The Application and its consequences for non-standard knowledge work

TY - GEN

T1 - The Application and its consequences for non-standard knowledge work

AU - Nouwens, Midas

AU - Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Application-centric computing dominates human-computer interactions, yet the concept of an application is ambiguous and the impact of its ubiquity underexplored. We unpack "the application" through the lens of non-standard knowledge work: freelance, self-employed, and fixed-term contract workers who create knowledge in collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders on a per-project basis. Based on interviews with fourteen participants we describe how: i) their economic value is intertwined with data and skills related to specific applications; ii) their access to this value is systematically jeopardised in collaboration due to the different application practices, preferences, and proficiencies of other stakeholders; and iii) they mitigate the costs of this compromise through cross-application collaboration strategies. We trace these experiences to common characteristics of applications, such as update processes, interface symmetries, application-document relationships, and operating system and hardware dependencies. By empirically and analytically focusing on "the application", we reveal the implications of the current application-centric computing paradigm and discuss how variations within this model create qualitatively different human-computer interactions.

AB - Application-centric computing dominates human-computer interactions, yet the concept of an application is ambiguous and the impact of its ubiquity underexplored. We unpack "the application" through the lens of non-standard knowledge work: freelance, self-employed, and fixed-term contract workers who create knowledge in collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders on a per-project basis. Based on interviews with fourteen participants we describe how: i) their economic value is intertwined with data and skills related to specific applications; ii) their access to this value is systematically jeopardised in collaboration due to the different application practices, preferences, and proficiencies of other stakeholders; and iii) they mitigate the costs of this compromise through cross-application collaboration strategies. We trace these experiences to common characteristics of applications, such as update processes, interface symmetries, application-document relationships, and operating system and hardware dependencies. By empirically and analytically focusing on "the application", we reveal the implications of the current application-centric computing paradigm and discuss how variations within this model create qualitatively different human-computer interactions.

KW - Application paradigm

KW - Application-centric computing

KW - Knowledge work

KW - Non-standard work

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046945502&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3173574.3173973

DO - 10.1145/3173574.3173973

M3 - Article in proceedings

AN - SCOPUS:85046945502

BT - Proceedings of the 36th annual ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18)

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

T2 - 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018

Y2 - 21 April 2018 through 26 April 2018

ER -