Work Practice Design - overview
Organizations are constantly in the process of updating old or adopting new strategies, software, incentive systems, team structures, even locations, floorplans and more. Typically those changes are made piecemeal, arriving from different directions and according to different objectives and rhythms. Yet meaningful transformation requires that participants integrate the various components together to form new practices.
Work practice is the enacted integration of technology, people, and business process; how real work gets done by real people in real places. Effective integration yields improved business results. Change disrupts work practice and requires re-integration, which happens whether planned for or not. WPD is an approach to study, prototype and design that reintegration. Research questions focus on the dimensions contributing to variations of work practice and how best to support their transformation. This research draws especially from ethnographic, participatory design, and design-focused methods for study and solution development.