Evaluation and design

Facebook is a social networking that connecting you with your family, friends, and colleagues... Here, you can speak whatever you want with friends, uploading photos, sharing interesting links, webcam talking, as well as to learn more about other people.

The reason why FaceBook is popular than the other networking site is because it provides more friendly interface and easer to maintain, and more important it is free of charge. Whoever you can use Facebook to communicate with other people, it is quite common among young people nowadays. People put pictures and information that they would like to share on Facebook, so that others will know them and they can also meet new friends in this way…

Why evaluation and design are important in develop a new technology:

In the development of a new technology and new products, the area where evaluation technology is most powerful in making user needs apparent. For example, while many of us can think of a new idea, as individuals we usually do not think about or know what it takes to develop a new product and introduce it successfully into the marketplace. On the other hand many of other companies can take advantage of their current knowledge of the marketplace and relationships with existing customers. The company who use evaluation and design approach will find a better position in the market because they think of use’s need, a better technology should take user in Centre, designer should think in two views- designer and user as parallel. If we use evaluation and design approach in develop new technology, we can avoid many project fail.

Experience of Video Conferencing from the point of view of Ethnography

The process of video conferencing in pratical is completely different from what we actually learn. There are whole lot of small things which should be taken care off for the process to be successful. Before the start of the actual process the groups decide what is going to be presented and also take notes of the topics they are going to cover up during the meeting. They even decide who is going to be the key speaker who is going to take the march from their side. They adjust their camera in such a position that all the people present in the meeting are visible. The microphones in such a manner that it remains within the reach of the speaker and voice is audible to the listeners. The volume of the voice should be kept fair enough so that everybody can hear what is being said.
In real video conferencing, there are some agreements and some disagreements to the topics proposed so there is need for taking on the spot decisions and negotiating as well. Thus, people need to be much more alert and concious about what they are speaking. The pauses between the talks are also very relevant to stress upon something in the conversation and giving time to think about what is said.
If all these small things are not taken care about, then it may cause delay in the process of communication. So the basic need for good communication via video conferencing is to engage with the culture of the communication at that particular time. This will help in engaging with the purpose of the meeting in a better manner. It also needs to be noticed the working way of the other party so as to gel along with the environment of the organisation and then work better according to the things which are considered relevant.
The people in the organisation are always busy, it should be checked whats the reason that they stay busy all the time or what do they actually do or how do they do their work etc. all these points should be taken care of while engaging with the working enviroment of a company. This would rather keep them informed and will not create any kind of misunderstanding, if possible.

Organising a Training Event

From the point of view of ethnography,organising a training event requires a whole lot of things to be undertaken for it to be considered successful. Various things should be taken in mind while planning a training event.
Basically it should be kept in mind that for whom the event is designed for i.e. workers, to make them understand and make them feel comfortable with the new working enviroment. It should be bared in mind that what kind of expressions and anxiety does the workers are going to be having. Who all apart from the workers are going to attend the meeting, like managerial personnel and those people who ahve invested their money in the organisation etc.
Since a training event is not a small event, it involves explaining the new staff whole lot of things about the organistion and at the same point keeping them comfortable with the environment. There are various interactions that take place, i.e. the new employees are explained the details and they ask various questions to clarify their doubts. This helps in maintaining a good relationship with the employees

Improvement points for video conferencing..

We can improve our communication in video conferencing in the following manner.
In case the voice is not clear in video conferencing, then we can make use of activities to make the other person understand that his voice is not audible, so that he can make certain arrangements for the problem to be solved.
If there is common ground,i.e. english and there is a common topic for everybody to participate in and stay interested in the meeting. This will enable us to run the meeting smoothly.
We should use smart boardfor showing the details of our meeting rather than speaking because when we see things, they have a deeper impact on our minds as compared to words.
If we find people disinterested in meeting and we had not planned for all that at all, then we can come up with some innovative ways of communicating so that everybody stays interested, like we can make the meeting more interactive by putting up questions to the audience and ask for their participation.

Improvisation of blog

Some of the things which can be considered and on the basis of which we can improve our blog.On the basis of-
COMMON GROUND
We can include topics of evrybody's interest so that we can make it more interactive with people. This would help us in getting different point of views on the same topic and give us a variety of diversity in views. We should try and use language which is easy and understandable to everybody. For example- we should use english as a common base for our blog with common topics and good content.

AFFORDANCE
Affordance can improve our blog as we can make it as a forum for people to learn new thnigs which they can use in their lives and improve the way they deal with things. But the only way to make it possible is to make a precise description of things so that people can easily go through details and get the idea of what is being talked about.We can put many pictures and videos in our blog as images are much more catchy than words.

ACTIVITY
This can be used as one of the way of making the blog much more interactive by putting something in the blog to which people respond to or give their opinions. Activity is one of the things which can help us in pointing out thnigs which are much more important to be read as compared to the other things. For example- we can put bullets to highlight the important points.

