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Situating the “music of” households and firemen in semi-open spaces: contribution to the analysis of collective activity’s spatio-temporal dynamics

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Abstract

Examining different team dynamics and understanding collective activities in home environments are two important challenges for ergonomics and its related fields. This article focuses on collective activities within home/building conceived as semi-open spaces (opening up opportunities whilst at the same time imposing more or less radical limits to collective activity) and discusses how orchestral formats (radically separating conceptual/physical and temporal axes) provide alternative perspectives for qualitative research. To do so, we leverage on the creation and use of MUltI-SCOre Format (for MUSICOF) in two previous in-depth studies of households and firemen. Drawing on a reflective analysis of our research practices, we describe how MUSICOF provides benefits when the researcher/practitioner has to cover a large conceptual/physical space, synchronise each basic unit of the collective activity, analyse activity at different levels (cognitive, social and spatio-temporal), characterise spatio-temporal arrangements and zoom in/out different degrees of abstraction of the analysis. It allows one to articulate multiple data and categories on a unique temporal axis, to formalise any type of arrangement of collective activity within space and time, to access all the required data on a single document where all the basic units are synchronised and to create either detailed empirical or synthetic formative models. After the demonstration of these benefits and some challenges, we discuss the perspectives and limits of this paper in order to equip studies of collective activity’s dynamics more consequentially regarding semi-open spaces, situated/distributed cognition, cognitive work analysis and scenario-based design.

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Notes

  1. See http://chronoviz.com.

  2. See https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/.

  3. We use capital letter when we refer to the whole theoretical framework or research program (Course of Action, Team Sense-Making etc.) Minuscules are used to point to specific concepts (e.g. course of action).

  4. Due to international differences in the organization of firemen teams, we explain the terms “chief”, “BAT” and “BAL”, and the local organization of these teams. The chief is in charge of a truck with five other members on board: a driver and two “pairs” of firemen (the “Water supply and system” pair, and the “Attack” pair). When on site, the “Attack” pair of firemen (‘BAT’ abbreviates Binôme d’ATtaque, in French) explores the disaster area, extinguishes or at least limits the fire and administers first-aid. The “Water supply and system” pair (BAL abbreviates Binôme d’ALimentation, in French) manages the initial connections in the whole water system (truck, hose, local supply devices), then monitors the system for the BAT and is in support of the BAT.

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Acknowledgments

Dr. Julien Guibourdenche would like to thank Prs. Michèle Grosjean†, Yves Clot, Pascal Salembier, Drs. Yvon Haradji, Myriam Fréjus, Jacqueline Vacherand-Revel and Germain Poizat for their collaboration(s) in previous works or publications. The authors wish to thank Dr. Magali Prost for her suggestions on MUSICOF. This work received support from the ADEME—Agence De l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie (Smart Electric Lyon project, Investissements d’Avenir program). The work from Guibourdenche (2013) received Grant Number 0562 from the Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie from January 2009 to January 2012. It was initially developed in collaboration between the laboratory ICAR—Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissages and Représentations (UMR 5191 CNRS–Lyon 2–E.N.S Lyon–IFÉ) and Electricité de France—Recherche & Développement at ICAME dpt—Innovation Commerciale Analyse des Marchés et de leurs Environnements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICD/Tech-CICO (UMR 6281 CNRS), University of Technology of Troyes, 10, rue Marie Curie, 10004, Troyes Cédex, France

    Julien Guibourdenche

  2. CERV/CREAD (EA 3875), Université de Bretagne Occidentale, 3, rue des archives CS 93837, 29238, Brest, France

    Cyril Bossard & Yohann Cardin

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  1. Julien Guibourdenche
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  2. Cyril Bossard
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  3. Yohann Cardin
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Correspondence to Julien Guibourdenche.

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Guibourdenche, J., Bossard, C. & Cardin, Y. Situating the “music of” households and firemen in semi-open spaces: contribution to the analysis of collective activity’s spatio-temporal dynamics. Cogn Tech Work 19, 191–206 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-016-0394-y

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