Daune West

University of the West of Scotland | UWS · School of Computing

This paper reports on a study in which an interpretive systems-based approach to knowledge elicitation, the Appreciative Inquiry Method (AIM), is used to elicit and record the expertise of what is referred to as a 'knowledge guardian'. A 'knowledge guardian' is an individual who is a current repository and representative of some culturally-embedded...

Authors of interpretive information systems (IS) work are claiming more frequently to be drawing upon action research as a means of undertaking IS research. The literature, while containing many useful discussions about the fundamental concepts of action research and case studies reporting its use, has little to offer the IS researcher in terms of...

Renfrewshire Council for Voluntary Services (RCVS) is involved in a large-scale project to investigate and develop a wireless network in Paisley and its environs. This exciting project has implications for many different actors and stakeholders, not the least, RCVS itself as its members contemplate its future possible practices, processes and servi...

This study aims to develop and evaluate an automated system for extracting information related to patient substance use (smoking, alcohol, and drugs) from unstructured clinical text (medical discharge records). The authors propose a four-stage system for the extraction of the substance-use status and related attributes (type, frequency, amount, qui...

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are a rich repository of valuable clinical information that exist in primary and secondary care databases. In order to utilize EHRs for medical observational research a range of algorithms for automatically identifying individuals with a specific phenotype have been developed. This review summarizes and offers a crit...

For some time, equine assisted therapy (EAT), i.e. the use of horse-related activities for therapeutic reasons, has been recognised as a useful approach in the treatment of many mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. However, despite the interest in EAT, few scientific studies have focused on un...

This chapter reports on an application of systems theory to a complex area of human endeavor, classical dressage. The area is well represented in a rich literature dating back to the time of Xenophon (c.380BC) and has many practitioners worldwide today. The author uses her interpretive systems perspective to explore classical dressage theory and pr...

Conference presentation

A review and commentary on the second book in Belasik's trilogy.

This paper reports on an application of systems theory to a complex area of human endeavor, Classical Dressage. The area is well represented in a rich literature dating back to the time of Xenophon (c.380BC) and has many practitioners worldwide today. The paper offers a description of Classical Dressage theory and practice presented through a numbe...

This review is the result of my own interest in trying to understand the history of writing on classical equitation. The 'notes' represent my attempt to review and comment on the texts and I am happy for any interested person to use them for research purposes, subject to usual academic referencing practices. The 'comments' represent questions that...

This review is the result of my own interest in trying to understand the history of writing on classical equitation. The 'notes' represent my attempt to review and comment on the texts and I am happy for any interested person to use them for research purposes, subject to usual academic referencing practices. The 'comments' represent questions that...

Many researchers in the field of knowledge elicitation (KE) have recognized the importance of the role of ‘expertise’ for the development of expert systems. This recognition has led to attempts to classify knowledge ‘types’ and define ‘genericxyr task structures so as to reduce the complexity of the KE process (Gammack & Young, 1985; Breuker & Wiel...

Since the mid-1980s there has been a growing interest in the application of soft systems methodology (SSM) to the information systems design process. This interest has resulted from attempts to overcome the recognized deficiencies of conventional computer systems analysis methods and techniques. A particular problem which has received attention ove...

Renfrewshire Council for Voluntary Services (RCVS) is involved in a large-scale project to investigate and develop a wireless network in Paisley and its environs. This exciting project has implications for many different actors and stakeholders, not the least, RCVS itself as its members contemplate its future possible practices, processes and servi...

The concept of ‘goal-seeking’ has had a powerful, almost omnipotent, influence on thinking about organizations. Whilst the concept is undeniably useful it is argued that it is also a very narrow concept of organization which can limit the way in which we think about human decision-making and action. Vickers’ idea of relationship-maintenance is revi...

In their text, Client-led Design, Stowell and West (1994) suggested that Vickers’ concept of relationship-maintaining might provide a basis of a concept of organisation that was more appropriate to interpretive IS work than the ‘traditional’ goal-seeking view of organisation. Whilst they may have gone one step further than Walsham (1993) in trying...

This chapter is concerned with the development of information systems and the role that modeling and diagramming play in this process. Diagrams and models are used in many different ways in the information system development process. For example, they may be seen as ways of conveying information to clients and specialists and as an important analys...

A form of systems map has been used as an important first stage of a subjective approach to the process of eliciting views and opinions about some area of concern prior to the development of a computer-based information system. This subjective approach is known as the Appreciative Inquiry Method (AIM) and its developers have claimed that it is a wa...

When using current object-oriented methods in the development of computer-based information systems, problems frequently arise in the identification and specification of ‘objects’. In this paper, these problems are discussed and an approach that draws upon interpretivist systems thinking is presented that, it is argued, may alleviate some of the pr...

Action Research has, for some time, been a advocated as a useful way of conducting work in the field of Information Systems since it offers and alternative to the traditional positivist approach to inquiry. The majority of action research literature appears to focus on the merits of action research as an alternative to positivist research in addres...

Diagrams play an important but often overlooked role in the process of information systems analysis (ISA). The type of diagrams that feature predominantly in traditional computer systems analysis is that of some form of data flow diagram that is an integral part of a structured computer systems analysis and design method. In this paper the roles of...

Over the past few years there has been considerable media and public interest in the discharge of patients recently hospitalised under the Mental Health Acts. This interest has been stimulated by reports of discharged patients who have carried out violent attacks on members of the public and the government’s policy of ‘Care in the Community’. As a...

Action Research (AR) has, for some time, been advocated as a useful way of conducting work in the field of Information Systems (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) since it offers an alternative to the traditional positivist approach in inquiry. In practice this has led to AR being used as a framework for designing, developing and implementing information...

In the first part of this paper a description is given of the Appreciative Inquiry Method (AIM), a subjective method of inquiry which is deemed to be of particular use and benefit in the development of computer-based information systems in complex domains. AIM was originally developed in its manual form as a method of knowledge elicitation (KE) whi...

Within Information Systems the design focus is increasingly concerned with human requirements and client needs. However, modern methods of design may still produce a technically competent computer-based information system which is met with resitance from the user. 'Clinet-Led Design' advocates a 'soft' systems approach which places the client first...

The Plenum Publication of the proceedings contain papers covering a wider range of topics but all have in common the use of Systems ideas.

As we approach the end of the 20th century we can look back upon the achievements that have been made in a variety of human endeavours with pride. Enormous strides have been made to improve the quality of life of millions of people through the application of the scientific discoveries made during this and past centuries. The 20th century will be re...

Action research is orchestrated by the interaction between theory and practice as exemplified by soft systems methodology (SSM). The use of computers has traditionally been developed out of what has been referred to as the ‘rationalistic’ tradition which represents the search for solutions for pre-determined, logical goals (Winograd & Flores, 1986)...

In this paper the authors offer a brief outline of a practical approach to knowledge elicitation (KE) for expert systems based upon the notion that human expertise consists of both “objective” knowledge (i.e. factual, rule-based, text-book, logical, tangible, deterministic knowledge) and “subjective” knowledge (i.e. knowledge resulting from experie...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible contribution of Vickers' ideas on 'appreciation' and what he called the 'appreciative system' to the design of expert systems. The paper begins with a brief summary of the problems of eliciting knowledge from human experts when developing expert systems and the apparent deficiencies of curren...

The origin of this paper lies in an earlier study that was concerned with investigating the general problems of designing expert systems (West, 1987). Research revealed that many commentators draw attention to the process of knowledge elicitation (KE), which is referred to as a “bottleneck” of expert system design and an area which merits further r...