Mårten Pettersson

marten.pettersson@bth.se

I am interested in studying work and in designing technology that can support the work practices. More specifically the main focus is on how to support cooperation. In my research I have done extensive ethnographic field studies of emergency service work, but also of truck drivers work and building maintenance work. When designing I explore what functions could support the work and how the interface could be constructed.

The settings studied are control rooms, mobile work settings and public settings. Examples of methods used are ethnographic field studies, observation, video recordings, interaction analysis, video scenarios and workshops. The understanding gained by the making the ethnography is very valuable when designing new technology.

I have focused on how people are getting involved in cooperative work, how we can support cooperation across distance and how we can support people reaching information when on the move.

One example of a concrete problem that I have worked with is how to support emergency service operators at different emergency service centre to work together. This has resulted in two design suggestions; The WaterCalls and the SpyCase:

·        WaterCalls - Aims to support cooperation between emergency service centres, one of the problems we have addressed in the SOS Project. It addresses the question of how we can combine awareness technology with functions that support interaction with technology and people.

·        SpyCase - Aims to support identification of multiple calls and cases about the same event. It address the question of how to make the operators aware of what is going on and support them when identifying similar cases.

My background is from the master program People, Computers and Work (MDA) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. I hold a licentiate degree in Work Practice and IT, and I am currently finishing my dissertation. I have been part of the Work Practice Laboratory since the autumn 1999.