Participatory Design Principles and Practices 1st Edition Douglas Schuler
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- 6. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN: Principles and Practices
- 8. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN: Principles and Practices Edited by Douglas Schuler Aki Namioka Boeing Computer Services Computer Professionals fo r Social Responsibility CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group Boca Raton London New York CRC Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an inform a business
- 9. First Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 365 Broadway Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642 Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 by CRC Press 6000 Broken Sound Parkway, NW Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Copyright 1993 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Participatory design : Principles and practices / edited by Douglas Schuler, Aki Namioka. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-8058-0951-1 (cloth). — ISBN 0-8058-0952-X (paper) 1. System design. 2. Human-computer interaction. I. Schuler, Douglas. II. Namioka, Aki. QA76.9.S88P38 1993 004.2' 1— dc20 92-27297 CIP Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
- 10. Contents Foreword Lucy Suchman Preface PART I: CONTEXT 1. The Hazards of Leaving Out the Users Ellen Bravo 2. Workers, Unions, and New Technology Frank Emspak 3. A Design of One’s Own: Towards Participatory Design in the United States Joan Greenbaum PART II: PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES 4. Scandinavian Design: On Participation and Skill Pelle Ehn 5o Achieving Cooperative System Design: Shifting From a Product to a Process Focus Kaj Gronbeek, Jonathan Grudin,Susanne Bedker, and Uam Bannon
- 11. Vi CONTENTS 6. Obstacles to Participatory Design in Large Product Development Organizations Jonathan Grudin PART III: APPROACHES TO PARTICIPATORY DESIGN 7. Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design Jeanette Blomberg, Jean Giacomi,Andrea Mosher, and Pat Swenton-Wall 8. Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences From the Scandinavian Scene Susanne Bodker, Kaj Grenbsek, and Morton Kyng 9. Contextual Inquiry: A Participatory Technique for System Design Karen Holtzblatt and Sandra Jones 10. PICTIVE: Democratizing the Dynamics of the Design Session Michael Muller 11. Reciprocal Evolution as a Strategy for Integrating Basic Research, Design, and Studies of Work Practice Christina Allen PART IV: CASE STUDIES 12. The Participation of Users in Systems Design: An Account of the Origin, Evolution, and Use of the ETHICS Method Enid Mumford 13. Principles in Practice: Two Cases of Situated Participatory Design Kari Thoresen 14. Small Changes: Starting a Participatory Design Process by Giving Participants a Voice Joan Greenbaum and Kim Halskov Madsen Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Author Index 303 Subject Index 309 123 157 177 211 239 257 271 289 299 99
- 12. Foreword Lucy Suchm an Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Computer systems development is invariably accompanied by the problem of how to define requirements for the system’s functionality. From the developer’s point-of-view, the problem has been viewed as one of somehow eliciting from prospective users of a technology what it is that they need the technology to do for them. At the same time this basic problem is often significantly displaced from any specific site of technology-in-use. Imagined users, model users, or surrogate users like the paid subjects of focus groups and operability tests stand in for those who will actually work with the technology. And stereotypic scenar ios or extrapolations from prevailing models of generic information processing tasks take the place of an investigation of the specific activities in which a technology will be involved. Even in those cases where development involves extensive inquiry into relevant work activities, it is often persons other than those who actually do the work who speak on their behalf. Against such a background, this volume takes up the problem of how to establish meaningful and productive interactions among those directly charged with processes of technology design and use. It does so primarily from a de signer’s point-of-view. That is to say, with the exception of contributions by Ellen Bravo and Frank Emspak, the voices you find here are not those of workers or system users but rather of researchers and developers concerned with bringing their knowledge of technological possibilities to bear on the work of system design. At the same time, what distinguishes this collection from many previous writings on system development is its central and abiding concern for direct and continuous interaction with those who are the ultimate arbiters of system ade quacy; namely, those who will use the technology in their everyday lives and work. A key concern throughout is the question of who does what to whom: vii
- 13. Viii FOREWORD whose interests are at stake, who initiates action and for what reason, who defines the problem (or decides that there is one.) Many of the contributions here are drawn from the first Participatory Design Conference held in Seattle, Washington in the Spring of 1990. That conference was initiated by members of a project on Computers in the Workplace within the national nonprofit educational organization, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). As a member of CPSR and program chair for the confer ence I had the pleasure of being part of a unique, grassroots effort to bring this new perspective home to the research and development community within the United States. The conference was, I think, a very special occasion for all involved, distinguished by its deeply cooperative, nonbureaucratic, widely dis tributed, and extremely effective organizing committee and by the spirit of ex citement that characterized the conference itself. The chapters in this collection follow in the footsteps of a small but growing international community of scholars and practitioners of participatory systems design. Many of the European originators of this approach are represented here as well as some new and distinctively American approaches. At the same time, the contributors vary significantly among themselves in their conceptualization of the processes in which they are engaged. The goal for these writers is not to offer up a general and unified ideology or methodology, but to report in a variety of ways on the problems and possibilities for a more authentically cooperative process of technology design. As a result the collection is characterized less by any single theory or technique that is Participatory Design, as by a rich and diverse set of perspectives and experiences that, despite their differences, share a distinctive spirit and a direction. That spirit and direction is characterized by concern with a more humane, creative, and effective relationship between those involved in technology’s design and its use, and in that way between technology and the human activities that provide technological systems with their reason for being. Participatory design makes explicit the critical, and inevitable, presence of values in the system development process. To predominant values of product quality and work productivity are added broadened participation and skill devel opment. The premise is that these values are closely related; that the productive ness of our work is tied to the extent of our involvement, and that product quality is a matter of a technology’s support for the continually expanding and develop ing work practices of skilled practitioners. Some readers may be surprised to find the voice of organized labor represented here as well. Such representation is critical in a discussion dominated to date by managerial and engineering perspec tives. Until we become familiar with and take seriously each other’s concerns there will be little hope for a mutually satisfactory future in the development of work and technology. Within this collection, the differences between European, Scandinavian, and United States environments for system development are clear. At the same time,
- 14. FOREWORD ix all of these countries participate actively in an international economic community that shares many basic relations of business and working life. To the extent that designers within the United States move ahead with a program of broadened participation in technology development, contradictions will inevitably surface between the rhetoric of user-centered design and employee empowerment, and the realities of hierarchical systems of accountability and control. The point here is not to reconcile these contradictions, but to give readers a sense for the range of the issues. The goal of CPSR, the Participatory Design Conference, and the volume that you now hold in your hands is to widen and deepen our discussion. If as a reader you take away a more sophisticated appreciation for the many meanings of participatory or cooperative systems design, including problems and conflicts as well as prospects and shared values, this collection will have done its job. As a product of our efforts, we hope this volume will be judged by its contribution to a continuing process of discussion, debate, and exploration of alternative approaches to computer systems design.
