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Situated Systems Research Project

Chief Investigators

Associate Professor Robert Johnston
Dr Simon Milton

PhD Researcher

Reeva Lederman

Research Associates

Professor Barry Smith (Ontology)
Professor Louis Goldberg (Situated Systems Modelling)
Graeme Simsion (Data Modelling)

Senior Research Fellow

Dr Vivienne Waller

Project Description

Information systems (IS) are part of work systems that are goal-directed. We have argued in a number of publications that existing methodologies for designing IS implicitly assume that goal-directed behaviour is enabled by deliberation upon abstract models (the 'thinker' metaphor). Systems designed this way are particularly inappropriate for supporting routine activity of humans in time-constrained operational task domains, because routine action is not well described by this deliberative theory of action. Recent work in robotics and artificial intelligence has tested an alternative theory of goal-directed behaviour that emphasises reactive responses to situations (the 'routine' metaphor). The goal of this research project is to refine and test a new IS design methodology based on this situational theory and show that it can produce effective IS designs, applicable to time-constrained routine operational domains, such as manufacturing operations, hostpital wards and emergency despatch, which are radically different from those produced using existing methodologies.

The aims of the project are:

• To develop and refine iteratively an alternative systems IS design methodology based on a radically different theory of agency that is currently being articulated in robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, but which has as yet had little explicit influence on information systems design. This approach to agency emphasises using simple rule-like responses to situations within structured environments;
• To demonstrate that the methodology can produce effective systems in a variety of IS task domains;
• To show using ontological analysis that the methodology so developed is paradigmatically different to existing information engineering methodologies.

The primary outputs of this project will be:

• A fully documented and tested methodology and tool set for the design of situational systems;
• Significant insights into alternative designs for information systems including a set of fully documented real-world examples;
• A demonstration of usefulness of evaluating information systems designs based on their underlying theories of agency;
• Significant insights into the nature of goal-directed activity in socio-technical systems.

This project is supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0451524 and tiltled "A Methodology for Designing Information Systems based on Situational Theories of Agency". For a more detailed description of the project, its background, aims and methods, click here.

Selected Publications
Situated Agency Bibliography

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Faculty of Science Department of Information Systems

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