Opening Plenary Address

Joan Greenbaum, City University of New York
Morten Kyng, Aarhus University

Tuesday, 8:30 - 10:00

The Design Challenge: Creating a Mosaic out of Chaos

As designers, we usually find ourselvesÐand our designsÐin complex organizational settings, where diverse and often conflicting interests co-exist. Yet design is often seen as a process where the "one best solution" is developed instead of allowing the rich mosaic of conflicting perspectives to be brought to light.

Cooperative Design emphasizes the role of end-usersÐnot as information providersÐbut as active participants with their own interests and viewpoints. This emphasis has, in turn, led to the development of new tools and techniques that bring the context of use into the foreground in design. Through various examples, different interests and viewpoints in system design will be illustrated. The examples will show how different interests and viewpoints may challenge, complement, frustrate or support one another. Cooperative Design presents an opportunity to create mosaics in such chaos.

Joan Greenbaum is professor of Computer Information Systems at LaGuardia College (City University of New York) and visiting professor of Economics at Barnard College (Columbia University). For two decades, her work has focused on the interrelationship of computer systems and jobs. In particular, she works with the development of cooperative design strategies for enabling workers to have more of a voice in the design process. Among her recent publications is the work she co-edited with Morten Kyng, Design at Work (Erlbaum, 1991) and "Windows on the Workplace: Computers, Jobs and the Organization of Office Work in the Late Twentieth Century" (Monthly Review, 1995).

Morten Kyng has worked on issues in cooperative design since the mid-seventies. His first book in English, Computers and Democracy (Avebury, 1987), edited together with Bjerknes and Ehn, introduced the idea of designing for democracy and skill in the workplace. His current work focuses on the development of computer-based design tools, with the aim of making tools and techniques that supportÐinstead of obstructÐend-user influence in design. He is Director of the Centre for Experimental System Development and associate professor at the Computer Science Department, Aarhus University.

Keith Instone / instone@acm.org / 95-01-05