- 16. Preface Participatory Design (PD) represents a new approach towards computer systems design in which the people destined to use the system play a critical role in designing it. The approach, pioneered in Scandinavia, is only now beginning to get recognition in the United States. As Paul Czyzewski, Jeff Johnson, and Eric Roberts note in the introduction to the Conference on Participatory Design (PDC ’90) proceedings, there are several fundamental ways in which PD differs from traditional design. It rejects the assumption that the goal of computerization is to automate the skills of human workers, instead seeing it as an attempt to give workers better tools for doing their jobs. It assumes that the workers themselves are in the best position to determine how to improve their work and their work life. In doing so, it turns the traditional designer-user relationship on its head, viewing the users as the experts— the ones with the most knowledge about what they do and what they need— and the de signers as technical consultants. It views the users’ perceptions of technology as being at least as important to success as fact, and their feelings about technology as at least as important as what they can do with it. It views computers and computer-based applications not in isolation, but rather in the context of a workplace; as processes rather than as products. Participation stands in contrast to the cult of the specialist. In the specialist model, an expert is sought out. The question is presented to the Expert who will eventually produce the Answer. With this approach, those most affected by the conclusion must sit idly by, waiting patiently for enlightenment. PD, of course, xi
- 17. Xii PREFACE demands active participation. PD, however, is not against expertise. There is no reason or motivation to belittle the role of expertise. Specialized training and experience, both technical and interpersonal, are important. In the participative model, however, this special expertise becomes yet another resource to be drawn on— not a source of unchallenged power and authority. A partnership between implementers and users must be formed and both must take responsibility for the success of the project. During the course of editing this volume we have come across several disci plines that prominently incorporate the idea of participation. These include par ticipatory education, participatory architecture, and participatory economics. Al though these other participative endeavors are not as familiar to us as participatory design of computer systems, it is clear that these other approaches are motivated by similar concerns as the PD practitioners in this book. The most basic motivation is the idea of democracy. To be more concrete: People who are affected by a decision or event should have an opportunity to influence it. Participation is the key element in democracy. The other compelling idea is that quality can improve with strong and effective participation of the people in volved. User involvement and iteration are generally acknowledged to be more critical to success in software design than adherence to conventional design paradigms. Participation is essential to social interaction. It is also essential to good design. The material here has been chosen in order to illustrate the underlying philos ophy and motivation as well as present enough information to begin applying PD in design. We’ve also sought to transcend the Scandinavian context by offering examples and advice that are pertinent to those of us in the United States. To best present the material we have divided the volume into 5 sections. Context intro duces the motivation for PD in the United States. Principles and Issues presents theoretical issues as well as implementation issues. Approaches to Participatory Design gives examples of Participatory Design inspired projects in the United States. This section includes descriptions on how to conduct a project using PD. Guidelines for Technique Development offers suggestions for how people considering PD can introduce the concepts and ideas to the participants. Case Studies talks about the results of PD projects, both in the United States and Europe. While it is impossible to offer a blueprint for PD, we hope that this volume supplies at least some of the conceptual scaffolding. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge the people who have contributed to this book, knowing full well that this list is incomplete. The people listed below contributed
- 18. PREFACE xiii to this book or to the Participatory Design Conference (PDC ’90) or in some cases, to both. First, we would like to thank Paul Czyzewski and Jeff Johnson who chaired PDC ’90. We would also like to thank Lucy Suchman, who as the program chair was largely responsible for the outstanding program at PDC ’90. Lucy invited many of the people from Europe and the United States who have significantly contributed to Participatory Design development. In addition, we appreciate her thoughtful forward to this book. We are very thankful for all the work that the contributors put into this book. In particular we would like to thank Jonathan Grudin, who not only contributed with two chapters but helped immeasurably in organizing the work, reviewing, and providing an effective European liaison. We are also grateful to the following people for providing invaluable support: Eric Blossom, Darlene Crane, Carolyn Curtis, Marcia Derr, Danielle Fafchamps, Roger Hayes, Heather Holmback, Lesley Kalmin, Dave Kadlecek, Dave Levinger, Max Palevsky, Steve Poltrock, Eric Roberts, Lois Toback, and anonymous reviewers. Finally, we would like to mention that the conference would have never taken place without CPSR, the CPSR Workplace Project, and the Palo Alto and Seattle CPSR chapters. Doug Schuler Aki Namioka
- 20. CONTEXT
- 22. The Hazards of Leaving Out the Users Ellen Bravo Milwaukee, Wl, 9to5, National Association of Working Women INVITED TALK PARTICIPATORY DESIGN CONFERENCE SEATTLE, 1990 At 9to5Awe’re very aware of the hazards of implementing automation without involving the people who will use it. For many years we had a contest called “the pettiest office procedure.” The winners one year were lawyers who had installed beautiful new beige carpet in their office. Like the good lawyers they were, they thought about the consequences. They wanted to keep the carpet unmarred, but their secretaries’ chairs had rollers on the bottom that would create tracks on the rug. So the lawyers decided— without consulting or even bothering to inform their secretaries—to have the chairs nailed to the floor. Of course, when the secre taries came to work the next day, they could not perform their job because they had to roll from the typewriter to the computer to the telephone. This is a great example of what happens when you omit the user. Not only does it incapacitate the user, but think about what the carpet must have looked like when the lawyers had to have the chairs unnailed. I focus here on a very significant and large group of users, namely, clerical workers. A lot of what I have to say can be extrapolated to apply to users at other levels as well. Clericals are usually omitted from every step of the technology process. They are left out of decisions on how the technology should be introduced, how the equipment should be designed, how the job should be designed. They are also *9105 is an advocacy group for low income working women and families. 3
- 23. 4 BRAVO omitted from decisions about the application of software and systems. Leaving out the users isn’t just undemocratic— it has serious consequences for worker health, human rights, job satisfaction, and also for the work process and the bottom line. When called upon for systems design, please consider carefully in what kind of atmosphere and on what equipment these systems will be applied. Let me begin by talking about health hazards. You’re all familiar with the problems of eye strain and vision deterioration that users are experiencing. For example, a 1987 study in Massachusetts looked at 1500 clericals employed at 38 worksites in six different industry groups (Rossignol et al., 1987). Researchers found that 72% of the workers had daily or almost daily eyestrain, about 140% more than people who weren’t working on VDT’s. Many studies have shown an increase in temporary near-sightedness. You may have seen an ad that asks what are the three most popular computer accessories. The answer is Tylenol, Ben-Gay, and Visine. What we’re finding is that Visine doesn’t eliminate temporary near-sightedness, just as Ben-Gay and Tylenol don’t take other kinds of problems away. People are experiencing permanent changes in their vision. Dr. James Sheedy, Associate Professor at the University of California, Berke ley school of Optometry and Chief of the VDT eye clinic there, said they are seeing a higher than normal incidence of focusing problems among people in their 20s and early 30s. Sheedy says many of these people are borderline: They have slight problems that would never appear as symptoms except for the extra load brought on by the way they use VDT’s. The problem is not inherent in the technology but comes from the design of the workstations and the design of the job. According to Dr. Sheedy, these problems may actually be causing a break down in the focusing mechanism of the eye. I could tell you horror story upon horror story of what happens to people who work in improperly designed workstations. A California word processor de scribed the various kinds of problems she had: the pain behind her eyes, the headaches, the difficulty reviewing, the blurring when she looked at a distance. She had eye therapy as prescribed by two optometrists— all of which she had to pay for herself, because her employer did not acknowledge her problem as job related. She eventually had to leave and go to a non-VDT-related secretarial job at a cut in pay of $800 a month. Her story is not atypical. Some problems occur as a direct result of the way the office is set up. I met a women in a VDT training who described how her eyesight had deteriorated a lot over the last 4 years. I asked her to describe what her office looks like. Manage ment decided to set up her workspace as the model office of the organization. They had beautiful wood walls put in with spotlights to highlight the wood. There were hanging strobe lamps throughout the room. And in the middle was the secretary’s desk with the VDT. Because her desk had no light on it, the managers decided to train the spotlights directly on the VDT. In addition, they bought her a spectacular wooden desk. She asked for a formica finish, but the
