Entangled collaborations : a study of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in the field of user experience and data-intensive technologies in campus cyberinfrastructure
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Known as a collaborative virtual organization, cyberinfrastructure is a large-scale sociotechnical assembly of people, organizations, and scientific computational infrastructures. It requires and serves cross-disciplinary scientific research collaborations in the age of digital transformation. Studies have shown that lack of understanding the diverse interests of different scientific stakeholder groups involved in the development of the cyberinfrastructure and ignoring usability issues, negatively impact the usage and broader adoption of cyberinfrastructure technologies. Through this dissertation, I provide two cases of data-intensive computational applications within a cyberinfrastructure research project, aimed to trace the entanglement of cross-disciplinary user experience (UX) collaborative practices of scientific research groups, and to identify an effective approach to build user-friendly cyberinfrastructure technologies. Drawing from Olson's theory of remote scientific collaboration and Grudin's theory of groupware applications, I apply a three-phase formative research: Phase 1, a systematic literature review to uncover, analyze, and present trends and issues in user experience studies of cyberinfrastructure research projects (Study 1); Phase 2, an iterative study to design, develop, and formatively evaluate the user experience of a cyberinfrastructure application (in this case, a healthcare data-intensive computational application) involving multiple different scientific research groups (Study 2); and Phase 3, an empirical investigation of the UX collaborative practices of cross-disciplinary research groups involved in the design, development, and formative UX evaluation of campus cyberinfrastructure research projects (Study 3). Each study applied multiple methods for data collection and analysis. The results of my dissertation contribute to the understanding of integration of UX studies in cyberinfrastructure development by providing empirical demonstration of how formative UX studies can be a fruitful approach in gradually uncovering both technological problems (e.g., usability) and social problems (e.g., distributed collaboration), and provide recommendations for improving the design of complex data-intensive computational applications. My findings reveal the nuanced ways in which entanglement challenges of cross-disciplinary UX collaborations play a role in shaping cyberinfrastructure development. Here, entanglement refers to the complex interconnections between human-computer interaction (HCI) systems and their social and technical environments. Entanglement of HCI systems highlights the need to take into account the diverse and complex ways in which users engage with and are affected by technology, as well as the broader social and cultural contexts in which technology is situated. Looking at research collaborations from the lens of entanglement helps to better understand and address the sociotechnical challenges of HCI. Implications suggest the significance of integrating disciplinary knowledge and practices in cross-disciplinary teams through (a) clarification of the different and diverse research goals early in the process, (b) early communication of partly different project plans of the cross-disciplinary groups involved and their management, (c) clarification of the mental models of the work processes of the different teams, (d) continuous and formative data-based feedback for improving the research process and product and making sure that the diverse teams understand the meaning of the data, (e) clarity of user needs and user feedback, and (f) understanding that the usability problem is not with the users, rather the design of the system. Overall, my dissertation provides insights into the complex entanglement of cross-disciplinary research interaction with technological, social, and organizational entities, and how it shapes the process of cyberinfrastructure development and the cross-disciplinary scientific collaborations for UX research.
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Ph. D.