What should I expect for workplace observations?
Workplace observations are where we get to see how people communicate about and coordinate their work to implement and manage IoT systems and devices. These daily practices are what helps to keep IoT safe and secure. They give us an inside view into the challenges professionals face when working together and what collaborative strategies end up being a success.
Meetings we need to observe in this research are:
- those between different IT/O&M units on your campus to plan and implement IoT systems infrastructure
- those that take place on specific building projects where project teams are designing and installing IoT systems.
Workplace observations ideally occur over an extended period of time and are conducted virtually. A researcher would:
- Attend workplace meetings
- Take notes about what they hear and see
- Ask to collect documents or other artifacts shared in the meeting.
Researchers would not participate in the meeting conversations other than to introduce themselves. Over time, the researcher may want to conduct interviews with meeting attendees to ask them further questions about a topic pertaining to communication and coordination with IoT systems and/or devices. These requests would be made by email directly to the meeting attendee.
I want to have a researcher observe our meeting. What do I do next?
If you are interested in participating in the observation part of the study:
- Get workplace approval to have a researcher attend your meetings
- Contact a researcher using our contact form
- Meet and identify which meetings would be the best for us to observe
After identifying the meetings we can observe:
- Inform meeting participants that a researcher has been invited and why
- Share with them an information statement that we provide about the observations