- 24. 1. HAZARDS OF LEAVING OUT THE USERS 5 managers wanted it to be natural wood to go with the walls. They were afraid the secretary would harm the wood, so they put a pane of glass over top of it. In sum, this poor woman had to deal with reflections all over the place because no one bothered to consider her needs. The other thing that’s contributing to people’s eye strain and deterioration of vision is having to read these ridiculous menus in order to pursue any operation on the computer. There must be ways programmers could help to reduce eye strain. Another big area of health hazards for VDT users is musculo-skeletal strain. We’ve all seen the pictures of splinted reporters. Once repetitive strain injuries, or RSIs, started occurring among prestigious reporters and even some editors, the big secret came out that RSI is a major problem among people who use comput ers. A friend who worked in a public defender’s office told me how they just plunked down the computers on regular desks. Within 6 months, 4 out of 16 clerical workers in that office had carpal tunnel syndrome. Some of you should be familiar with this problem from 911 operators in Seattle. When the operators went back to work with carpal tunnel syndrome, some coworkers walked around with their hands curled up and ridiculed the operators for having “puppy dog” syndrome. That’s how little recognition there is for the seriousness of what can be not just painful, but a permanently disabling condition resulting from the lack of user involvement in the office set-up and on the job. The main thing I want to discuss is what has been described as the chief occupational hazard of the computer age, namely, stress. A 1987 study by Denise R. Resko and Phyllis Kemaff Mansfield asked VDT workers and non-VDT workers about a number of symptoms. The researchers controlled for family stress and for job stress that was not connected to VDT’s. They found that VDT work in and of itself was creating higher rates of stress symptoms: headaches, gastrointestinal problems, menstrual problems, musculo-skeletal problems, etc. (Resko & Mansfield, 1987). Why is this happening? 9to5 did a study on stress back in 1984, which was the first time that people really looked at stress among working women. Until then, it had been considered mainly an executive, and therefore a White male, problem. This study, which had 40,000 respondents, showed some very interesting results. Although women managers were more likely to describe their jobs as being very stressful, clerical workers were more likely to experience the health symp toms of stress. Like the women managers or professionals, the clerical workers had high levels of responsibilities—but unlike the managers, the clericals had little control. It was this absence of control matched with the high level of responsibility that created the stress. The singular condition that most contributed to stress in the 9to5 survey was computer monitoring. The same kind of results have been found in the Framingham heart studies. When they looked at women clericals, they found they had twice the rate of heart
- 25. 6 BRAVO attacks as all other women workers; if you add in variables of low income and children, the clericals had four times as many heart attacks. Why? They were more likely to have an unsympathetic boss, a dead-end job, and no outlet for their anger. In other words, they were more likely to have lack of control. Considered next are five ways in which technology is adding to stress, then I discuss what that really means in terms of human health and other costs. First of all, lack of control comes from software designed without knowing or thinking about the needs of the users. A librarian, for example, described a book ordering procedure that originally entailed one form, which now has to be en tered on three screens. A dues accounting system for a local union now requires three steps for something that could be done in one step. The person who programmed the system did talk to the staff before developing the program, but did not check back with them afterwards to see how it was working and whether there were any glitches that needed to be changed. There should be a law: No one who hasn’t managed a database should be allowed to program one. I call this law: “No one should be allowed to make menus who hasn’t had to eat off them.” If you’ve ever entered data into a database and had to manage it, you know that one of most common things you have to deal with is duplications. You enter a name and then you find that person was already on your list and you want to go back and delete the dup. Say you have two ‘Gloria Williams’— if you delete ‘Gloria Williams,’ you have no “Gloria Williams.’ You have to trick the computer: change one of the ‘Gloria Williams’ to ‘Gloria Wilhelm’ and then delete ‘Gloria Wilhelm’ so that ‘Gloria Williams’ will still be on your list. Why isn’t there a simple thing that says: “dup, delete one”? The computer would know there are two; take out one, and you have what you need. Or how about this for a revolutionary idea. Shosana Zuboff, in her book, In the Age of the Smart Machine, (1988), discusses the fear of computer operators that they won’t be able to retrieve their data. Computers now work on the principle that what you input is worthless until it reaches a certain stage, at which point you tell the computer: This is now good enough; save it. It should be the other way around: Everything I enter is worthwhile unless I tell you to the contrary. Everything would automatically be saved. You would never have to worry that an error would happen or that the system would go down before you had saved your document. Before you could get out of the document, the screen would say: Name this or type the word “delete.” Not: hit “y” or “n.” It’s much easier to delete what you don’t need than to go back and re-key what you lost. The greatest angst, as any one of you who’s ever done this know (and I see you nodding your heads), is losing something that you composed from your head with no notes. If the computer treated us as having daily brilliant thoughts, it would save everything we did. These were examples where the user needs are not understood. The second area related to stress is where the user needs may have been understood, but we’ll never know because we can’t understand the instructions either in the menus or
- 26. 1. HAZARDS OF LEAVING OUT THE USERS 7 in the manual. Consider the “stop print” function in some database programs. You make a mistake or you see that it’s not printing the way you want and you want to kill it. So you quickly open the manual under “print” and look for “stop” and there is nothing. So you look under “s” for “stop” and there is nothing. So you look under “k” for “kill”; you even look under “a” for “annihi late.” And there is nothing in the index that tells you how to make the darned thing stop. Instead you have to pay $135 a year to some user network that you call up when these things happen, and they tell you how to get the thing to stop printing and how to start over again. I think that there is very little malice involved in people who make these instructions. The problem is people who don’t speak conversational English, even though they are not foreign-born. They simply speak “tech-ese”; we need an interpreter to understand them. It would obviously be a lot easier if the people who used the system helped design the instructions. A third area that contributes to stress is software designed without regard to the impact on the user. An insurance clerk told 9to5 that every time the system was about to go down, a message flashed on the screen saying: “fatal error.” Even when you know that you, in fact, have not murdered anyone with your keystroke, the stress effect on your heart and breathing are the same every time the message comes up. TWA has a new call distribution system. It has eliminated the 6 seconds that you used to have between calls to finish scribbling your paper work, or take a sip of water, or maybe crack your neck. There are now no seconds between calls. Clearly, whoever designed the system had no idea what it would feel like the instant you hang up to have to pick up the phone again. The fourth area is software that is designed to manipulate or control the user. On an episode of “L.A. Law” Roxanne led the secretaries in a walkout. One of the issues they were up in arms about was VDT’s. They were concerned about the hazards, but they were also really angry because their machine was flashing messages saying, “My world is calm,” “My world is productive,” The secre taries were incensed. Their world was not calm. They were trying very hard to be productive. They found the messages patronizing and offensive. Nowadays soft ware manufacturers boast about programs with this capability. Greentree Pub lishing, for example, advertises a software package called “Subliminal Sug gestion and Self-Hypnosis” with everything from feel-good messages to more pointed commands like “work faster.” But the fifth area related to stress is the most insidious, the fastest-growing, and the most frightening: The computer is actually used to spy upon the user. We tend to think of spying as something you do to the enemy. And we treat very seriously people who spy on us as a country or who sell our secrets to other countries. Yet we are promoting the use of technology as spy and the worker as the enemy. Here the worker is no longer in any way a subject but becomes the object of the system. Imagine being a reporter writing your first draft. You’re just kind of spitting
