Introduction

The overall goal for the project is to improve conditions for employees in a particular activity (in an enterprise or within an organization). In order to improve the work situation, you need to collect certain information about the organization studied:

• what are the objectives of the activities in the organization?
• what kind of procedures do they follow in order to achieve these objectives?
• Are there parts of the organization that can be improved to more easily reach the objectives? I.e. what is perceived as problematic, confusing, unclear, etc.?

The project should not focus primarily on a particular system's user interface, but rather on the activities within the organization. One should therefore take into account aspects of cooperation, communication channels, rules or regulations, roles, division of labour and other aspects that may affect how the activities within the organization are performed. The tools offered by Activity Theory will help you focus on what to look for when you communicate with people in the organization studied and analyse your results (lectures v. 4).

The Hierarchical Task Analysis, HTA will be used to analyze the task level of the system.

Later in the project (see below) you should try to incorporate the results of the study into a prototype.

If any of the results found are not considered in the prototype, the reasons for omitting them should be explained and discussed in the final report.

Phases

The project consists of the following phases

• Phase 1 - Starting the project (v. 4-5)
  In this phase you are to take the first steps including forming groups, choosing organization and handing in a detailed project plan.
• Phase 2 - Data gathering, analysis and design (v. 6-8)
  In this phase you are to gather data in cooperation with representatives from the organization, make a thorough analysis of the data using the Activity Theory, and then turn this into a design for the system, also using other sources of information such as guidelines and an analysis based on HTA. Results are presented in a seminar.
• Phase 3 - Finishing the project (v. 9-11)
  In this phase you are to evaluate your prototype, redesign the prototype according to the results from the evaluation, review a report from one of the other groups (individually), and take part in a seminar where the results of the peer reviews are shared. Finally, presenting your results at a final seminar.
  
• Phase 4 - Finishing the report (v. 11-12)
  The group makes changes to the report according to the reviews and finishes the reports.

Deliverables

In Phase 1:

1a Forming groups 25/1, 13.00

1b Detailed Project Plan 1/2, 13.00

In phase 2:

Questions and issues concerning the analysis seminar e-mailed to Dipak 21/2, 13.00.

Work analysis report due 22/2, 13.00.

In phase 3:

Preliminary report to peers 27/2, 17.00

In phase 4:

Final project report due 25/3

Seminars (Attending the seminars is compulsory)

In phase 2:

Results from the analysis part and the first design suggestions are presented in a seminar 22/2 13.00-17

In phase 3:

Peer review seminar, preliminary reports are reviewed by students in another project group 5/3 13.15-15

Seminar covering the evaluation and final designs 15/3 13.00-17