At a time where computer technology is putting human lives and work under pressure, we discuss how to provide alternatives. We look back at Participatory Design (PD) which was originally about possibilities and alternatives as much as it was about specific solutions. The paper aims to revitalize and revise PD to help people influence big issues . The agenda for this is set through proposing a set of key elements for realizing new, important possibilities. We discuss the possible changes of partnership with users, call for a new role of researchers as activists, debate how to work with demanding visions for lasting impact, and democratic control. We focus on high technological ambitions, on deployment of working prototypes, on alliances, and on scaling up, all seen as important for a PD that matters. We conclude the paper with an invitation to participate in the continued discussion, codesign, and realization of a PD that matters.

Many studies show that self-care technologies can support patients with chronic conditions and their carers in understanding the ill body and increasing control of their condition. However, many of these studies have largely privileged a medical perspective and thus overlooked how patients and carers integrate self-care into their daily lives and mediate their conditions through technology. In this review, we focus on how patients and carers use and experience self-care technology through a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) lens. We analyse studies of self-care published in key HCI journals and conferences using the Grounded Theory Literature Review (GTLR) method and identify research trends and design tensions. We then draw out opportunities for advancing HCI research in self-care, namely, focusing further on patients' everyday life experience, considering existing collaborations in self-care, and increasing the influence on medical research and practice around self-care technology.

Telemedicine, the provision of health care at a distance, is arguably an effective way of increasing access to, reducing cost of, and improving quality of care. However, the deployment of telemedicine is faced with standards that are hard to use, application-specific data models, and application stove-pipes that inhibit the adoption of telemedical solutions. To which extent can a software ecosystem approach to telemedicine alleviate this? In this article, we define the concept of software ecosystem architecture as the structure(s) of a software ecosystem comprising elements, relations among them, and properties of both. Our objective is to show how this concept can be used (i) in the analysis of existing software ecosystems and (ii) in the design of new software ecosystems. We performed a mixed-method study that consisted of a case study and an experiment. For (i), we performed a descriptive, revelatory case study of the Danish telemedicine ecosystem and for (ii), we experimentally designed, implemented, and evaluated the architecture of 4S. We contribute in three areas. First, we define the software ecosystem architecture concept that captures organization, business, and software aspects of software ecosystems. Secondly, we apply this concept in our case study and demonstrate that it is a viable concept for software ecosystem analysis. Finally, based on our experiments, we discuss the practice of software engineering for software ecosystems drawn from experience in creating and evolving the 4S telemedicine ecosystem. The concept of software ecosystem architecture can be used analytically and constructively in respectively the analysis and design of software ecosystems.

Technological advances in miniaturisation and communication are enabling revolutionary transformations: computation can be embedded in almost any object and the increasing bandwidth and ubiquity of communication networks connects objects and frees them spatially.

Today the design of most healthcare technology is driven by the considerations of healthcare professionals and technology companies. This has several benefits, but we argue that there is a need for a supplementary design approach on the basis the citizen and his or her everyday life. An approach where the main focus is to develop healthcare technology that fits the routines of daily life and thus allows the citizens to continue with the activities they like and have grown used to -- also with an aging body or when managing a chronic condition. Thus, with this approach it is not just a matter of fixing a health condition, more importantly is the matter of sustaining everyday life as a whole. This argument is a result from our work -- using participatory design methods -- on the development of supportive healthcare technology for elderly people and for diabetic, pregnant women.

This paper presents research on participatory design of interactive systems for emergency response. We present the work by going through the design method with a focus on the new elements that we developed for the participatory design toolkit, in particular we emphasize the use of challenges and visions as ways to bridge between fieldwork and literature studies on the one hand and the emerging computer based prototypes on the other. Our case concerns design of innovative interactive systems for support in emergency response, including patient identification and monitoring as well as construction and maintenance of a situational overview.

We describe our research-its approach, results and products-on Danish emergency medical service (EMS) field or "pre-hospital" work in minor and major incidents. We discuss how commitments to participatory design and attention to the qualitative differences between minor and major incidents address challenges identified by disaster sociolo-gists when designing for major incidents. Through qualitative research and participatory design, we have examined the features of EMS work and technology use in different emergency situations from the perspective of multiple actors. We conceptualize victims in incidents-and particularly in major incidents, where on-site medical as-sessments is highly incomplete-as boundary objects over which the complex and imperfect work of coordination is done. As an outcome of our participatory design approach, we describe a set of designs in support of future EMS work.

This paper presents an approach to user involvement in product development that has grown out of a Scandinavian

This paper investigates CSCW aspects of large-scale technical projects based on a case study of a specific Danish engineering company and uncovers challenges to CSCW applications in this setting.The company is responsible for management and supervision of one of the worlds largest tunnelhidge construction projects.Our primary aim is to determine requirements on CSCW as they unfold in this concrete setting as opposed to survey and laboratory investigations.The requirements provide feedback to product development both on specific functionality and as a long term vision for CSCW in such settings.The initial qualitative analysis identitled a number of bottlenecks in daily work, where support for cooperation is needed.Examples of bottlenecks are: sharing materials, issuing tasks, and keeping track of task status.Grounded in the analysis, cooperative design workshops based on scenarios of future work situations were established to investigate the potential of different CSCW technologies in this setting.In the workshops, mock-ups and prototypes were used to support end-users in assessing CSCW technologies based on concrete, hands-on experiences.The workshops uncovered several challenges.First, support for sharing materials would require a huge body of diverse materials to be integrated, for example into a hypermedia network.Second, daily work tasks are event driven and plans change too rapidly for people to register them on a computer.Finally, tasks are closely coupled to materials being processed thus a coordination tool should integrate facilities for managing materials.

No abstract available.

Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design — the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program — the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.

This paper is about the kind of tools and techniques that are accessible to resource weak groups for use in design and evaluation of computer support. “Resource weak” means in this connection, that the economic power and the ability to control the “local environment” of the group is limited. The human resources of such groups are often (potentially) strong, but restrained by the organization of work and society; and although the tools are cheap the activities are demanding in terms of human resources. This kind of work should be seen as a supplement to participation in design processes controlled by others. When end users participate in projects set up by management, these “lay” designers often lack familiarity with the tools and techniques, they lack the power and resources to influence the choice of questions to be considered, and they are not the ones deciding how to utilize the results of a design project when actually changing the workplace.