- 27. 8 BRAVO out your thoughts. Suddenly you get a message on the screen from your editor: “Bad lead. Start over.” PC Week Magazine advertises software with such ca pability by telling the reader: “Look in on Sue’s computer screen. You monitor her for a while. . . . In fact, Sue doesn’t even know you’re there.” In a New York company that had 100 or more terminals in one room, someone told us that occasionally this message would appear on her screen: “You’re not working as fast as the person sitting next to you.” The computer is able to count every keystroke that you enter, every minute that you are away from your desk to use the bathroom. In fact, it is now not uncommon to have bathroom break statistics posted, with the people who need the fewest potty breaks minutes at the top of the list. This is going to give a whole new meaning to “wellness pro gram,” a whole new set of exercises to learn to keep from going to the bathroom outside of break. Let me share some very serious examples. A lot of this happens in the airline industry. On our job problem hotline we heard from an airline reservationist who was suffering from severe mental stress, insomnia, and stress-related jaw spasms. This is how she described her job: “The computer tracks your time on the calls and it’s connected to a light on the tower. If the light goes out for more than 14 seconds, they come on and listen and make nasty comments at you through the earphone.” Another sales agent described how workers punch into three different things: the VDT; a keypad called the Collins; and headsets. Management tracks every second of their working day. Daily and weekly printouts map the average call length, the length of time between calls, the unplugged time, and sales perfor mance. This woman said, “I get more grades in a month than my kids get in their whole life from school.” Supervisors can listen into your calls not only with customers but with your coworkers. And you get demerits if you have too much unplugged time, if you didn’t sell enough rental cars, if you didn’t get enough people to get their tickets in the mail, etc. This woman, although she’d been there seven years and had a good work performance every year until they implemented this system, was threatened with losing her job because she had too much unplugged time—read: time in the bathroom, time between calls. And she was very nervous, trying to get her statistics up. Her supervisor noticed she didn’t look well and told her, “Take 10 minutes and pull yourself together.” And the woman said, “I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I had a feeling it was going to take more than 10 minutes to take care of it.” In fact she had a nervous breakdown and was in therapy for 8 months. Practices like these have very serious consequences for our whole concept of worker rights and the issue of worker health. A group in Massachusetts did a survey on the consequences of computer monitoring. Sixty-two percent of the people they interviewed did not know at the time they were hired that they were going to be monitored on their job. Barbara Garson (1988) in The Electronic
- 28. 1. HAZARDS OF LEAVING OUT THE USERS 9 Sweatshop gives an example of a woman who plugged in her headset, turned to a coworker and said, “The doctor says it’s cancer,” then took her first call. An hour later her supervisor called her in and said, “Is there any way we can help you with your cancer?” The woman stormed out of the office, marched up to her coworker and said, “How dare you tell them.” The coworker replied that she had said nothing. That was the first time they realized that their private conversations could be overheard by the same people that were listening in to their calls with customers. Almost one-quarter of the people who answered the survey in Massachusetts said that their individual stats were publicly posted either by the week or by the month. This misuse of computer systems, treating the user as the object rather than the subject, has serious consequences for worker health and also for the bottom line. A friend of mine did a study on the introduction of technology into three different workplaces and what its impact was on users. She interviewed 161 clerical workers and asked them various questions about how automation had been introduced. The two conditions that most correlated to a high rate of health symptoms were too little training and too much down time— where the user, in other words, had too little control to use the machine effectively. There are lots of studies that show that productivity goes up 10-25% when you create healthful and ergonomically designed workstations, and the opposite is true when you don’t. Harley Shaiken has written about studies demonstrating that computer monitoring is counterproductive. People say they use this tech nology to improve productivity, but it doesn’t work. It makes you wonder if that was ever the intent at all, or if in fact the intent, as Shaiken maintains, isn’t rather to control and intimidate workers. I’ve been sitting on a commission in New York on the skills for the workforce 2000. They have identified two different trends in management. One trend, representing about 5 to 10% of businesses, is toward a high skilled, high value- added workforce, which requires a new form of work organization— what you refer to as “participatory design,” a team approach. But the majority of work places instead have a low-skill, low-cost, high turnover view of management. If you have that view of how to do business, obviously you need control in order to get your workers to do the job because the attachment, loyalty, morale don’t exist without investing in the workers. We all know Big Brother didn’t work in Eastern Europe. Why is it taking some people so long to figure out that it’s not going to work in the United States? It’s going to take a lot of work on our part to see that it stops. In answer to the question, “How do we get management to realize that these things need to change?” , the most significant way is by creating the power among workers and like-minded professionals to make them change. You can also use arguments of the bottom line. Stress claims cost an average of $11,000 as compared to $5,000 overall for worker compensation claims. The National Institute of Mental Health said that 30 million Americans suffer mental
- 29. 10 BRAVO strain on the job that is workplace-related. A third of those people are under the age of 30. More than half of them are female. We are talking about symptoms that may affect a minority of workers, but they affect them in very significant ways, both for the workers and for the workplace. Clericals have been thought of as just users, just women, just secretaries. The idea that they would have something to say about how the work should get done is really a radical departure from business as usual in the United States. We also have management that focuses on short-term rather than long-term cost effective ness. It’s not really more expensive to do what we want to do, but it’s not the way that American management on the whole thinks. And it’s clearly a question of power. Pay attention to this author who characterizes much of American management style as the “military method of leadership.” The author asks why so many American managers ignore the basic rights that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and then gives this answer: “Simple. It requires the CEO’s and the top VP’s to give up power. This is threatening to them.” The author of that opinion piece, by the way, was not a radical 9to5 member, but the president of Catholic Knights Insurance Society in Milwaukee, a man named Daniel Steininger (1990). He also quotes some remarks from the man who started quality control circles in Japan, to the effect that companies exist in order to guarantee a good income to their employees and to see that they live a happy life; and if they don’t carry out this function, they don’t deserve to exist. Clearly, the only way to reverse this situation is to involve users in decision making and that means some radical re-thinking about how jobs should be designed. Variety and rotation of tasks, multiskill approaches have to be incorpo rated into the actual job. There are people trying right now through various approaches to make this happen. At Ohio Bell, for example, a collective bargain ing agreement limited secret monitoring. It said management could take aggre gate data, but could not use data on individuals. People have been trying litiga tion with mixed results. There are four key cases, two of them in favor of the worker, two of them in favor of management. At 9to5 we are looking for a test case linking the issue of monitoring with the right to privacy. And legislation has been introduced, the Privacy for Consumers and Workers Act, which provides mainly for the right to know and privacy protections. We need to see a much more interactive model, where users are involved at each step of the way, where the locus of control shifts to include or mainly be in the hands of the users, where everything starts from the needs of the workers. If workers don’t yet have the ability to conceptualize what they need, they certainly know a starting place. We need to figure out how to create the language and the interaction so that the conceptualization can take place with the users playing an integral part. We need to have designers experience work so that they know how the application is going to be used and what it will mean. I end by cautioning you about the concept of participatory design. The idea of
- 30. 1. HAZARDS OF LEAVING OUT THE USERS 11 worker participation is being espoused by some people in top management, but I suspect in very different ways. There is a big difference between making sug gestions and making decisions; and there is a difference between having the right to participate and having power. As you pursue the issue of participatory design, I encourage you to make sure that users include clericals, and to make sure that participation involves decision making. Editor's Note More information on the topic of computer monitoring and health and safety issues can be found in two 9to5 publications: Stories of Mistrust and Manipula tion: The Electronic Monitoring of the American Workforce, and VDT Syn drome: The Physical and Mental Trauma of Computer Work. To order, call 9to5 at 216-566-9308. REFERENCES Garson, B. (1988). The electronic sweatshop: How computers are transforming the office of the future into the factory of the past (p. 69). New York: Simon and Schuster. Resko, D. R., & Mansfield, P.K. (1987). Video display terminals: How they affect the health of clerical workers. American Association of Occupational Health Nurses Journal, 35(7), 310-314. Rossingnol, A. M. et al. (1987). Video display terminal use and reported health symptoms among Massachusetts clerical workers. Journal of Occupation Medicine, 29(2), 112-118. Steininger, D. (1990). Workers’ happiness should come first. Milwaukee Journal, March 23, p. C l l . Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine. New York: Basic Books.