AUTOPOIESIS
Autopoiesis means self created. This can actually ask us to make our blog much more innovative, by putting new ways of user friendly ways of using the blog as a representation of ideas.

Space, Co-ordination & Activity

SPACE
Space in communication systems is how much area we require during a coversation or presenting ourselves in front of people. Space basically involves physical enviroment we need in order to communicate, it can be possible that we extend our physical area by moving at different places while stressing on certain areas which are important to be addressed to everybody. There may be many barriers in the space given but its just how you overcome those barriers and do not let them become a hurdle in communication.

CO-ORDINATION
Co-ordination is one of the most essential part of communication. There can't be communication without co-ordination. It involves when one should say whatever he wishes to say, i.e. if one person is saying something the other person should co-ordinate with his speech and should speak when that person finishes rather than poking his ideas inbetween. Co-ordination in communication would involve understanding amongst the people communicating. Co-ordination sets the alignment of communication.

ACTIVITY
Activity is a part of communication. It involves the activities undertaken during the method of communication. Activity basically involves actions, for example- if a teacher is teaching in class and he finishes with what he is explaining, then in order to recieve a feedback he agrees the nodding of students as an indication that the students have understood whatever he has taught or incase if a student shruggs his shoulders then its an indication that he has not understood whatever has been taught or he has a doubt. Thus, communication can be done as a way of activity as well.

Affordance,Common Ground, Deictic references,

Affordance:

Affordance is when a users seeing a new thing, users can not only recognizes the purpose of it, but also recognizes how it can be use and how to operate it immediately. For example, when you see a door handle, you know here is a path to somewhere else, and you know when you pull/push the handle, the door will open. Affordance is people can easly get konwing new things bise on their previous knowledge and experience.

Common Ground

The Clark’s common ground theory has illustrated a clear picture of the human communication process. It states that all of the communication actions are the collaborative activities that require the participants share the common goal and responsibly to achieve that goal. The coordination mechanism has been used as a shared basis that ensures participants to believe the existence of the same common joint goal between them during the communication actions. The shared basis is common ground. According to Clark, the using of language and the way of communication between human beings are highly depending on the collaboration of speaker and listener. In order to develop a common ground, the speaker presents an utterance to express a meaning and the listener gives evidence of understanding of that presentation. The common ground processing consists of several pairs of presentation and acceptance.

Deictic references

The deictic references are the collectively orientation features of human language. It is used for pointing out and clarifying the space, time, location and other significant information in the human linguistic communication.

video conferencing blog

There are two companies. One company is merging with the other company. The company is planning to set up a meeting with its employees via video conferencing in order to re-assign some staff with other jobs. There are some elements we need to consider in order to make the meeting a successful event.

Preparation:
For the meeting to be held there are few things that we need to arrange. We need to arrange/book a suitable room with proper equipments that support video conferencing and proper seating arrangement like chairs and table. The room should be big enough to fit the number of people who will be attending the meeting. The main equipment we need is the CODEC( coder-decoder),that is the brain for the video conferencing to take place. It includes whole lot of things that help in transmission of video.We need projection screen to show us the image of others attending the meeting. This will help in watching their reactions. We also need a smart board in order to interact by putting slides etc.We should arrange for DVD screen in case we we want to show videos. Webcams should be set in a proper position to catch all the participants. Light effect should also be set up cleverly so that everyone is visible. We can also provide coffee and tea at the end of the conference so that everyone can have a chat and discussion.

Content:
We will givea print out of what is going to hapen in the meeting, the print out will includ the agenda of the meeting, who is representing what in the meeting, name of the staff members who are going to re-assigned jobs with the pay-roll. At the beginning of the meeting, we will first check if everyone is attending the meeting. Then the speaker will give a brief of the situation, explaining the case, why these people are here and so on. The speaker will emphasize on explaining each employee’s skill, why they are being assigned to the particular new position, what would be the benefit from this change,i.e make them understand of how are they going to work in the new work enviroment.This will be accompanied by feedback from employees, whether they like the decision or not.

Closing:
If everything works according to the plan, then it is possible that we achieve our goal easily, i.e. re-assignment of jobs is successful and everybody agrees to the change. But if it doesn't work out the same way,since it deals with humans, so we can try and make the disagreeing employees understand the benefits of the change and try and negotiate with them.

Session 4 workshop- Merging of two companies

MERGING OF TWO COMPANIES

Participants-
SUMIT
TONY
PAUL
CINDY

Task - Human Behaviour during merger of two companies

There are two companies Q & U. Q is an Indian Company which is taking over U, a UK based company. Q co. is taking over U co. There are several issues when there are two companies merging. These issues are from both the companies, i.e. Parent co. and the merging co.

