Of Dogs, Paper, Brains, Microbes, and Cyberinfrastructure Charlotte P. Lee Department of Informatics Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine (UCI) How Collaboration Occurs in the Development of Complex Information Systems

contents of talk i.introduction ii.material artifacts and the negotiation of boundaries in the design of a museum exhibition iii.the human infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure iv.current work on cyberinfrastructure v.conclusion

i.introduction increasingly necessary to solve complicated problems rarely a straightforward matter of people fitting together well-defined “pieces” Collaborative Design

Ethnographies of how groups create information systems collaborative design Social Informatics CSCW/HCI Also Relevant To: Science and Technology Studies, Science Policy, Organizational Studies, Engineering and Design Education, Project Domains

research theme: partial alignment Partial Alignment incomplete mutual understanding of collaborative social structures and information artifacts Research Goals empirically studying, theorizing, and supporting partial alignments in information systems for complex organizations

ii. material artifacts and the negotiation of boundaries in the design of a museum exhibition

boundary objects inhabit several communities of practice satisfy the informational requirements of each of them maintain a common identity across sites. Definition (Bowker and Star 1999): Boundary objects are easily “handed off” to collaborators

case study Ethnographic study of a group of designers creating an exhibition about dogs at a large natural history museum Research Questions –What communities of practice are involved in the design of this exhibition? –How do members of a design group comprised of people from different communities of practice collaborate? –How are artifacts used by the design group?

the design group as an intersection between communities of practice Functional units Education, Fabrication, Design, Curation Professional organizations Industrial Design, (Museum) Visitor Studies Other affiliations Previous employment (e.g. working in a particular museum genre), professional training, educational background (e.g. major area of study at university)

many documents and a multitude of practices

boundary negotiating artifacts Possible predecessors of boundary objects Can be largely sufficient for collaboration Facilitate the crossing of boundaries (transmitting information) Surrounded by sets of practices that may or may not be agreed upon by participants Facilitate the pushing and establishing of boundaries (dividing labor) May seem “effortful” as opposed to effortless Fluid — often incorporated or transformed into other artifacts

First rule of partial alignment outcome Ambiguous practices can result in ambiguous artifacts that are functionally useful

iii. the human infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure

cyberinfrastructure Large scale distributed scientific enterprise Cyberinfrastructure is attracting considerable investment, participation, and interest Changing scientific practice Technologies and forms of collaboration still emerging

creation of cyberinfrastructure Approach: Infrastructural inversion (Bowker 1994) Methodological device that places infrastructure in the foreground and reveals its relational nature Motivation: Explore how the creation of large-scale information systems are co- constructed through a combination of new technologies and new practices

human infrastructure The arrangements of organizations and actors brought into alignment in large-scale, distributed collaboration in order for work to be accomplished human infrastructure simply put:

research site: FBIRN Function Biomedical Informatics Research Network Funded by NIH 13 institutions Part of a larger BIRN project to facilitate sharing of experimental data Centered around experimental functional brain imaging data Map of BIRN Sites and Network (FBIRN in Red)

test case: schizophrenia research Complex disease that affects approximately 51 million people worldwide

amount of data, resources, fmri variance Image courtesy of Jessica Turner and FBIRN

data collection 18 months 36 bi-weekly meetings 3 on-site “all hands” meetings 20 interviews

personal networks Similar to knots (Engeström et al., 1999) and intensional networks (Nardi, 2002) networks used to find and fill positions participants had unique sets of people to rely on for help and information FBIRN cultivates new networks

not-so-virtual laboratories place-based, not virtual research sites provide support –material, organizational, human –scanner types (e.g. power, brand) –scanner time –technicians –fmri physicists –patients –data processing capabilities –legacy software –research know-how (methods, expertise)

working groups and task forces working groups –formed to focus on specific areas of application (e.g. statistics, MRI calibration) task forces –formed to discuss cross-test bed concerns (e.g. data sharing)

fuzzy membership in groups Team borders often fuzzy in distributed organizations (Mortensen and Hinds, 2002) Participants often did not know whether or not they themselves were part of a team –infrequent participation, consider self peripheral –know if participated, but no clear in or out –teleconference participation suggests membership but has not been fully embraced as defining membership

fuzzy organizational membership no clear outer periphery no list of participants for about a year didn’t know difference between working groups and task forces successfully accomplish work with a partial view of the organizational membership and structure

synergy with other collaboratories “ We want synergy. The only way realistically to get it done is to leverage and cooperate between groups that have similar goals.” “The FBIRN and (other) projects are one big smudge.”

human infrastructure in flux human infrastructure dynamic –working groups change and emerge over time human infrastructure holds more than one shape at a time –flexible –meets demands quickly

rethinking distributed teams each alone fails to account for the whole –traditional organizations –personal networks –distributed teams infrastructure vs. “infrastructur-ing” infrastructural view –problematize teams and networks

outcomes Second rule of partial alignment Ambiguous collaborative social structures can yet result in useful information infrastructure

iv. current research collaboration in the development of cyberinfrastructure for marine microbial biology

research objectives Explore: Transformation of scientific and engineering practices role of information artifacts in managing change notion of partial alignment in relationship to both larger innovations and incremental innovations in artifacts and practices relationship between patterns of collaboration organizational and scientific outcomes

Principal Investigators

Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA) White Filamentous Bacteria. Source: John Delaney and Research Channel, U. of Washington Images courtesy of L. Smarr

marine genome sequencing project measuring the genetic diversity of ocean microbes Sorcerer II Data Will Double Number of Proteins in GenBank! Slide courtesy of L. Smarr

early findings Rhetoric of “the community” masking diversity amongst scientific constituencies technological constituencies funding mechanisms users of CAMERA data & tools Reinforcing second rule of partial alignment and increasing granularity of analysis Recurring theme of “leverage” and “synergy” for accomplishing work

partial alignment revisited ambiguous artifacts that are functionally useful ambiguous collaborative social structures that are functionally useful What do other forms of partial alignment look like? For what types of situations are partial alignments appropriate? How can partial alignment be supported by information systems? How does partial alignment help or hinder innovation?

v. conclusion Cyberinfrastructure a domain that bridges a myriad interests supporting scientific advancement investigating new practices afforded by technological implementations interacting with more audiences theorizing sociotechnical systems researching and supporting virtual organizations What is important is what we learn from cyberinfrastructure

partial alignment will help HCI How and in what ways information systems need to be flexible and adaptable How tools and processes can support innovation Produce theory native to human-computer interaction

thank you! Questions?