- 32. Workers, Unions, and New Technology Frank Emspak School for Workers University of Wisconsin—Extension The best way to change the structure of American industry in a manner that preserves productive employment, produces a better quality product, and restruc tures the technology among more democratic lines is for users and designers to find the means to talk with one another as equals and then actually effectuate a decision. To be able to talk with each other as equals, to engage in a participatory design process, we need to construct a support mechanism to enable the process. In this chapter, we focus our discussion on how people in the factory see new technologies being implemented. In effect, we focus on one class of user. We emphasize metal working and factory work primarily because unionized workers have been the most able to express concerns about the way their work is struc tured. However, the issue of top down implementation and design of new tech nologies is the same for office workers, hospital workers, as well as draftsmen, planners, and large numbers of lab technicians. Workers at all levels share the problems of the apportionment of skill, the design of our tools and equipment (especially software). It is, therefore, apparent that we need to forge links with all users and thus develop more global criteria for the construction of software systems, factories, and the productive apparatus including all office work and data processing. Although unionized workers in the private sector have traditionally been the ones to raise questions about technology implementation this may be changing. Organized public sector workers may soon be in the best position of all to raise questions of work organization, technology, and enhanced quality of service resulting from meaningful worker input. The demand to cut costs in the public sector may provide unionized workers with a means to push a worker-oriented skills-based agenda. When employees have a chance to reorganize work and 13
- 33. 14 EMSPAK make efficient use of new technologies the organizational structure of the system is altered reducing many expensive and not necessarily productive management positions while maximizing expanded service delivery roles. As more and more office workers get organized, particularly in the public sector, and express them selves collectively, we anticipate increased discussion of job restructuring in the office setting. Throughout the chapter, I will use the terms worker and labor. Who is the worker and what do we mean by labor in this essay? The worker is defined as the nonprofessional work force. Labor tends to indicate blue collar organized labor. Generally, the old terms blue and white collar, with the exception of profession als, delineate this group of workers. The mental paradigm is the traditional factory. In most such institutions the line between those who implement and those who program and design is very clear. Ultimately, any strategy that has as its objective bringing together conception and execution will have to involve computer programmers and designers. At some point, workers, programmers, and designers will have to begin to meet together and figure out how to work collectively in order to bring about change on the shop floor. In an addendum to this chapter, I suggest a model for a technology design project which may provide a framework for cooperation. However, the chapter itself is more limited. My goal is simply to discuss how technology is viewed looking up from the bottom, and suggest steps that orga nized labor can take, in the immediate future, to enhance its ability to represent the work force. A FAMILIAR STORY The story is familiar. Workers notice some new managers and engineers in the work place. People are measuring something. All of sudden new equipment or computer terminals come in. Some individuals are assigned to the new system— but no one explains how the new system really works. Different jobs are cre ated—but it seems that management keeps the interesting work— even though workers used to do it. Older workers aren’t trained on the equipment. All of a sudden they aren’t flexible enough and don’t know enough. New people usually brought in out of seniority are put on the job. The union leadership has been told some new equipment is coming, but they have not been told much about its capabilities. The leadership is uneasy— and so are the workers. But after a few weeks of talking with management about the effects the new equipment may have on the work force, only some details like shift assignment and some bumping rights are straightened out. There is no discussion about the new jobs and management is still doing the work. No one feels quite right. . . There is a sense of loss. Often the introduction of new machines or office procedures is accompanied
- 34. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 15 by a veiled threat. Either do it the new way or no new investment. In these times of plant relocations and shut downs only a fool would argue about how invest ments are made— at least so the story goes. Besides— who knows if there is a better way to put in new technology. After all, don’t the engineers and management know best? The story does not end yet, although the official role of the union usually stops after the conclusion of the first flurry of discussion about new means and meth ods. But time goes on and the work force including management tries to get used to the new equipment. To a degree it becomes part of the landscape. But the equipment is not working too well. Even after a few months the new system is not living up to expectations. Start up costs are high. Problems happen all the time. Quality problems show up and the company is still in trouble— threatening their own existence as well as our jobs. Is There Another Way? There are other ways of implementing technological change that allow workers to enjoy the promise of the new technologies. To estimate if those ways can be of use to American workers we must first understand what technology is and who actually implements it. What is Technology? A good definition of technology is the means and methods through which we as a society produce the substance of our existence. What does that mean? There are old tools, like a shovel and new tools like a robot. There are old sources of energy like steam and new sources of energy like electricity. Materials are also part of technology. Old materials like cast iron and new materials like fiber optics. Then there are techniques of production—old, like weaving, and new as x-ray lithography for producing micro chips. Finally, there is the organization of work—craft work is an old form of organization, the assembly line is newer, and various computer aided flexible manufacturing systems are the newest.1 WHO IMPLEMENTS THE TECHNOLOGY? In spite of massive changes in the technical base of our factories and offices it is still the worker who implements the technology. As yet there is no substitute. On the surface there appears to be a contradiction between the tremendous invest ment in sophisticated equipment and its use by relatively unskilled workers. 1Since the beginning of the production of goods, there has been an old technology and a new technology. The pace of change, however, has altered.
- 35. 16 EMSPAK Sometimes this contradiction expresses itself as the new jobs are more boring and less creative than the old. However, the fact remains that people are needed. And because people implement even the most costly and modem technical system there is a way out of the seemingly downward spiral of job displacement, poor quality, and excessive costs associated with the introduction of new technology. The way out derives from the concept that most working people have the same aspirations as everyone else. Increasingly, working people and their organiza tions are coming to realize that the technologies that are being implemented in the work place are not immutable and can be changed. The introduction of new technology is an opportunity for labor to regain the initiative in regards to management over job content, skill, wages and benefits.2 TECHNOLOGY: THE PACE OF CHANGE For about 50 years from 1920 to 1970, the technology in industry changed incrementally and relatively slowly compared to the last 10 years. The basic job structure was designed by F. W. Taylor, who proposed reducing each individual job to its smallest least skilled portion as a means of achieving management control and hence efficiency. Over time the basic trend in work organization was to separate conception from execution. This reached its most capital intensive form in the automobile industry although much of the so called women's work in light manufacturing, and almost all office work is organized in the same manner. In the early 1950s, the first numerically controlled machines were designed. The Numerically Con trolled (NC) machine tool provided a means to further separate execution from conception. At that time some firms specifically identified deskilling workers to reduce control over production as one driver behind the development of new technologies— specifically the numerically controlled machine tools. Starting in the 70s the technological pace of change picked up. Not only did technique change but the actual job structures changed as well. The organization of work changed. In the machine trades the programmer increasingly decided on to speeds, feeds, and tool sequence. These functions had been in the heads of the machinists. In large manufacturing plants fairly rigid production control systems like Materials Resource Planning (MRP) displaced the clerks who had tradi 2But in order to take advantage of this opportunity working people need some ingredients which have previously been missing in a view of technology. First, working men and women, and our unions, need to understand the new technologies with the same precision that we understood the older technologies. Second, from that understanding workers need to project a vision of what is possible. Above all working people need to regain and build on their self-confidence. The basic building block of our self-confidence is the pride which most workers share in producing a good piece of work.
