ABSTRACT
Work in control rooms, or so-called Centers of coordination, challenges both humans and technology. The people working there have to be able to make quick decisions as well as be alert during less busy times. The work has to be coordinated within the group, since the operators are much depending on each other's work. This places special demands on the technology; it should be fast, trustworthy and easy to manipulate so that the complexity of the work is reduced.SOS Alarm is a company that is responsible for managing the telephone calls made to the emergency telephone number 112 in Sweden. The SOS operators receive, categorize, document, dispatch and monitor the incoming cases. This paper discusses SOS operators work; how they coordinate the information and tasks between them; how the technology supports that work. This study presents a fully computerized setting, compared to many other studies of centers of coordination that are not.
- Artman, H. (1999). Fördelade kunskapsprocesser i ledningscentraler vid nödsituationer. Linköping: Linköpings Universitet.Google Scholar
- Artman, H., & Waern, Y. (1999). Distributed Cognition in an Emergency Co-ordination Center. Cognition Technology & Work, Vol 1, pp. 237-246.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting Things Out Classification and its consequences. London, England: The MIT Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood-Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
- Helgeson, B., Lundberg, J., Normark, M., Pettersson, M., & Crabtree, A. (2000). Redovisning av uppdrag i SOS Alarm AB:s Nova 2005 Teknik projekt (541 00 010). Ronneby, Sweden: Institutionen för arbetsvetenskap (IAR): BTH och SOS Alarm AB.Google Scholar
- Martin, D., Bowers, J., & Wastell, D. (1997). The interactional affordances of technology: an ethnography of human-computer interaction in an ambulance control centre. Paper presented at the Proceedings of HCI'97, the British Conference on Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge: British Computing Society/Cambridge University Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Normark, M. (2002). Using technology for real-time coordination of work; A study of work and artifact use in the everyday activities of SOS Alarm. Licentiate Thesis TRITA-NA-0122, ISBN 91-7283-239-8, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.Google Scholar
- Suchman, L. (1993). Centers of Coordination A Case and some themes: Presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Discourse, Tools and Reasoning, Lucca, Italy,.Google Scholar
- Whalen, J., Zimmerman, D., & Whalen, M. (1988). When words fail: a single case analysis. Social Problems, Vol 35(No 4), 335-362.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Sense-making of an emergency call: possibilities and constraints of a computerized case file
Recommendations
Ambiguities, awareness and economy: a study of emergency service work
CSCW '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative workThis paper derives from a study undertaken at an emergency service centre in Sweden. The studies have focused on features of work familiar to the CSCW community, including the documenting and analysing current work practices, understanding the ...
Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wizards of Oz
CSCWThe Wizard of Oz method is an increasingly common practice in HCI and CSCW studies as part of iterative design processes for interactive systems. Instead of designing a fully-fledged system, the 'technical work' of key system components is completed by ...
Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCW
In this article we focus attention on ethnography's place in CSCW by reflecting on how ethnography in the context of CSCW has contributed to our understanding of the sociality and materiality of work and by exploring how the notion of the `field site' ...
Comments