2008-09 Visitors

My research focuses on how to support coherent user experiences in heterogeneous system settings. I am interested in 1) understanding how user experiences are formed in the context of Extended Information Services (EIS) - services that are systemically extended across multiple platforms and 2) how distinct system characteristics influence coherent user experiences in these environments. My previous experience as an interaction designer in sports technology industry sheds additional practitioner insight into my work. With my qualitative, cross-disciplinary research I wish to contribute practical in-depth knowledge that can be used in the design of more user-friendly pervasive IT.

My ongoing project is called Building Professional Communities of Practice in School: Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platforms (PracSIP). A PracSIP is an Internet platform which makes students able to simulate (parts of) the community of practice of a professional setting, and thereby supports their development of educationally important competencies. In collaboration with the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet I have developed a PracSIP called The Editorial Office which supports students in building a journalistic community of practice. While staying at Stanford, I will work with empirical data from Danish classes that have worked with The Editorial Office.

My research is focused on virtual and mobile knowledge work. My main research question is: What are the specific job demands, stressors and job resources that contribute to the well-being of distributed team members? I use qualitative approach in analyzing interview data from nine globally distributed industrial teams to identify and model the demands, hindrances and enablers of well-being and leadership in virtual and mobile knowledge work. In this research, I apply psychological, organizational, and information technology perspectives.

Social media and Web2.0 have changed the way people think and use the Internet. They also seem to be key drivers for deeper integration of the Internet and mobile applications. Key research issues in my project include Web2.0 platform, applications, and features, and the risks they pose (for both individuals and organizations). Special emphasis will be given to understanding the role of social networks and persuasion in this context. Overall, the goal of this project is to develop sound and safe design principles for the next generation of Web-based and mobile applications.

I study organizational knowing related to decision making and anticipating and creating the future, especially the future consumer needs. My previous work focused on intuitive and experience based knowing as an important resource for product development and user involvement in sports technology. My current research covers areas of knowledge management, organizational studies, social aspects of creativity and new tools and models for social innovativeness. I analyze practices and references of knowing within a business context and the development of tools and practices to enhance organizational knowledge creation and creativity together with user orientation.

Shortages of skilled operatives, and of skill instructors, are reported in many manual occupations throughout the world. Several technologies have the potential to enable the formulation and communication of skill knowledge - without human skill instructors. My study investigates the relative potential of different technologies, such as virtual reality and augmented reality. Further, my study investigates the relevance to instruction by these technologies of establish techniques which are used during the formulation and communication of skill knowledge by human instructors.

I am researching how we can use rhetorical communication theory when designing interactive computer systems and whether it might allow us to address end-user motivation directly. My case is corporate knowledge management systems for innovation. I hope to contribute with a different understanding of the human-to-human computer mediated relationship in a corporate setting. At Stanford I will be studying persuasive technology at the Persuasive Technology Lab and trying to establish how this field might be valuable in ensuring end-user contributions in corporate systems.

The focus of my research is Strategic Design, which is a combination of business, design and social science. It involves multidisciplinary teams working with complex and unframed problems. Strategic Design is a relatively new area in both practice and research. Nevertheless it approaches some of the key questions in relation to our everyday lives. For example: What can hospitals do to improve children's experience during hospitalization? or What will television be used for in the future? The research is conducted as a processual research and the purpose is to identify some of the driving mechanisms in the Strategic Design process.

My research is aimed at innovation in inter-organizational networks with specific focus on the initial phases of the network (how do companies identify and involve other companies in an inter-organizational network?). The theoretical framework is Social Network Analysis. The project with which I will be working during my visiting scholarship at H-STAR is an inter-organizational network, the Intelligent Utility network (www.intelligentutility.dk), which is seeking to develop new business models, services and products on the basis of the current implementation of smart meters in Danish private households.

My current research focuses on the business intelligence and medical/nursing informatics applications of text summarization and information extraction systems. The goal is to develop useful summarization and IE applications and to better understand the possibilities and challenges in developing and using these applications, while in the process to further improve the underlying methods and techniques. I am especially interested in trends and network discovery and following-up through the analysis and summarization of economic and business reports and news, daily nursing narratives, and AML Suspicious Activity Reports.

My research project "mediated reputation" approaches reputation formation of innovations through thematic interviews of key people (journalists, VCs, Analysts and PR-practitioners) in the innovation industry in Silicon Valley and aims at constructing a model for the formation of media reputation of innovations. The project focuses on media reputation, as it is the journalists' impressions that most shape how the innovation is presented in the media and how the stakeholders in the end perceive the innovation. The project asks (1) What sources and clues do journalists combine to form their impression of an innovation? and (2) What role, if any, does media reputation have in the overall reputation of the innovation?

My current research looks at Transformation Design and User Driven Innovation for the Experience Economy. Despite the suggestion of business hype in this description, there is a very real need to make "freemium" business models sustainable at a local scale. My main focus right now is on historical adventure games and mobile technology in a number of projects in cooperation with Danish museums using narrative concepts linking historical information, museum objects and specific geographic locations. Young learners are engaged in production of quality content that can be disseminated via mobile internet and web 2.0 learning communities.

During my stay I would like to deepen my studies of how the new biomedical material and visual world can inspire new ways of curatorial and display practices in museums. Biomedical objects differ from the kind of artefacts that we normally associate with medical history collections and museum exhibitions. This has mainly to do with the molecular, digital and hybrid structure of biomedical research and practice. How to overcome this communicative gap is in the focus of my research.

My research at H-STAR focuses on mobile social video applications. I am involved with a project that is developing an application that is used as a test-bed in our empirical studies. During my visit to Stanford I will conduct case studies in the context of learning and user-centered game design. I seek to explore the potential of mobile social media in these areas. Especially, I am interested in novel ways to apply tagged video content. Furthermore, the aim is to develop sound design principles of mobile social applications.

My research project focuses on the organizational uses of virtual worlds for communication and collaboration. Specifically, I am interested in the social interaction and group identity of innovative, geographically dispersed teams collaborating in these environments. The research questions are: 1) What are the specific features of virtual worlds that are related to team communication and team dynamics, such as to the creation of a shared group identity and 2) how team members construct their social identities when collaborating via avatars in these 3D environments. While staying at Stanford, I will work with empirical data collected from a geographically dispersed group collaborating in Second Life.

My research focuses on the design of architectures and resource management frameworks for integrated optical wireless networks. I address the challenges of integrating optical and wireless network technologies and building future access networks to provide a broadband and ubiquitous last-mile connection. My project investigates innovative architectural and transmission solutions based on the newest physical layer achievements and adequate management and control algorithms. The project pursues experimental validations of the architectural and transmission solutions by creating a versatile development and complex test environment.

Masataka Nakaue, Kobe Shinwa Women's University, Japan.
August 2008 - August 2009.
Working with Shelley Goldman & Aki Murata, School of Education.
I am engaged in two projects:
(1) In the Family Math project, the team develops mobile applications to support mathematics activities in daily lives of middle school students. The development is anchored in the findings of a basic research study for the Family Math project in which 23 families were interviewed, identifying the many mathematical activities they engaged in.
(2) Lesson study is a collaborative teacher development where school teachers plan, conduct and reflect on research lessons in their own classrooms.  Unlike other teacher development methods, lesson study respects autonomy and collaborative research activities of on-site practitioners.  My research question is how to improve and foster the discourse of teachers during their analysis on their own lessons.