Weaving it all together:


Central theme -- Co-adaptive software environments
	Implications for research, development, theory, design
	Central example:  electronic messages
	Additional examples:  MIS, Educational software

Claim:	Key point is that there is a relationship between 
	people and information that changes over time.
	Computer networks provide an important method
	of exchanging information.

	In such situations, people have an incentive 
	to modify the system to meet their needs, since 
	they perceive the system in terms of the usefulness
	of its content, not as a system in and of itself.
	Yet they are changed by the system too.

Claim:	Some systems are naturally co-adaptive (postulate 
	what the characteristics are and back up).
	May be possible to explicitly create ones as 
	well.  Cite Zuboff for examples of changes in 
	"informated" plants...

Features that change behavior:  dist. lists vs netnews.  

Environment
	Assume heterogeneity
	Assume multiple sources/types of information
	Assume clashes of assumptions
	Assume change

Theory
	Repair theory -- user perceptions vs. behavior
	User strategies for changing the environment
	(Co-adaptivity)

Research strategies
	Triangulate: field and experimental studies
	Parallel projects/challenged assumptions
	Video and EVA
	Exploratory data analysis

Development strategies
	Video prototyping
	Scaled prototypes
	Iterative design/development/test/redevelopment	
	Task partitioning for:  efficiency vs understanding
				(lo overlap vs hi overlap)
	Process vs system elegance/choice of primitives

Design Implications
	Support co-adaptivity
	Build in user feedback
	Support flexibility -- along which dimensions?
	Interactivity:  define rich modes of interaction
	Allow user control of information
	Don't assume that information is independent of 
	the content and the user. 

Communication/Learning
	Relationship/control over info between user and others
	Who is initiator of info delivery?
	Changing relationship of information over time

Research data
	editor tutor
	Types of user innovation found
	Users changing the system
	Compare use at DEC, Wang, Xerox, MIT, SIGCHI
	ITS -- in context learning
	Changing interaction with info over time

Role of the network
	...




Relating co-adaptivity to:

Educational cube: Dimension: The student's work context can be an
essential component in providing the right information, (either by the
student figuring it out or by an outside expert, human or otherwise,
providing it with respect to the student's behavior).  In such cases,
as the student's behavior changes, the kinds of appropriate
information will change as well.  The student has the opportunity to
affect the information delivery either by changing his/her behavior or
by modifying the information delivery system.  Yet, the range of
possibilities suggested will likely be dictated by the design of the
information delivery system.  (Sources of change to it: new releases
of software or changes by the user or other users in the user
community or perhaps accidental changes from interaction with other
software.)

Lens: Users object to the restricted model defined by the original
designers.  One person makes a serrendipitous change -- provides 
a new way of using the system.  This leads to a change by the 
designers, to make the user-developed change easier.  This leads to 
the formulation of a new model of use.  The pressure to change 
is based on the changing relationship between the user and the 
messages over time.  The solution is only one of many possible.
The presentation of the "idea" of a rule changed people's behavior.
People's perceptions didn't match their actual behavior -- feedback 
about actual behavior helped optimize.

Message cube:  The balance between the sender and receiver of 
messages can be changed, explicitly through choice of message
medium or implicitly through rules, etc.

Study individual differences -- and underlying assumptions.



