Recently we published a paper together with the School of Digital Technologies of Tallinn University on a topic we have been working for nearly 4 years. This paper presents cooperative design as method to address the needs of SMEs to gain sufficient knowledge about new technologies in order for them to decide about adoption for knowledge management.

Our Team Viktoria Pammer-Schindler & Angela Fessl developed together with the Team of the School of Digital Technologies an iterative design method that addresses the needs of SMEs to gain sufficient knowledge about technologies to decide about adoption for knowledge management. The method was iteratively developed over 9 use cases from SMEs in Austria, Estonia and Norway and consists of three stages:

  1. an analysis stage based on activity theory
  2. a design stage based on paper prototyping
  3. stage three consisting of design workshops.

 

Applying this method “in the wild” within 9 different SMEs of different domains led to a good understanding a) the domain by researchers and b) of new technologies that might be beneficiary for the respective SME. Interested practitioners and researchers alike are welcome to use the here presented tools to cooperatively match the domain needs with the offerings of new technologies. The value of our work lies in providing a concrete implementation of the cooperative design paradigm that is based on an established theory (activity theory) for work analysis and established tools of cooperative design (paper prototypes and design workshops as media of communication); and a discussion based on nine heterogeneous use cases.

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