- 36. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 17 tionally specialized in production control functions. To a greater and greater degree people became monitors rather than doers. Over the years the response of organized labor to issues of technology has centered on the effects of technology, not its design. When industrial unions organized themselves in the 1930s the structure of work was not challenged by the CIO and, by and large, was not an issue. By the mid 1970s the pace of technological change was fast enough so that many union staff people, full time officers, and workers with seniority active in the union but not affected by the new jobs lost their understanding of the actual way in which work was per formed. The net result was that unlike European unions, which are more in volved in issues of job content, American unions until recently did not see this as a major issue. THE BARGAINING PROCESS: DOES IT FIT THE RAPIDLY CHANGING CONDITIONS? The essential outlines of modem collective bargaining became law 50 years ago. In the bare essentials industrial unions agreed to negotiate about the effects of the technologies. The legal structure that regulates unions specifically restricts unions from having a right to bargain on “means and methods.” (Management may agree to discuss the issue, but it is not a mandatory subject for the purpose of collective bargaining.) Management has the right to choose tools, energy forms, techniques, and organization of work. Unions negotiate primarily concerning compensation— including benefits. An important exception has been the increased activity re garding health and safety effects of the machines and office equipment. One group of unions—the craft unions maintained their practice of intervening con cerning means and methods. They have been able to continue this tradition through the control of training, especially apprenticeship training. This bargaining structure no longer meets the needs of many workers. Bar gaining that is limited to wages, hours, and a narrow definition of working conditions in a rapidly changing technological world fails to ensure a better standard of living for most workers. However, what choices do workers have? Having to change the bargaining system in order to negotiate concerning tech nology hardly seems like an opportunity. Labor law is fossilized and admin istrative law mechanisms are controlled by business interests seemingly dedi cated to marginalizing unions. But there are forces in the manufacturing world that recognize change must occur. FORCES FOR CHANGE If only union members were negatively affected, then the chances for reform of the labor relations structure would be very poor. Research and experience indi cate, however, that it is also true that the modem equipment does not work as
- 37. 18 EMSPAK effectively, quickly, and at as high a quality as possible without the in depth and voluntary participation of the work force. Although management resists many changes that limit its authority, American firms also have to face competitive pressures abroad. Successful competitors have been those industries that have been more willing to change the scope of collective bargaining and bring labor to one degree or another into the process of determining means and methods. American management may not like it but if faced with a determined well organized union projecting a program of how to get things done better, bit by bit the door to more innovative and inclusive agreements would be opened. What do we Need to Know? The best negotiating committees are formed by members who understand the contract and who also have a detailed knowledge of the equipment they work with. They can use this knowledge to bargain effectively. When that knowledge is diluted or removed from the purview of the union its ability to bargain intel ligently on any issue is reduced. Understanding technology means a basic understanding of the work process and its potential. Unions, and workers in general, need to know what software is and how it can be programmed. Working people need to know that software can be redesigned so that workers on the shop floor can program it. Users need to know if one way information systems often found in offices are truly one-way or if they can be reconfigured for increased operator interface. Part of our understanding must revolve around the issue of worker interven tion. One must know how flexible the systems are— and as part of that one must know with what precision systems are capable of monitoring work. Understanding the production processes, including work flow, scheduling, and the operation of the firm’s information system allows the local union to bargain effectively because it can control production. By understanding the real position of the worker in the firm’s productive apparatus the union membership can plan for the future. For example, if the specific jobs in question are transitory due to technological change, for example, key punch operators, then emphasis has to be put on training and alternative job paths for those workers. Likewise, as working people better understand how new technologies impede or expedite the transfer of production to non union areas labor’s legislative and bargaining objec tives can be altered to match those dangers more precisely. TECHNOLOGY IS NOT A SEPARATE ISSUE Technology bargaining is not a separate issue from other parts of the contract. It should not be treated as one item on a laundry list of items. The companies understand that the design and implementation of means of production are central
- 38. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 19 to the work place and so should unions. Firms usually design their bargaining strategy based on how they want their equipment used and don’t treat technology as a separate issue. Neither should unions. Technology bargaining could be called bargaining over means and methods. Trade unionists can use such bargaining as a way to project a vision of the workplace as a means of motivating people to do something about it. Very few people get all excited about a grievance or some technical change in the contract. But there is much more interest when unions start talking about more general ideas including adding some skill and control to the workplace. The Workers Role in Job Design What should workers do if their firm is willing to negotiate the design of a new system? The first task is to create a list of design criteria. These criteria should reflect the reality that the firm must be profitable. Thought must be given to criteria that need to be added for the system to maintain employment. Criteria need to be defined which can enhance skills. The second task is to reject criteria based only bn minimizing jobs and employment. If the firm is to increase market share, produce better, etc., then overall costs have to decrease. In fact, based on our earlier criteria, costs of the hourly wage for our members may go up in absolute terms— although maybe not as a percentage of the cost of production. However, overall costs of production may go down as quality improves and as the firm is able to respond more quickly to problems, as a result of increased skill and flexibility within the work force. At this point the problem is not a technical one. It is a political, technical, and economic one. Workers have to convince management to bargain about how they want to run the enterprise. Can this be accomplished? The situation, legally, is that management has a technology rights clause. They also have a right to do everything else clause. These clauses are called a management rights clause. It is unlikely that a union can insist that this be dropped as a precondition for discussions. But if workers are successful in getting management to the table then in the next round of formal contract nego tiations they should consider trying to limit this clause. In order for workers to get management to talk, there are two tracks that can be pursued at the same time. The first track challenges management as to their overall strategy. In other words ascertain if they just want to reduce labor costs or do they want to increase productivity and quality? In order to challenge management workers need to have time. Part of negotiat ing about technology is to have time to analyze the new systems. It is important to insist on formal, early notification of any impending changes, along with the company’s estimate of the impact on the work force. Meanwhile, it is also important for workers and the union, using their own sources, to have an inde pendent estimate of the expected effects of the new systems on employment and skill.
- 39. 20 EMSPAK Workers can pursue another track too. They can learn how the office or plant works. A union local needs to have some ideas (even if they are not completely right) as to how to run the enterprise better. It could be, for example, more training; it could be worker programmable equipment; it could be another dis patch system or production control system. In other words working people col lectively have to know as much about the plant as individual workers know about their job. Jobs are too important to leave it up to management. What happens if that strategy idea does not work? At least by pursuing track one workers probably know what the company is going to do. If a union directly offers management a willingness to discuss change and better ways to produce something, management in generally divested of its ability to go to the union members and accuse the union of standing in the way of progress. If the union has done its work, it has used management’s answers combined with its own research to provide the membership with good reasons for why the union didn’t buy the company’s approach. Hopefully, due to the cohesiveness of the union and its understanding of the productive process, it may convince the firm to rethink its position and bargain. Assuming that a firm is willing to bargain, how does one use the ideas of participatory design to save jobs or enhance skill? At this point the task may be more technically difficult, but a union has made an important organizational gain. We have to put the union’s criteria for machine design into practice. Often a firm has already defined its design objectives, and may be ready to order specific equipment. It is in the union’s interest to independently evaluate the system or machines based on the union’s criteria as well as the firm’s. The next step is to investigate alternatives. There are several approaches to this step. Three of them are: 1. Use the resources of the international union to get an idea of what type of machines or systems are on the market, or how other locals have dealt with the same problem; 2. At the company’s expense visit machine tool or system designers, local technical universities, etc. and compare equipment; 3. Work with professionals with expertise in human factors to make sure you understand the alternatives. What work are we really doing by searching for alternatives is acquiring equality of knowledge. If one is ignorant of what alternatives are possible, then it will be impossible to win them. The central point in making ideas into reality is knowledge. The Center for Applied Technology There have been some limited examples of worker participation in designing production systems. As a means to encourage modernization of the manufactur ing base, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts organized a project called the
