you applied some effective solution or workaround to overcome a shortcoming related to thesystem lately?Do you think that the system has become more difficult to be used after some of its recent updates andnew releases?

End-user deskilling and expertisepreservation and enhancement

Have you lately experienced problems in the handing over of tasks or in the workflow (like unusualdelays, common resources blocked by other teams and the like)?Do you think that using the new system may contribute to preserving or even enhancing your know-how about the work tasks?

Authorship- and privacy-related concerns Do you think that sharing content and system modifications within your team prevents you fromprotecting ideas and information?Do you think that either the data you put into the system, or the actions you perform during its usecould threaten your security and privacy?

End-user accountability and power issues(also empowerment)

Since the introduction of the new system, do you think that new people or roles have gained morevisibility and power within your organization, at the expense of others?What's the main obstacle that prevents you from participating more actively in the IT project (liketime, skills, the colleagues already involved, a sense of pointlessness,…)?What could really convince you to join the IT project, if anything (e.g., explicit acknowledgment by thetop management, economic rewards, non monetary compensations, benefits, social status,…)?


small polls or surveys, administered through social media,or in informal but scheduled meetings with the membersof a specific team at a time. It could also be done even intotally informal and impromptu talks at the coffee break orin similar situations [66]. In particular, the first question inthe table (“What's the system for you, and why has it beenproduced and its adoption encouraged within the organi-zation?” [67]) is the most important one, as it refers bothto the original Socratic main question: “Ti estì;” (What isthis?), and to one of the most important matters ofconcern in requirement engineering.

Far from being comprehensive, the list of questionsreported in Table 1 represents just a first contributionwithin a research strand. This could address more ser-iously how to contribute for fostering a culture of partici-pation within organizational communities, especially inthe context of a digitization project that is supported byEUD and metadesign techniques. Indeed, a more generalframework of concerns, that a maieuta designer shouldaddress, can be built from this preliminary list and thestudy of its impact on real settings (see the first column ofTable 1). This framework to date includes eight macroareas of concern that encompass: psychological ownershipand change management [68,69]; work process redesign


and adjustment (i.e., fit to task); usability shortcomingsand room for improvement; lack, redundancy or overloadof data structures and functionalities; anomaly detection,bug reporting and evolution traceability; end-user des-killing and expertise preservation and enhancement;authorship- and privacy-related concerns; end-useraccountability and power issues (also empowerment).

Our point is that there is a need to detect motivatedpeople within organizations, and not only give to thedomain developers a set of tools (i.e., the EUD environ-ments), but also (and above all) assign to some people (i.e.,the maieuta designers) precise responsibilities and roles.It is particularly important to provide maieuta designerswith an indication of a set of possible actions to undertakeand initiatives to foster, so that they can contribute tobuilding a real culture of participation within their orga-nization. All the actors involved may thus enjoy such aculture within the wider process of co-evolution.

5. Conclusions

In this article, we have proposed explicitly extendingthe notion of a sentient multimedia system to encompasssociotechnical networks of humans and non-humans [70],






where both kinds of agents are able to perceive and act inthe environment, but only the former can feel it and makethe whole ensemble “sentient.” The most important fea-ture of these networks is their ability to autonomouslyreconfigure their inner relationships (human-human,machine-machine, human-machine) and also to evolve,in the face of the continuous changes in the environmentand the network itself. In this article, we have focused on aparticular design approach that does not only allow forcontinuous evolution, but even fosters it: metadesign. Wehave extended this framework, originally proposed withinthe EUD field, by enriching it with an additional role, themaieuta designer. This role could be seen as a criticaldesign device, and therefore as a way to make sentientmultimedia systems – intended as sociotechnical systemsencompassing people – able to wonder about and reflectupon themselves. As a critical design device, we suggestsupporting the maieuta designer with a list of questions,organized in turn according to a set of macro areas ofconcerns, through which he/she can trigger reflection andcultivate a culture of participation. This can be a powerfulway to make sentient multimedia systems more capable ofinteracting with an ever-changing environment and to beready for the unexpected.

Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the Italian Ministryof University and Research (MIUR) under grant PON02_00563_3470993 project “VINCENTE – A Virtual collec-tive INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainableTechnology Entrepreneurship ecosystems” and by theItalian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE) undergrant PON Industria 2015 MI01_00294 “LOGIN – LOGisticaINtegrata.”

The authors also wish to thank the English ProfessorLynn Margaret Rudd for her careful proofreading.

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Fostering Participation and Co-Evolution in Sentient Multimedia Systems

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