Human Work Interaction Design

Human Work Interaction Design (HWID) is a socio-technical HCI design approach. This introductory chapter presents HWID as a platform with five parts: context, human work, interaction design, relations between human work and interaction design, and theory and methodology. The platform is to be used for building locally valorized theory and action in the form of IT artefacts. The contexts for a HWID project can, for example, be a small- and medium-sized manufacturing company that suffers from problems with productivity and worker satisfaction related to the use of algorithms. Current knowledge about socio-technical HCI design approaches offers solutions to such design cases. This book focus on what HWID can offer to socio-technical HCI design researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.

This chapter introduces and compares systematically HWID to current research knowledge about socio-technical HCI. It introduces to the existing body of HWID research, and to traditional and more recent approaches to work analysis and interaction design. Then it compares systematically HWID and Experience Design (Hassenzahl et al in Synth Lect Human-Cent Inform 3(1):1–95, 2010), HWID and Practice-Based Design (Volker Wulf et al in Socio-informatics—a practice-based perspective on the design and use of IT artifacts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), and HWID and ‘Design Tensions’ for group work (Gross in Comput Supp Cooperat Work (CSCW) 22(4):425–474, 2013). This is followed up with a summary overview and outline of what is unique and what HWID as a platform for socio-technical HCI theorizing shares with other socio-technical HCI design approaches. The chapter ends with an introduction to four types of HWID relation artefacts.

This chapter touches on the perhaps most crucial and difficult part of HWID, of finding psychological needs from both an interaction design and a work analysis point of view. The chapter presents three sub-types of relation artefacts Type I: organizational problems, worker needs, and contextual personas. It further develops a terminology that acknowledges that computer algorithms (e.g., robots, work automation) are themselves socio-technical systems that embed designers, vendors, suppliers, and managers, even when their primary users and collaborators are workers. Finding human and non-human actors’ psychological needs is not a well-defined procedure, but an interpretative act that requires courage and will, and the chapter ends with a summary of how this is done.

This chapter is about relation artefacts type II, which are socio-technical ideation sketches. These are presented as a design movement with three sub-types of Type II from the technical to the social. This begins with interaction design patterns, then do collaborative sketching, and finally converge on new workflows. They are explained with reference to the HWID platform and illustrated with examples of how to sketch interaction and collaboration concepts for workplaces. Novel approaches for supporting designers in sketching algorithms, such as alternative machine learning approaches to the same problem, are discussed. Ways of evaluating sketches from a work analysis and organization perspective are introduced. The chapter ends with a summary of how to sketch alternative solutions for interaction design in a complex work domain. A design case with a simple folder design for a complex work environment that illustrates the relation artefact Type II is presented.

This chapter takes the thread with sketching HWID solutions from Chap. 4 further and presents socio-technical hypothesis prototyping as relation artefacts type III. Three sub-types move the design from the social to the technical: Organizational action hypotheses, prototyped worker experiences, and UX-at-work field evaluations and tests. Prototyping hypotheses on a HWID platform means that specific organizational work design hypotheses and interaction design hypotheses should be presented as prototypes, and that these should be UX tested, and field evaluated. The chapter draws on notions about ‘justificatory knowledge’ for prototypes, and ‘appropriating’ prototypes. The chapter ends with summary of relation artefacts Type III as expressions of workers actively prototyping specific hypotheses about interaction designs and social arrangements at work.

This chapter is about relation artefacts Type IV which are socio-technical interventions in organizational and wider contexts. Three subtypes of these relation artefacts move the design from the technical to the social: interaction interoperability checkups, digital legacy interventions, and organizational strategy alignments. The HWID platform is shown to provide a massive push toward such interventions, through the continuous relations building between empirical work analysis and interaction design activities that aims to create new local sociomaterial realities for stakeholders involved. Ways of avoiding falling into a ‘techno-determinism’ trap and instead keeping the relations to the social, and vice versa, are introduced. The chapter ends with a summary of how to do socio-technical HCI design interventions.

This chapter provides guidance for academic researchers on how to study socio-technical relations and perform socio-technical HCI theorizing with the HWID platform. Most importantly, the chapter presents the tool of ‘theorizing workshops’ and gives detailed instructions and examples of how to run such workshops with researchers, students, and practitioners. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the notion of HWID templates for digital analysis of qualitative data and provides example of rich design case data files that weave work analysis and interaction design together, based on these HWID templates. For the quantitatively inclined researchers, the chapter proposes a way to do HWID-based formative structural equation modeling of data from socio-technical HCI design cases. This how-to chapter ends with a proposal for a work plan for using the HWID platform in a socio-technical HCI project on the size of a master thesis or a Ph.D. project.

This chapter is for consultants rolling out solutions based on the HWID platform in multiple companies. As a normative platform for doing consultancy, HWID stands out with its few strict methodological requirements and much flexibility. The chapter presents benefits and challenges of using the HWID approach in socio-technical design cases and compares this to the use of classic user-centered design approaches and other socio-technical design approaches. The type of consultancy expertise that may benefit from using the platform is outlined. Socio-technical design cases are discussed from a consultant’s perspective. The chapter ends with suggested ethics guidelines.

This chapter provides policymakers with a HWID platform for regulating socio-technical HCI phenomena and issues. After a brief introduction to HCI and policymaking, the chapter presents policy work done on the HWID platform about sustainable digital work design. The HWID relation artefact Types I–IV are revisited from a policy perspective, and policymaking is discussed related to socio-technical HCI design for digital work environments, well-being at work, a notion of decent work, and more. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of geopolitical issues and reflections on benefits and challenges of HWID and policymaking.

This chapter reflects on the use of the HWID platform in a wider context of ethical value exchange, post-humanism, and the anthropocene. It asks the question if we should design socio-technical HCI design that basically helps humans to come to terms with ‘living with monsters’, that is, powerful algorithms. It attempts to explain the difference between socio-technical and sociomaterial and how they are both useful for design. At the same time, the chapter argues that human psychology should be given a prominent place in the use of the HWID platform and suggests to study socio-technical HCI design phenomena related to the human user tendency to anthropomorphize technology such as AI, robots, etc. The chapter ends with pointing to the need for designing on a global scale, while reflecting on the psychology of the planetary interaction designs. In this way, the chapter becomes a powerful argument for keeping a strong focus on the technical in the social sciences, without falling into a trap of technological determinism.

This chapter summarizes and concludes on HWID as a form of socio-technical HCI design under the heading ‘Sketching for digital human work’. It lists the main insights in one display. These include that theorizing for socio-technical HCI should avoid the technological determinism trap, that the HWID platform is a solution to avoid this, and that it should be used as a multi-sided platform, open for interpretation and change, to design and valorize local theory relevant to the local community. Furthermore, it includes four types of socio-technical relation artefacts associated with psychological need finding, socio-technical ideation sketching, socio-technical hypothesis prototyping, and action and design interventions. These insights should be particularly useful to any HCI researcher interested in action-oriented approaches to HCI in organizations and work settings. With the HWID platform, they should be able to involve most stakeholder groups in theorizing about socio-technical HCI and do this in a context and culturally sensitive way. Furthermore, the HWID approach supports consultancy and policy work of importance to many people. The ideal is that workers will be the designers of their own (work) world. Hence, in contrast to some work design methodologies, sketching for human work with the HWID platform is an open and accessible approach.