Strategies Supporting Heterogeneous Data and Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Towards an Ocean Informatics Environment

This paper considers the elements and challenges of heterogeneous data management and interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing from the literatures on participatory design, computer-supported cooperative work, and science studies to support information design efforts within the rapidly evolving world of large-scale science projects. Certain tensions are embedded in such collaborative projects, being rooted in distinctive disciplinary knowledge interests brought to the table and expressed in occasionally divergent understandings of project rationale, identity and success. A continuum of strategies exist for dealing with such tensions. In this paper, we discuss two of these: a strategy of ‘mindful variety’ built around an appreciation of disciplinary, organizational and biographical heterogeneneity of collaborative ventures; and attention to the proliferation of ‘boundary objects’ and shared languages between and within adjacent communities of practice. These strategies are cons...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: Karen S. Baker, Steven J. Jackson, Jerome R. Wanetick
• Keywords: Biometrics, Distinctive Disciplinary Knowledge, Heterogeneous Data, HICSS 2005, Ocean Science, System Sciences