‘User-designer relations’ concerns the sorts of working relationships that arise between developers and end users of IT products - the different ways designers of IT products seek to engage with users, and the ways users seek to influence product design. It is through the shifting patterns of these relations that IT products are realised. Although it has generally been accepted that achieving better user-designer relations will improve the quality of IT products, there has been little cons...

Vast amounts of digital data are now generated daily by people as they go about their lives, yet social researchers are struggling to exploit it. At the same time, the challenges faced by society in the 21st century are growing ever more complex, and demands research that is bigger in scale, more collaborative and multi-disciplinary than ever before.This cutting-edge volume provides an accessible introduction to innovative digital social research tools and methods that harness this...

The Internet and associated technologies have been around for almost twenty years. Networked access and computer ownership are now the norm. There is a plethora of technologies that can be used to support learning, offering different ways in which learners can communicate with each other and their tutors, and providing them with access to interactive, multimedia content. However, these generic skills don’t necessarily translate seamlessly to an academic learning context. Appropriation of t...

This publication has grown out of two frustrations. One is the experience that so many applications in the area of information and communication technology (lCT) are built without an eye to what the users can handle or need for their work, systematic user oriented evaluation of new tools is therefore limited. The video recorder provides a good general example of this phenomenon, but more worryingly so do many software tools designed for use in organisations. The other frustration arises fr...

The use of information and communication technologies to support public administrations, governments and decision makers has been recorded for more than 20 years and dubbed e-Government. Moving towards open governance roadmaps worldwide, electronic participation and citizen engagement stand out as a new domain, important both for decision makers and citizens; and over the last decade, there have been a variety of related pilot projects and innovative approaches.With contributions f...

Information Systems Development (ISD) progresses rapidly, continually creating new challenges for the professionals involved. New concepts, approaches and techniques of systems development emerge constantly in this field. Progress in ISD comes from research as well as from practice.This conference will discuss issues pertaining to information systems development (ISD) in the inter-networked digital economy. Participants will include researchers, both experienced and novice, from in...

This book describes current advances and future directions in the theory and application of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector. It is the product of an international effort involving a network of construction IT and computing researchers, investigating different aspects of agent theory and applications.The contributed chapters cover different perspectives and application areas, and represent significant efforts ...

Why should every student take a computing course? What should be the content of these courses? How should they be taught, and by whom? This book addresses these questions by identifying the broader reaches of computing education, problem-solving and critical thinking as a general approach to learning.The book discusses new approaches to computing education, and considers whether the modern ubiquity of computing requires an educational approach that is inherently interdisciplinary a...

Most construction projects are large and costly. Collaborative working involves two or more stakeholders sharing their efforts and resources to complete the project more effectively and efficiently.Collaborative, integrative and multi-disciplinary teams can tackle the complex issues involved in creating a viable built environment. This tends to be looked at from three interrelated perspectives: the technological, organizational, and social; and of these the key issue is to improve ...

In modernity, an individual identity was constituted from civil society, while in a globalized network society, human identity, if it develops at all, must grow from communal resistance. A communal resistance to an abstract conceptualised world, where there is no possibility for perception and experience of power and therefore no possibility for human choice and action, is of utmost importance for the constituting of human choosers and actors.This book therefore sets focus on those ...

Online and Social Networking Communities is a professional guide written for educational practitioners and trainers who wish to use online communication tools effectively in their teaching. Focusing on the student experience of learning in online communities, it addresses ‘web 2.0’ and other ‘social software’ tools and considers the role these technologies play in supporting student learning and building learning communities.The guide offers:real-world case s...

Research on communication and information technologies is of growing importance to sociology and the interdisciplinary examination of communication and (new) media. This volume includes eight chapters examining recent developments in the field, illustrating the maturation, vibrancy, and diversity of this field of study as well as pointing to rich new avenues for scholarly exploration. Contributions aptly chart three key developments that characterize current research on communication and d...