Articulation work is a practice where actors use verbal and non-verbal communication to document what they are doing, what they understand about that, and how this relates to others. It is the work necessary to join one actor’s sense of a situation with another’s, so their flows of activities can be allocated, coordinated, and dovetailed. It is necessary to identify constraints, pitfalls and strategic positions in the field of work. Doing so consists of the work needed to coordinate tasks, jointly recover from errors, and assemble resources, both shared and individual. This includes tasks that allocate, schedule, interrelate, divide respective activities in relation to the information. Articulation work in large-scale settings has a dual character: the articulation activities internally in arranging local work and the articulation activities between two (or more) different locals. Building a collaborative information management system around only information flows and not the articulation work necessary to align how users make sense and make decisions with that information flow can lead to serious ethical, legal and social issues.
Guiding Questions
How might it be possible to be aware of others’ actions, intentions, and activity flows within a common information space in order to support dovetailing, without infringing upon privacy?
Is it necessary to negotiate tasks in order to support workflow?
How might it be possible for users to see relevant information to enable a cooperative working division of labour? Can this be done without information overload?
What kinds of controls exist for users to manage the dissemination of their own information?