There are several issues to be taken care of and dealt with in case of a merger. There are emotional issues involved with the decision of the two companies. These issues should be taken care of while merging of the two companies. The employees in the U co. might feel that the working enviroment and organisational structure in the Q co. would be different from their co. so they would resist the change and would not agree to the merger. There would be different social rules and regulations of Q co. which does not match with U co. The employees of U co. would feel a sense of insecurity of losing their job.

There emotional issues involved in merging two companies can be behaving in such way: first of all, we think of the employee in U co. they might have kind of resistance to merging with other co. since they have different couture/social background, and further for, when two companies merge together, competition will increases among employee or even manager in different department, they are afraid of losing they current job. Secondly, U & Q Company has their own rules, regulation and work policy, and it would be quilt a lot different the one in UK and the one in Indian. As a parent co. Q company wants U company done jobs according to their rule, however, U co. may not like to follow Q company’s rules to against their own rules and market. And finally, people have different way of thinking, again it might because of the couture differences, some employee may afraid of merging so that they will have lot of complain, but some employee may take this as a challenge to work hard, to develop themselves.

There are several methods for improving the communication among employees and the owners of the two co.'s. A bridge should be built up through informal communication and social gatherings such as company parties. There should be task alloted to the groups of the two companies. This would allow the employees of the two companies to know each other in the work enviroment as well and help the employees of the U co. to know and adapt to the working enviroment. Both the co.s' should clarify the doubts of the employees of their co. that how this merger will help them in increasing their capability and they would not be losing their jobs because of that. Q co. should take the initiative of organising training events to make the employees of U co. understand the culture and working enviroment of Q co.
Last but not the least, the same information technology platform should be used in both the companies with wich both the companies can easily familiarise with. Companies should ensure the communucation between the two is running smoothly by using telephone, e-mail, fax, video conferencing, skype, etc. This would facilitate the companies in creating a healthy work enviroment.

COMMUNICATION TASK

Communication Task

Participants
SUMIT
PAUL
CINDY
TONY

Task- Differences and similarities in modern day communication and communication in the past.

There are many similarities and differences in the way human being communicate now and the way they used to do it in the times when there were no communication tools. The basic thing that has been concieved from ancestors from the past is the urge to be communicate and be in society. Since human being is a social animal it feels the need to commnicate and stay connected with people with whatever means possible. Since everybody needs to communicate and be social so communication tools started improving to keep the pace with time. With the improvement in communication tools, human beings started to develop a network amongst themselves. They improved the way to think and developed the skills to manage with time and developed watches and calenders.

From the earlier days there has been a particular language in which humans have tried to communicate. In the earlier days since there were less of communication tools and the tools that existed were either very tough to cope up with or were next to impossible. So with the improvement in times, the communication tools developed and started making life easier for evryone. Communication has now become very flexible and save time due to its easy accesibility. In earlier times people used to travel to a particular place to give a certain message, but now its just got in the palm of your hands, like you can SMS or call anybody, anytime as per your covinience.
In past, the communication tools used were horses, donkeys and other animals, fire, or just walking and going to a place. With modernisation and enhancement in thinking power, today we are using the best of communiction means. With a mobile phone in our hand we can access any place at anytime in the world. We can actually go to any place in the world because of increase in accessibilty to places. This has made us to organise things efficiently.

Most important thing that has been constant in human nature is that there has been an urge for improving and information transformation. Thus this basic instict of communication has improved the way of communication and will keep on improving in the same manner.


SUMMARY

SIMILARITIES
Urge to get together
Information transformation
Fixation of particular date and purpose
Preparation for events
Presence of initiator
1 language to understand


DIFFERENCES
Commnication tools have enhanced in multiple and are much more efficient
Got calender and watches to measure and organise time
Communication tools save time in process
Communication has become much more flexible
Transportation systems has improved communication process
Easy to decide things because of improvement in methods

A thought about human beings communications

The human beings can be seen as the social animal; the social action of human beings can not be implemented without the communication between individuals; therefore, the communication is a necessary element of peoples’ daily life. In the early period, the communication methods of human beings are quite simple and crude such as smoke signal, face to face communication, and voice of clarion. With the social development of human beings, the methods of communication have been changed time to time. The developments of communication methods and tools have been encouraged by the social communication needs of human beings. They become faster, more flexible and complex such as telegraph, landline telephone, mobile and the E-communications. (Include E-mail, online message etc) On the other hand, desire of communication of human beings has been enhanced and encouraged because the flexibility and convenience of these communication tools and methods allow the communication action of human beings implementing in any place at any time; moreover, the modern communication activities of human beings have been imposed by these communication methods and tools; people can not communicate smoothly or even can not live without these communication tools.

BIS group-9

Hello,
We are a group of four students doing Business Information Systems from Royal Holloway University of London. The members of our group are-
1. Sumit Sethi
2. Xindao Chen (Paul)
3. Pan Yi (Cindy)
4. TengYueTony( Tony)
We have prepared this blog for People & Technology. In this we get to know how people get affected by technology nad how technology gets affected by people.We are going to keep it updated. So stay connected and stay updated.