e-Research Infrastructure Development and Community Engagement

UK e-Science All Hands Meeting

Nottingham, 13.09.2007

Alex Voss, alex.voss@ncess.ac.uk

Community Engagement

Two related JISC projects, started April’07 Funded under the e-Infrastructure programme

community engagement strand Aimed at widening uptake of

e-Infrastructures Common approach to evidence gathering,

similar analytic approaches but different outputs / interventions

Understanding & Widening Uptake

Drawing on science and technology studies Early adopters - followers - late adopters (Not character types) Mutual shaping Sociotechnical alignment Path dependencies - lock-in Uneven distribution of costs & benefits User-designer relations

Designing interventions Based on understanding of drivers / barriers / enablers /

alignment / beaten paths

e-Uptake

Enabling Uptake of e-Infrastructure Services

Immediate Aims

Consolidate understanding of user needs Identification of gaps in the training &

support needed Run training, education and outreach

events across disciplines Create a repository of event information,

support information and learning material

Longer term

Recommendations on how responses to barriers might be sustained and funded in the future

Foster ongoing dialogue between service and technology providers, application developers and research communities

Analysis

Of barriers to uptake as well as enablers Through document reviews and fieldwork

(interviews, surveys or direct observation) Static, linear description is not adequate as there

is no one typology of issues Searchable along a number of dimensions

(typologies and tags) through a web interface Better ‘recipient design’

Intervention

Through Training, Education and Outreach (TOE) Activities

Series of workshops and training events in different application areas

Development of training and support material for these communities

UK ‘one-stop-shop’: event information, support material and support contacts

Crucially: federation to community sites (e.g., NCeSS, AHeSSC)

Stakeholder Involvement

Support through the communities of service providers, technology developers and users (of various stripes) is essential

Review workshops to validate findings Overlap with other activities exists and creates

additional requirements but also opportunities Aim is to foster an ongoing discourse that will

last longer than the project itself

e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models

Outputs

Capturing patterns of use:Transferable Inspiring examples

Three different, but related outputs:Experience ReportsUse CasesService Usage Models

Key word here is traceability Easily searchable and consumable by stakeholders

Collecting Evidence

Gathering experience reports Semi-structured interviews guided by an

interview framework. Identifies research area, research tasks, and tools

and technologies used

Fieldwork and producing short ethnographies of practiceE.g. production of video vignettesResource constraints & practical agenda

Use Cases

Engaging stories about e-Infrastructure usage, tied back to more concrete experience reports

Generalise over experience reports Make usage patterns more user friendly

and transferable

Use Cases Example

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Community Process

Important aspect to achieve sustainability OSSwatch consultation explored the idea

of forming a community around eIUS and e-Uptake.Users ContributorsCommitters

Stakeholder Benefits

Potential benefits to Service Providers:Input for their own requirements analysis and

user engagement activitiesMore publicity for their servicesGet at how researchers use a particular

serviceUnderstanding of how researchers join up

services to achieve a particular goal

Stakeholder Benefits (II)

Potential benefits for researchers:Learn about ways of using e-InfrastructureFind out what key decisions need to be madeFind contacts: peers, support, trainingTell service providers about their ways of

using e-Infrastructure

Summary / Outlook Understand uptake as a complex social process Enable uptake through more targeted interventions Foster developments within communities rather than just

offering technologies to them. Initial review and conceptual work and piloting of

fieldwork Now developing strategies for the next stage, evidence

gathering Work on technical outputs and planning events Next presentation: e-Social Science ‘07 @ Ann Arbor,

7th-9th October (http://ess.si.umich.edu)