Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces

AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, Jun 2012

This paper critically reviews previous IS literature on user participation and argues that the literature is mainly empirically or normatively oriented and lacks design research on developing system prototypes in order to foster continuous user participation. It then contributes to the current research by introducing a system prototype, a communication tool that enables users to participate while using their application systems in their work contexts. The prototype provides different communication channels for supporting user-designer communications and knowledge sharing among users with respect to application usage. When integrated in the interface of an application system, the tool can help to adapt and redesign the application. The initial evaluation of the communication tool within the context of an application system indicates its usefulness and usability.

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Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces

AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction n-Comput 0 1 r Int 0 1 Recommended Citation 0 Yetim , F., Draxler, S., Stevens, G., & Wulf, V. (2012). Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding 1 a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction 4(2), 153-168. Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol4/iss2/7 This material is brought to you by the AIS Journals at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been accepted for inclusion in AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contact . - Article 7 DOI: n o i t c a r e t n I r e t u p m o C n a m u H n o s n o i t c a s n a r T S I A Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces Fahri Yetim University of Siegen Gunnar Stevens University of Siegen Sebastian Draxler University of Siegen Volker Wulf University of Siegen This paper critically reviews previous IS literature on user participation and argues that the literature is mainly empirically or normatively oriented and lacks design research on developing system prototypes in order to foster continuous user participation. It then contributes to the current research by introducing a system prototype, a communication tool that enables users to participate while using their application systems in their work contexts. The prototype provides different communication channels for supporting user-designer communications and knowledge sharing among users with respect to application usage. When integrated in the interface of an application system, the tool can help to adapt and redesign the application. The initial evaluation of the communication tool within the context of an application system indicates its usefulness and usability. Dennis Galletta was the accepting Senior Editor. This article was submitted on 10/30/2010 and accepted on 6/13/2011. It was with the author 112 days for 1 revision. Yetim, F., D. Draxler, G. Stevens, and V. Wulf (2012) “Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces,” AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (4) 2, pp. 153-168. ■ Issue 2 ■ INTRODUCTION User participation (and the related concept of user involvement) has received significant attention over the past several decades, and extensive literature investigates a number of dimensions of participation in Information Systems Development (ISD) (see Markus and Mao, 2004 and He and King, 2008 for reviews) . While the majority of research focuses on phenomena of participation in the design process before use, issues related to post-deployment or postimplementation participation have also gained significant attention (e.g., Wagner and Newell, 2007) . Yet a common characteristic of this IS literature on user participation is that it is mainly empirically or normatively oriented and rarely design focused. For example, a line of research investigates the communication between users and system developers (Hartwick and Barki, 2001; Gallivan and Keil, 2003) , yet does not suggest how to design systems that enable such communications. One strand of current research on user participation challenges empirical findings in previous research and calls for new orientation that better addresses the new contexts and issues we face today, including considering the diversity of users and contexts and the distributed nature of participation in system development, and using different kinds of intermediaries to represent the users (Markus and Mao, 2004; Barcellini et al., 2008; Iivari et al., 2009) . Another strand of current research takes a design research perspective (Hevner et al., 2004) and calls for designing system artifacts for supporting user participation. In particular, approaches to tailorable systems or End-User Development (EUD) (Lieberman et al., 2006; Germonprez et al., 2007; Wulf et al., 2008; Fischer, 2008) aim not only to design systems that are flexible and easy to adapt, but also call for socio-technical infrastructures to enable users to participate in their work contexts through the use of their application systems. For example, it has been argued that integrating a meta-communication mechanism in an application system would allow communication about the system’s communication and would foster continuous participation (Yetim, 2010) . This paper is motivated by these calls for further design-oriented research for supporting user participation, and makes two contributions to current research: First, we provide a critical review of previous participation research. The critical review uses five general questions as an analytic framework, asking why, who, where, when, and how users are (or should be) involved. In contrast to the most recent literature review (He and King, 2008) , which analyses literature along several empirical constr (...truncated)


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Fahri Yetim, Sebastian Draxler, Gunnar Stevens, Volker Wulf. Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces, AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 2012, Volume 4, Issue 2,