Sociologists can be surprisingly useful in interactive systems design

Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University)Published 1 January 1993

Ian Sommerville, Tom Rodden, Pete Sawyer, Richard Bentley

Citations76

Abstract

ion is a key part of this process - the computer science researcher is always examining the problem at hand to discover abstractions and to produce general rather than specific solutions. Confirmation of 10 Ian Sommerville, Tom Rodden, Pete Sawyer and Richard Bentley theoretical predictions or, indeed, the discovery of theories by analysis of experimental results is not currently a significant research methodology. The sociology research methods of relevance to our work are based on observation. The sociologist looks at a society to determine its practices, and behaviours. The sociologist may try to fit these observations into an existing theoretical framework or may derive a new theory from them. For ethnographers, all detail is potentially significant and they are reluctant to make abstractions in case this hides potentially important system details. However, different sociologists are concerned with looking for different things. Some sociologists are concerned with observing socia...

Keywords

Computer ScienceBusiness, Management and AccountingSocial Sciences

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