Page 233 - Culture Technology Communication

216 Lorna Heaton

context: Japan. It is based on a larger, comparative study (Heaton
1997) whose central research question was the extent to which dif-
ferent preoccupations in different countries are the result of differ-
ent “cultural constructions of computing.” How do CSCW designers
translate their ideas about what people do when they work, and the
role of computers in supporting work, into the systems they design?
2
What is the impact of the circumstances in which designers find
themselves, on the systems they design?
Given the complexity of the subject matter, and the small num-
ber of laboratories actually involved in CSCW design, we adopted a
case study approach as an appropriate means of capturing the sub-
tleties of the multitude of situational variables and their interaction.
During five months of observation in various CSCW laboratories, the
author conducted extensive interviews with over twenty software de-
signers and took part in numerous informal conversations with oth-
ers involved in CSCW research. Earlier typologies of cultures,
particularly as they have been applied to the world of work, were
used as a starting point and a general guide for observation, although
no attempt was made to fit the data gathered into these classificatory
schemes. Analysis of documents produced by the laboratories in ques-
tion was also an important part of the process. Some of these docu-
ments described the CSCW systems, while others were explanatory
in nature. Both internal (working documents, memos, project reports)
and external documents (scientific publications) were analyzed. The
focus was twofold: to understand how designers perceive their work
through what they say and write about it, and to analyze the work it-
self (both work practices and the resulting machines and software),
the goal being to draw parallels between the two.
The present paper focuses primarily on the relationship be-
tween designers’ justifications for their choices and how these
choices are reflected in the design of machines and software. The
specific cases presented are illustrative of larger tendencies and
trends in CSCW design in Japan.

Patterns in CSCW Research

In the context of this paper, CSCW has been broadly defined as work
by multiple active subjects sharing a common object and supported
by information technology. The presence of active subjects provides
a means for delineating CSCW from traditional office automation
perspectives. Furthermore, a community that shares a common ob-