- 40. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 21 Center for Applied Technology (CAT). One means that the center employed to bring about change in the work place was to encourage the formation of joint worker management teams to solve production and quality problems. The experience of CAT showed that it is not necessary to have all the an swers—but only necessary to pose alternative ideas of manufacture. CAT reached people in management who thought about production and was able to help them organize joint worker-management projects that discussed design and implementation issues. The CAT succeeded in going through all the steps noted above at the Pneu matic Scale company. Local 444 of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union originally interested the firm in the CAT program and consis tently encouraged the firm to stay involved in the project. The firm employs about 350 people engaged in the machining of parts and their assembly into packaging machinery, mostly container cappers and fillers. Customers include Proctor and Gamble and Lever Brothers. CAT assisted in organizing a team including the president of the local, the vice president, the manager of industrial relations, and the manager of produc tion to work out details. Every so often all the top management of the firm would come for a report and agree, disagree, or in consultation with CAT and the union, modify the proposals. Then management would implement. The most significant part of the program was the union’s role as initiator. It came to the CAT and brought management with it. The union insisted on re vamping the training. The union pushed for changes in production. Noteworthy aspects of this approach are the equality of knowledge, the scope of the decisions that the team was allowed to make, and the fact that the union was represented in its own right. THE VISION A new approach that has proven its value is skills based automation. Another way of saying the same thing is user driven design. Both concepts take as their starting point that the user is the worker—not just the management. Generally speaking, when the machine tool and computer people talk about users they combine the buyers (management) with the actual user (workers). Their designs conform to the financial and organizational needs of the firm first, not neces sarily to the needs of the production people. Taking it one step further, user driven design places the needs and abilities of the worker at center stage along with the other needs of the firm. Skills based automation as a goal and negotiating tool allows working people to take the offensive in regards to technology implementation. It also allows organized labor to move off the defensive in the discussion of productivity, competitiveness, and training. It allows labor to take the high ground when it
- 41. 22 EMSPAK comes to flexibility. The most skilled workers are the most flexible. A skills based conception of work enables working people to devise a manufacturing system that produces a quality product in a cost effective, efficient manner. Can Organized Labor Project a Vision of Change in the Interests of all Workers? The ability of the labor movement to defend all workers by projecting a positive vision is a necessity if the labor movement is to break out of the isolation imposed on it by the corporations. A skills based view of work allows organized labor to set the agenda and defend the interests of all working men and women, not just a few affected by a specific process. Both professionals and nonprofes sional workers are interested in jobs that include a continuous self-improvement factor and during the course of the day combine physical and nonphysical ele ments. Most people want jobs that offer some creativity and responsibility. Almost all working people want to have some say in their pace of work and not be machine paced or computer driven. Working people need to be able to recognize that technology is not some sort of force outside of their lives, but a socially determined system. Like any other socially determined system a technical system reflects certain values and as sumptions. These values and assumptions may favor management at the expense of workers. Most unions and working people understand this when it comes to questions of health and safety. Raising the issues of design and implementation is not much different than raising issues regarding safety and health. The labor movement has at its disposal a great reservoir of information regard ing new technologies. This knowledge resides in the membership of the unions and in the many unorganized working men and women who would be only too glad to share their knowledge and expertise with their fellow workers. It is probably accurate to say that the knowledge potential of the trade union move ment far surpasses the information available to management. So the basic ingre dient for participatory design knowledge is present. The only ingredient lacking for the moment is the vision to use it. Addendum It is not enough to suggest that working people can and must participate in designing the technologies used at work. We must outline the forms within which this process can take place. The School for Workers, a program of the Extension, University of Wisconsin, has proposed a technology assessment and design project in the fine cabinet industry. The model has the potential of being applied in many industries. The project can encourage meaningful participation by workers, engineers, and designers, as well as progressive firms in the industry. Although we in the
- 42. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 23 United States do not have the institutional support that could assist participatory design efforts— as do our European counterparts, we think their model has a great deal of relevance. Thus any resemblance between the project we suggest and Scandinavian participatory design ideas is deliberate, and we thank our colleagues abroad for their pioneering work. PROPOSAL Skill Based Automation For the Fine Cabinet Making Industry Objective The application of modem computer aided wood working equipment and skill to the fine cabinet making industry will allow the industry to manufacture high quality, one-of-a-kind products at competitive costs. The results will include an expansion of the industry while the quality and variety associated with the industry is enhanced. The skill composition of the work force will also change. Of necessity there will be a process wherein the traditional wood working skills will be combined with newer skills associated with flexible computer aided manufacturing. The result will be that an enterprise will have a work force that combines the new and the old at a higher level. The project will demonstrate in a practical fashion that a combination of traditional cabinet making skills combined with flexible automation can: 1. produce high quality fine cabinetry at a reasonable cost; 2. preserve and enhance the skills associated with the trade; 3. indicate the value of a union environment as opposed to a nonunion environment. Phase One Project Organization. The Carpenters Union and the University of Wiscon sin School for Workers will organize a project leadership body. The body will include individuals from the Carpenters Union national staff, working cabinet makers, local officials, and faculty from the school. Members from the industry will also be asked to participate—either directly or as part of cooperative agree ments that exist between the Carpenters and the owners. The chairman will be from the Carpenters Union and the cochairman will be from the School for Workers. It is understood that the committee will be answerable to the Carpenters Union in all matters.
- 43. 24 EMSPAK Duties of the Committees. The committee will direct the skill based automa tion project as defined below. The committee will also evaluate the results of the project, set criteria that direct the design of machinery and software, and in general oversee the project in all its detail and complexity. A brief outline of Phase One follows. 1. Organize a project leadership committee. The School for Workers will assist in developing a joint committee consisting of Union and management representatives. 2. Convene the committee. Assess whether current problems in communica tions exist between the worker (union) and management representatives, using the facilitation services of the School for Workers. The School will provide the necessary training in problem solving to enable the participants to work together on a different and positive basis. 3. Develop goalsfor the project. The School will assist the body in reaching a consensus as to the specific goals of the project. The committee will jointly draft the objectives and implementation strategy. 4. Educate the committee. The School will provide the committee with a full explanation of the concepts of skill based, flexible automation. In addition, we will review the current technologies available to the cabinet making industry. 5. Define criteria. Once our education is complete the committee will define the criteria by which we will judge the hardware and software available for use in our industry. 6. Identify skills. The committee will identify key management and working skills, essential for making best use of the technologies. 7. Identify resources. The committee will identify engineers, software de signers, and machine tool manufacturers who are best able to advance the objec tives outlined in the project. Phase Two Two distinct problems must be addressed if we are to use new, programmable machinery to produce fine cabinetry. First, appropriate hardware must be identi fied, or if unavailable on the market such hardware must be designed. Second, the best software that governs the tool movements must be identified. If software that matches the reasoning process of the cabinet maker is not presently on the market, we must design and produce the software.
- 44. 2. WORKERS, UNIONS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 25 1. Hardware Identification. A survey of existing wood working equipment will be conducted by the committee or its designee. Equipment presently in use in the industry will be rated according to criteria developed by a Carpenters Union study committee. 2. Software Identification. A survey of exiting software will be conducted by the committee or its designee. Software presently in use in the industry, in this country and abroad will be evaluated based on the criteria developed by the committee. While members of the committee may be designated to participate, engineers or other persons with expertise including working cabinet makes, will also be solicited to identify needed software. Phase Two will be complete when the software and hardware is selected and rated according to our criteria. Phase Three: New Design In all probability the evaluation phase will discover that existing designs, especially software designs, do not match the needs of the work force, or of the industry. If such is the case the committee will evaluate the costs and benefits of modifying existing software. If our analysis is positive the committee will com mission the design of new software to meet our needs. Phase Four: Implementation The committee will arrange for a demonstration project of the hardware and software defined above. The committee will direct an evaluation of impediments to the organization of cabinet making using the production system that we as a committee have identi fied. Our evaluation will include an assessment of the application of human and management resources to the changed work place. Based on the findings of that evaluation, appropriate educational and organizational steps will be implemented in shops that are willing to be used, in whole or in part, as implementation sites. Phase Five: Dissemination The results of each phase will be disseminated to participants as soon as practical. Editor's Note Frank Emspak is an assistant professor in the School for Workers, University of Wisconsin Continuing Education Extension, Madison Wisconsin. Prior to join
- 45. 26 EMSPAK ing the School, he was project Director of the Center for Applied Technology, a state funded program headquartered in Boston MA. Before coming to CAT, Dr. Emspak was a machinist employed by the General Electric Company, Wilmington MA. While employed at GE, Dr. Emspak served on the Executive Board of his local union IUE Local 201 (AFL-CIO) for 8 years. FURTHER READING Ahlin, J., & Svensson, L. (1980). New technology in mechanical engineering industry: How can workers gain control? Economic and Industrial Democracy, 1, 487-521. Ashford, N., & Ayers, C. (1987). Changes and opportunities in the environment for technology bargaining. Notre Dame Law Review, 62(5), 810-858. Bernard, E. (1987). A union course on new technologies, 14, 3-4 , University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Brodner, P. (1985, September). Qualification based production— The superior choice to the “un manned factory.” Preprintfrom the 2nd IFAC Conference on Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Man Machine Systems. Varese, Italy. Cooley, M. (1989). European competitiveness in the 21st century: Integration of work, culture and technology. FAST Action Program of Human Work in Advanced Technical Environments (Final Draft Report 27), June 1989. Martin, T., & Ulrich, E., & Wamecke, H. J. (1987, July). Preprints. 10th World Congress on Automatic Control. Munich, Germany.
