Cyberinfrastructure research develops and deploys solutions that benefit cyberinfrastructure and the broader scientific community. Designing novel cyberinfrastructure solutions is inherently complex and requires collaborative relations between heterogeneous scientific stakeholders, governing bodies, and organisations. This study investigated the problems and pitfalls experienced in the cross-disciplinary collaboration of three groups: computer scientists (Group 1), User Experience (UX) researchers (Group 2), and domain scientists (Group 3 – bioinformatics, and health informatics researchers) who worked together to build cyberinfrastructure applications. Using participatory action research (PAR), we studied the dynamics of conducting UX research. The main results indicate four tensions that impacted the collaborative practices of cross-disciplinary groups using UX studies in cyberinfrastructure projects: (1) contradictory views on the quality of prototype development, (2) mental models of the work processes (know how) varied among the different groups (3) clarity of feedback was lacking, and (4) the usability problem was perceived to be with the users. Our results highlight the significance of aligning UX and computer science research goals and actively engaging involved cyberinfrastructure research members to meet user expectations. Findings reveal the nuanced ways in which computer science and UX work processes become entangled during the research process and shape cyberinfrastructure development.

Data users (researchers, scientists) in healthcare institutions need access to integrated healthcare data to conduct timely analysis of diseases to serve the right population at the right time. However, preserving patient privacy and timely access to quality healthcare data is a critical challenge. Current healthcare data governance systems are largely manual. Besides, processing process data requests is extremely slow, often taking months. To address this gap, we designed an honest-broker-based healthcare application to support data users in accessing healthcare data securely and to design a comprehendible process of data governance for data users. This study applied two iterations of a user experience (UX) evaluation of an honest broker prototype. Results show that participants found the new system promising for their research prospects. Implications suggest that technological knowledge should not be a requirement for using healthcare applications to promote broader adoption in the community. This study highlights the necessity of a process to balance the control of access to sensitive data between data providers and users as well as to educate data users on data privacy. Iterative UX studies can be a fruitful approach in gradually uncovering problems and improving the design of complex systems.

With ubiquitous, mobile computing, health care systems, and smart factories, socio-technical phenomena continue to emerge that challenge traditional design and evaluation methods. We perceive such phenomena as the intertwinement of technical artifacts and social practices. Previous work shows that there is no sufficient method to evaluate the quality of this socio-technical intertwinement. Hence, our goal was to develop socio-technical heuristics, in short ST-heuristics, that can be applied by individuals to detect issues. Drawing inspiration from the success of usability heuristics in the field of human–computer interaction, we first applied a literature review to develop an initial set of ST-heuristics derived from six domains comprising groupware/computer-support cooperative work, job design, usability, socio-technical design principles, privacy, and process design. We then conducted two studies to evaluate and improve this set using empirical data from 13 cases from health care, industry, and engineering education fields. In total, we analysed 306 problems. The results substantiate a final set of eight ST-heuristics which allow for evaluating the socio-technical intertwinement in situ. We perceive the contribution of this work as a starting point for evaluators to uncover crucial issues and to improve current practice. We discuss the developed set of ST-heuristics within existing literature.

Big data computation tools are vital for researchers and educators from various domains such as plant science, animal science, biomedical science and others. With the growing computational complexity of biology big data, advanced analytic systems, known as prescriptive systems, are being built using machine learning models to intelligently predict optimum computation solutions for users for better data analysis. However, lack of user-friendly prescriptive systems poses a critical roadblock to facilitating informed decision-making by users. In this paper, we detail a formative usability study to address the complexities faced by users while using prescriptive systems. Our usability research approach considers bioinformatics workflows and community cloud resources in the KBCommons framework's science gateway. The results show that recommendations from usability studies performed in iterations during the development of prescriptive systems can improve user experience, user satisfaction and help novice as well as expert users to make decisions in a well-informed manner.

In this paper, we report three cases of the integration of technology such as web-enabled media tablets in Scandinavian schools. Both qualitative and quantitative data have been applied. A daily challenge for teachers is to coordinate their group of students in a way that enables collaborative learning. We report the gaps and interrelations between the dreams and the practice of the teachers. They dream about an interconnected praxis -- the magic silver bullet -- and establish their visions of inter-connectivity because of their breakdown experiences of media tablets aiding complexity instead of reducing it. The teachers must learn how to navigate during the breakdowns before media tablets reduce complexity and reach a state in which the tablets take part in the classroom ecology as functional organs. The teachers have to deal with complex situations during class in situ. In order to be able to continue with the class, the teachers become jongleurs of different design elements including the handling of the didactical designs and the breakdowns caused by the integration of media tablets; the teaching practice in classrooms moves away from a common routine activity and turns into a design project.

We propose an interdisciplinary workshop to explore key design principles of collaborative learning in the workplace. The workshop's theme is, simply "CSCL at the workplace". Our first workshop at ACM Group 2010, and the resulting book, raise an important set of issues and potentials for research, but does not solve the thorny and controversial issues. This workshop will be focused on for making progress on the identified issues. The ACM Group conference remains an ideal venue for a workshop on this topic because the North American and European communities who participate in Group include leading members of the international CSCL and CSCW communities. The proposed workshop will be a full day. It will open with a situating presentation by the organizers and, participant questions and proposed solutions aimed at the issues we have raised and begun to recognize, and focus working groups on the resolution of those issues in work to follow the conference. To participate in the workshop, discussants will be asked for a position paper of up to 2 pages in standard ACM format. Our edited book will be made available to participants in advance, and selected authors who will be present will provide overviews of their work and perspective in an interleaved way with the more action oriented working sessions.

We propose an interdisciplinary workshop to explore collaborative learning in the workplace. The workshop's theme is, simply at work. The ACM Group conference is an ideal venue for a workshop on this topic because the North American and European communities who participate in Group include leading members of the international CSCL and CSCW communities. The proposed workshop will be a full day. It will open with a situating presentation by the organizers and be followed by topically oriented small group breakout sessions. To participate in the workshop, discussants will be asked for a position paper of up to 4 pages in standard ACM format. Up to three papers will be selected for featured talks in the afternoon. The workshop will conclude with a decision on next steps. We have an outstanding book proposal with Springer on this topic, and an edited book is one possible next step.

Particularly in environments where experiments are the core elements of learning, it is considerably important how experiments are accessible and operable. Especially in the field of production engineering education, real-time remote "hands on" laboratories did not exist in the past. During the EU funded project "Platform for e-learning and Telemetric Experimentation (PeTEX)", the team has designed and developed a prototype of a networked and distributed learning environment (see figure 1) for individual and cooperative lifelong learning aiming at experiment-based education in production engineering. The distributed prototype consists of three physical real laboratories in the areas of material characterization in forming technology, cutting using a milling machine and joining using friction stir welding. The experiments are holistically integrated into the modularized learning material. The proposed demonstration will focus on the example of material characterization in forming technology and will include the presentation of online learning material and the tele-operated experiment.

Patterns, which are based on in-depth practical experience, can be instructing for the design of groupware applications as socio-technical systems. On the basis of a summary of the concept of patterns - as elaborated by the architect Christopher Alexander - its adoptions within computer science are retraced and relationships to the area of groupware are described. General principles for patterns within this domain are formulated and supported by examples from a wide range of experience with knowledge management systems. The analysis reveals that every pattern of a groupware application has to combine the description of social as well as technical structures, and that a single pattern can only be understood in the context of a pattern language. It also shows that such a language has to integrate patterns of socio-technical solutions with measures and procedures for introducing them, and that the language not only has to express one type of directed relationship between the patterns but a variety of different types which have to be deliberately assigned to the patterns.