‘Work’ in CSCW

I have been reading a few papers on the focus of 'work' in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. First up is this provocative offering from Crabtree, Rodden and Benford who appear to be calling for a shift in focus (or a widening of focus) from workplaces to a broader set of situations in which CSCW concepts may be applied:

Moving with the times: IT research and the boundaries of CSCW. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 14, 3 (June 2005), 217-251.

This paper appears to be in part a reaction to Bill Gaver’s assertions that existing HCI interests in things like task efficiency, workflow design and so on fail to be useful outside the world of work:

People do not just pursue tasks and solve problems, they also explore, wonder, love, worship, and waste time. These activities, captured by the notion of ‘Homo Ludens,’ or people defined as playful creatures, are meaningful and valuable, but difficult to handle from traditional perspectives

(From Gaver, W. (2001) “Designing for ludic aspects of everyday life”, ERCIM News, No.47.)

(This particular beef later appears to have developed into a more general critique from Crabtree et al. in 2009’s panel discussion at CHI:

A. Crabtree, T. Rodden, P. Tolmie, and G. Button. Ethnography considered harmful. In CHI ‘09: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 879-888, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM.)

The 2005 Crabtree et al. paper is followed up by Kjeld Schmidt five years later in this paper:

‘Keep Up the Good Work!’: The Concept of ‘Work’ in CSCW. M. Lewkowicz et al. (eds.), Proceedings of COOP 2010, Computer Supported 265 Cooperative Work, Springer-Verlag London Limited 2010.

Schmidt criticises the idea that CSCW concepts can successfully be applied to non-work settings, drawing on Ryle’s notion of polymorphic concepts; in the case of work, it cannot be generally described and yet specific types of work can be. Schmidt also uses Schutz’s writings about work being a sort of primary instance of the natural attitude, with other experiences being somehow layered on top of this primary layer, i.e., work.

His argument appears to be that CSCW concepts can be applied to non-work settings, but wonders where this actually gets us, i.e., whether things like 'fun’ and so on can be picked apart by notions like divisions of labour, mutual awareness, orchestration and so on.

I’m not sure about either side. I feel that the purchase CSCW concepts can give to non-work settings is pretty useful, and they can successfully be applied to non-work settings, and illuminate the nature of them for design, using 'work’ as an analytic device (I’ve done so myself). However, I see why Schmidt worries that this orientation will at times can rub up against the other essences of those settings, such as fun, enjoyment, fear, and how people “explore, wonder, love, worship, and waste time” in them.

Schmidt’s paper is pretty recent so I expect that this debate has got some decent legs still on it.