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Digital Work Environment Rounds – Systematic Inspections of Usability Supported by the Legislation

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12933))

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Abstract

Digital tools are an essential part of the work environment of many civil servants working at public authorities. They should therefore follow the prevalent work environment legislation. This paper describes a method to conduct digital work environment rounds to assess the usability of digitalized work to assess work environment risks and identify improvements. The methodology used is following a participatory action research project in collaboration between users, union representatives, managers and IT experts. The case presented in this paper describes the development of the digital work environment round in collaboration with a court in Sweden. It was based on an international standard in the making and collaboratively developed and adapted to the situation at the public authority. Based on this work the public authority has now decided to make this method a part of their annual systematic work environment management and other organizations are following in their tracks.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the study we used the concept of “IT support” to encompass the entire sociotechnical system of software, hardware and the organizational structure in which it is used. It should not be confused with the concept of support staff. Later on, the concept was changed to digital system, which in itself is an ambiguous concept as the interview subjects had troubles understanding it as the entire system rather than a particular computer application. Therefore, for this study the concept “IT support” was used to mark the entire sociotechnical system.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the staff at Förvaltningsrätten i Göteborg (Administrative Court of Gothenburg) who took part in the case and provided support for this action research study. Their help and support were tremendous. They have also given their consent to being visible in the photographs from the study. I would also like to thank the Swedish Institute for Standardization (SIS) and particularly Åke Walldius, the editor of the Usability Round standard without whose input none of this would have been accomplished.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jan Gulliksen

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  1. Jan Gulliksen
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Correspondence to Jan Gulliksen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Gulliksen, J. (2021). Digital Work Environment Rounds – Systematic Inspections of Usability Supported by the Legislation. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12933. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_13

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85616-8

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