Ethnographic study of collaborative knowledge work.

INTRODUCTION

According to Tom Davenport, a knowledge worker is "someone with high degrees of expertise, education or experience and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution, or application of knowledge." (1) The term was coined by Peter Drucker in 1969 to describe someone who adds value in the workplace by processing existing information to create new information which can be used to define and solve problems. (2) Examples of knowledge workers include managers, salespeople, nurses, doctors, lawyers, judges, and analysts. To get their job done knowledge workers rely heavily on tacit knowledge, the kind of knowledge that cannot be codified, but only gained through training or personal experience.

Companies consider knowledge workers among their top talent and are looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. These workers rely on the ability to work collaboratively, leverage relationship capital, and deliver new solutions. (3,4) Understanding how they work and what their needs are is a critical step toward creating tools that enable them to perform more efficiently. If we can improve technologies and work practices for knowledge workers, we may impact the knowledge work component of many jobs. (5)

We describe an ethnographic study whose goal is to better understand the ways knowledge workers get their jobs done, to identify the kinds of support they could benefit from, and to make recommendations for tools that might provide such support. We conducted this study as part of a requirements gathering initiative for future workflow products for business users (in this paper the terms "workflow" and "process" are used interchangeably).

The knowledge workers in our study have no special computer skills--we refer to them as non-technical business users of information technology (IT). We focus on knowledge work that involves collaboration and business processes (we use collaboration in the sense that at least two people are involved in the given process). The data we collected are based on field interviews, on observation sessions, and on validation sessions using prototypes. We analyzed the field data using selected principles from grounded theory and used the results of each cycle to guide the collection of data in subsequent cycles.

In our findings we describe how knowledge workers develop their own strategies and techniques for getting their work done in complex, dynamic environments in which prescribed work processes serve only as reference models. By presenting instances of such environments from our study data, we illustrate how such individualized work processes are created and demonstrate the need for new supporting technologies and tools.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section we describe our methods and study design, including approach, tools, study participants, and procedures followed. In the following section we present the results of the study. Because the study was realized as a three-cycle process, the results are presented by cycle. The last section consists of a discussion of the results and related work.

METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN

We describe in this section our approach to carrying out this study, the study participants, and the methods and procedures we followed. The field research component of the study was conducted by an ethnographer (the first author) and was reviewed by a project team whose 12 members included IT specialists in design, development, marketing, product management, and research. For confidentiality reasons the names of people and businesses are fictitious.

Approach and tools

We conducted this study over a six-month period in 2003 and 2004 at five different business sites in the Boston area. At each site we conducted interview sessions with a number of study participants. Each session included a questionnaire-based interview, an observation period, a task analysis segment, and a validation segment using prototypes. The tools we used included semistructured questionnaires, a low-fidelity storyboard, and two high-fidelity storyboards.

We performed the data analysis using selected principles from grounded theory (GT). (6) Grounded theory is a qualitative analysis method used in the social sciences to find relationships and distill patterns from loosely connected data. The collected data are analyzed and this analysis guides the collection of additional data. The process can be summarized as:

Collect data -> Define concepts -> Build relationships between concepts -> Discover patterns in data

Consistent with the GT approach, the study consisted of three cycles, whereby the results of each cycle affected the course of the following cycles.

Participants

The 52 participants in this study (all three cycles) are knowledge workers who are business users of IT and have no specialized computer skills. They are domain experts in the following areas: biotechnology, high technology, medicine, health care, professional services, retail, manufacturing, and law. Table 1 shows the grouping of participants by job title and the number of participants in each group.

Procedures

The study was conducted in three cycles, and the results of each cycle were used to direct the data collection in the subsequent cycles. At the end of each cycle, the results were checked in a validation segment that involved the participants, and then reviewed by the project team. The project team included people from design, development, marketing, product management, and research. Content for the storyboards was developed iteratively with the help of the study participants.

First cycle: Observation and task analysis

Observation sessions lasting approximately three hours were conducted with a total of 10 participants, two at each of the five sites. Participants allowed us to observe them while they worked, and also provided tours of their work environment. The tour included the participants' personal work areas, meeting rooms, reading areas, service areas such as mail rooms and lunch rooms, and areas where people gathered for informal breaks. Time was set aside for questions at the beginning and end of each session, when we completed questionnaires, collected work-related artifacts, and took photographs if permitted.

At the end of the visit, we asked the participants to describe the work processes they either used or intended to create. We made sure we understood the job-related tasks, the strategies used to perform these tasks, the tools used, and the problems encountered. We also solicited suggestions for new tools and strategies for managing the work.

Empirical data collected from this cycle were coded and then organized into distinct groups (known as "open coding" in the GT approach). Concepts that would account for perceived patterns in the data were developed for each group. Notes (in the form of memos, as per the GT approach) that captured and compared relationships between the concepts were created. As more data were collected, additional comparisons were made to further refine the concepts. Data collection continued until a point of diminishing returns was reached, when no additional insights were generated from the data analysis (known as saturation in the GT methodology).

The results were reviewed with the project team and the study goals for the next cycle were identified. A prototype, in the form of a low-fidelity storyboard, was created for validation work. Using a GT approach, dimensions/categories of importance were identified. Testing and validating the low-fidelity prototype was the goal of the second cycle of the study.

Second cycle: Low-fidelity prototyping

One of the processes encountered in our study involved scheduling meetings for groups of people. A low-fidelity prototype based on this process was used to validate results obtained in the first cycle. Validation sessions were conducted with seven participants. The sites were the same as the ones in the first cycle, but the participants were different. Two to three site visits were conducted with each participant, and a few of these were followed up by phone sessions.

The prototype consisted of a fictional storyboard with a narrative involving several people attempting to schedule meetings for a number of different purposes: meetings with customers and staff meetings for updates and for performance reviews. The storyboard consisted of rough, paper-and-pencil sketches.

We began the session by walking the participants through the storyboard and then encouraged them to comment. The participants suggested changes, and the storyboard evolved with each session, as each additional participant offered new details or new insight based on personal experience. We designed the storyboard to contain attributes common to all sites, but in addition, also included aspects specific to only certain sites. The latter helped stimulate discussion and revealed how decisions were made as well as nuances across domains.

This study cycle enabled us to collect both confirmatory and contrasting use cases. Consistent with the GT approach, we coded the results and refined the concepts and categories defined in the first cycle. The results from this cycle were used to design two high-fidelity storyboards to be tested in the third cycle.

Third cycle: High-fidelity prototyping