FWP 2013 Abstracts


Full Papers
Paper Nr: 6
Title:

The Future of Engineering Work - Increasing Flexibility in Work Content, Environment and Processes

Authors:

Hannele Lampela and Jorma Papinniemi

Abstract: This article presents an exploratory study of the trends affecting engineering work in the future, and their implications for managing engineering processes within companies. In many industries, the future workplace will be significantly different from that of today, changing the content of the work, the working environment and the way we work. In this study the effects of these workplace changes are discussed, based on both literature and practical experiences, from an engineering point of view as an example of highly knowledge-intensive work, and further research needs are identified.
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Paper Nr: 7
Title:

Social Media Usage at Universities - How Should it Be Done?

Authors:

Jennifer-Carmen Frey, Martin Ebner, Martin Schön and Behnam Taraghi

Abstract: The social media hype these days is omnipresent, encouraging even public institutions to participate. This study seeks to reveal, which factors have to be kept in mind, when doing social media work at universities. It also is an attempt to provide a list of recommendations and possible fields of action to ensure an efficient presence in social web. Therefore we analyzed the present situation of university efforts and evaluated the success by measuring user engagement concerning different aspects of social media activities (e.g. content, publishing time, frequency of activities, existence of visual elements, additional links, etc.) The study shows, that it seems less important how many times a week a university is publishing, or how long the text messages are in detail, but that there is a significant relationship between the contents of a post, the time of its publishing and the used elements, pointing out that users actively perceive and interact with social media activities that encourage contact between both: the profile-owner with the community and the community amongst itself - especially if made in a personal, emotional or funny way, offering people ways to identify with the institution and to connect with it through well-known habits and traditions.
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Short Papers
Paper Nr: 1
Title:

Socio-technical Trends and Drivers for the Future Workplace: Findings from Expert Interviews

Authors:

Andrea Denger, Alexander Stocker and Michael Schmeja

Abstract: There is an ongoing discussion in the industry in particularin the complex and dynamic automotive domain on how the workplace can be arranged in the future to best possible support knowledge work. This discussion understands the concept of the ‘future workplace’ in a holistic way, i.e. including new forms of web based technology as well as new ways of working together. Respective scientific literature has already discussed social media to play a major role for the workplace, as social collaboration, social workplace and social business are already ubiquitously used terms. But what are major trends and drivers of the future workplace? This position paper presents results of recently conducted study on the future workplace, where 16 experts from academia and industry have been interviewed, to launch the discussion on a research agenda for holistic future workplace research. The interviewed experts mentioned most notably the relevance of social media, mobility and cloud services to facilitate knowledge work.
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Paper Nr: 2
Title:

The Networked Enterprise - Current and Future Trends in IT-based Collaboration

Authors:

Alexander Richter and Alexander Stocker

Abstract: Based on data and experiences gained in projects aimed to implement social software into German-speaking enterprises, we identify and discuss four observed phenomena concerning future developments in IT-based collaboration environments: new organizational structures, changing communication practices, increasing individualization of employees and blurring of boundaries between work and life. Additionally, this position paper exemplarily provides and discusses two feasible solution approaches to cope with identified trends and their impact and lists relevant case studies. The presented research-in-progress is dedicated to application oriented scientists in order to understand socio-technological aspects, when implementing Web-based information systems in order to facilitate communication, cooperation and knowledge sharing.
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Paper Nr: 3
Title:

A Preliminary Short Survey of State of the Art Enterprise Search Engines for Future Work Place

Authors:

Selver Softic, Manfred Rosenberger, Markus Zoier, Konstantin Mondelos and Erik Pillinger

Abstract: This short survey represents a first step towards identifying relevant enterprise search engines as possible key enablers for challenges related to Future Workplace like knowledge transfer and individual and organisational information management inside an enterprise collaboration cycle. In the early period of our research we want to deliver a short overview on current state of the art solutions that can contribute to the idea of Future Workplace. We summarised in our literature study most significant parameters from current research on the topic of semantic and enterprise search. Information was collected via product sheets and white paper of the vendors as well using previous studies and accessible information at the web. Four most advanced solutions in this area has been evaluated. We used them to check their appliance for Future Workplace trends and are aiming at expansion of our review for additional solutions in the future.
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Paper Nr: 4
Title:

Intuitive Multi-touch User Interface for Visualization of and Interaction with Product and Process Information to Enhance Product Lifecycle Management

Authors:

Martin Eigner, Karl-Gerhard Faißt and Alexander Keßler

Abstract: Today’s products more and more turn into systems which are built up of different kinds of linked components that communicate among each other. The resulting complexity brings today’s information management technologies, user interfaces and information visualizations to their limits. This paper presents a research idea which proposes the use of modern touch devices with multi-touch multi-user enabled graphical user interfaces in order to handle the named complexity explosion in a new and better way.
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Paper Nr: 5
Title:

A User-interaction Approach in an Information-cockpit

Authors:

Christian Kaiser, Selver Softic, Vedran Sabol and Mario Zechner

Abstract: This position paper introduces an approach for user interaction in an information-cockpit. The informationcockpit in our case is an explorative visual user interface backed by a faceted search-engine. The user interface employs several visualizations helping the user to get an overview of the data and providing intuitive drill-down functionality on search results. Besides searching and visualizing of data on a personal drive, our informationcockpit supports federated searching where files are located across heterogeneous data sources in the network.
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