- 46. 3A Design of One's Own: Towards Participatory Design in the United States Joan Greenbaum La Guardia College, City University of New York The road toward participatory design in the United States has been under con struction for some time now. Certainly by the middle part of the 1980s as most large companies grappled with the proliferation of PCs on employees desks, it was becoming clear that users of computer services needed more of a voice in the type of computer services they were receiving. This chapter lays out some of the groundwork that has been leading to more user-centered system design, and explains how this can be used as a bridge toward building more participation into the system development process. Several issues emerge here. The first issue is that user-centered design, while helping to pave the way towards participatory design, is not participatory in and of itself. The second issue addresses the differences between what has come to be known as the Scandinavian approach to design and the way participatory design in the US is emerging and is likely to develop. The third issue is that while participatory design both requires and fosters workplace democracy, participation in the design process may not neces sarily lead to workplace democracy. In fact, a central point of this chapter is to illustrate the ways that, I believe, American design needs to take on its own home grown characteristics and to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, become a design of one’s own. As the chapters in this book point out, participatory design is many things to many people. Yet there is a remarkable core to the ideas which have been built on common ground. Among the elements in the common core, are the ideas that: Computer applications need to be better suited to the actual skills and working practices of the people using the systems; that work is a social activity involving the interaction of many groups of people; and that barriers between technical specialists and people using computer applications need to be broken down in order to build effective communication during the design process. 27
- 47. 28 GREENBAUM Participatory design implies that workers as users of computer products should take part in the decisions that affect the system and the way it is designed and used. Because technology is not developed in isolation, participation in decisions about technology also involves decisions about work content and job design. Seen in this broader context participatory computer system design needs to be part of an integrated design that looks at work organization, job content, and the way technology is used to support these activities. This integrated design process also implies that system developers as technical specialists need to re focus their energies so that they can learn to rely on the expertise of the workers. System developers in an integrated and participatory environment would then take part in playing active roles in fostering and enabling people to use their knowledge to make decisions. But the step between fostering participation and enabling decision making is grounded in a question of power. POWER SHIFTS: CONTROLLING THE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT PROJECT Participatory design represents a potential break with traditional approaches to system development. The break happens when we recognize that full and active participation of users as workers implies a shift in power relations within com panies. To address this issue more closely the chapter focuses on Information Systems (IS) within large organizations, particularly Management Information Systems (MIS). In the development of MIS applications the contradictions be tween the roles of system developer as management consultant and system devel oper as spokesperson or catalyst for user groups become quite clear. System analysts, whether they are employed by an organization ordering a system or work as outside consultants to a project, are usually hired by management to respond to a set of management defined objectives. Within the American con text, the idea of a system analyst acting as an advocate for user rights is not yet an issue on the table of possibilities.1 This means that when system developers take an active role helping users become involved in defining and using computer systems they are moving into uncharted waters. The role of system analyst as management consultant or man agement technical specialist comes into conflict with that of system analyst as System analysts work in a variety of arrangements including work as in-house staff and outside consultants. Their work also varies depending on the extent of interaction they have with users (i.e., products for software houses where users are often not directly involved in the development process, or user-specific applications in application areas like banks). The point here is that regardless of the type of work done, most developers are employed by management to carry out management goals. This chapter focuses on MIS applications, for discussion of product development organization see J. Grudin in this volume.
- 48. 3. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN IN THE UNITED STATES 29 user-facilitator. For participatory design to work within the unstated assumptions of the American corporate world, these conflicting roles need to be spelled out and clarified. Movement from involving users in design to full participatory design means encroaching on some decisions that have traditionally been consid ered the prerogative of management. It also means looking at the concept of the integrated design of work organization, decision making, and computer support. In a sense participatory design opens up Pandora’s box, for the questions we need to ask affect the whole organization and the way decisions are made within it. To better understand this situation a brief look at the history of system devel opment is useful. Following World War II some of the early methods and pro cedures for system development came from the field of Operations Research (OR). OR-based procedures emphasized quantitative reasoning in order to facili tate coding complex programs. In the 1950s as software for large mainframe computer systems was laboriously cranked out, practices from the newly emerg ing field of Management Science also began to frame the boundaries of system development field (see Greenbaum, 1979). The merging of Operations Research and Management Science was not an accidental marriage. In the early days software development was extremely labor intensive and prone to error. System analysis and design emerged as a series of techniques that could place clear-cut standards on the way software was to be produced, including contractual arrangements to control the stages of develop ment. Thus the system life cycle was defined as a series of linear steps from feasibility study through implementation and documentation, which could be seen by MIS departments as isolated project parts to be defined, administered and controlled. Interpreting this from the labor process perspective of Braver- man’s (1974) book on Labor and Monopoly Capital, one could say that computer systems were in fact designed to further divide workers and in many cases take away the skills that they had (Greenbaum, 1979, Kraft, 1977). Viewed in this way the system development process has not only excluded users from the development of systems, but has done so by design (Noble 1977). The steps in the traditional life cycle approach were originally developed to control large scale projects yet the emphasis on control has remained a cor nerstone of the profession. So much so, in fact, that if one were to read through the leading textbooks on System Analysis and Design today one would still find that the themes of dividing the project into stages and controlling each stage continue to dominate the material. Although newer textbooks introduce chapters on prototyping and inject some sections on the ‘human factor’, most material still focuses on procedures for meeting management needs for control over project costs time-frame requirements. In short, how the system might suit the needs of people working within the organization has been secondary to management requirements for control over the project. As early as the 1960s some observers began to argue that the life cycle approach and formal procedures were unresponsive to human needs. In 1965,
- 49. 30 GREENBAUM Robert Boguslaw asserted that system developers were “concerned with neither souls nor stomachs,” resulting in the fact that “People problems are left to the after-the-fact efforts of social scientists” (p.3). Today, close to 30 years after Boguslaw’s warning, the tools and techniques taught to new system developers still follow the procedures for control outlined in the textbooks. In practice, the patterns of behavior among system developers and managers, for the most part, mirror the textbook methodology, or at least try to sound as if they do (see Friedman, 1989). System Analysis and Design as practiced within the confines of most Management Information Systems (MIS) departments looks a lot like general management practices with some specific techniques thrown in to ac count for the difficulty of controlling software projects. Yet over the last 30 years the pages of management and system journals have been peppered with articles bemoaning the fact that so many systems don’t work or fail to do things that both managers and users expect them to do. In addition to critiques within the system field, social scientists who have studied people at work point out that many computer systems adversely affect the performance of the workers using them. Most work places seem to have stories that confirm these findings— stories about workers having to do extra tasks just to make the data fit the system or about people spending long hours trying to print out letters on printers that are incompatible with their work stations. General dissatisfaction about workplace systems seemed to have reached a feverish peak in the mid 1980s when MIS departments began to complain more loudly about taking the blame for systems that did not work (Friedman, 1989). Some changes that occurred during the last decade may help propel both MIS departments and users toward the need for some form of participatory design. The proliferation of PCs throughout many organizations means that many for merly passive users have begun to ask not what they could do for the MIS department, but what the MIS department could do for them. In fact, as many workers become more familiar with using computer hardware and software they no longer think of themselves as the silent majority. Thus the fact that MIS departments perceive that they are losing some control combined with the real ization that users are getting more knowledgeable can lead us in the direction of practices that involve more participation from all who are affected by changes that occur when computer applications are installed or updated. FROM USER-CENTERED TO PARTICIPATORY DESIGN In the mid 1980s research in the area of user-centered design pointed out the need for applications that were not just user-friendly, but rather were more deeply rooted in the practices of people using them. The user-centered approach at tempted to bring people back into the picture, putting emphasis on the need to develop systems that worked in practice, not just in testing. During this period
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