Author: Rebecca Cort

This week, I attended the last session in a series on valorisation at Uppsala University, titled “Do Research with Impact in Mind”. This seminar series turned out to be a very inspiring event and brought lots of ideas on how research can contribute to society, not just through publications but by becoming part of real-world solutions, services, and policies. The seminar series was organized by UU Innovation, a support function at Uppsala University that offers guidance and support for researchers to explore potential ways for their research to achieve societal impact. 

The seminar focused on valorisation, described as the process of translating research and knowledge into societal or economic value. This could mean anything from influencing policy and public health to developing new technologies, services, or educational approaches. Valorisation is not just about commercialization but about recognising the broader potential of research to shape the society around us. This definitely broadened my initial view of the types of research that could create societal impact.

To me, one of the most interesting points from the seminar series was the “professor’s privilege,” which means that teachers at Swedish universities own the rights to their research results. Despite the name, this applies not only to professors but to all researchers at the university and means that we have the possibility to choose if, how, and when our results might be used outside academia. That is a powerful opportunity, but also a responsibility.

The key takeaways from the seminars were to plan for impact early in the research process and that societal impact can take many shapes and forms. Overall, it was an inspiring event that made me reflect on the broader potential of research and how impact can (and perhaps should) be part of our research process from the very beginning.

When we hear the word “handover,” we might think of a nurse passing on information at the end of a shift, or maybe a car switching from self-driving mode back to the driver. If you think more closely about it, you will see that handovers are everywhere around us — and that they are quietly shaping how we work, collaborate, and share responsibility with both people and technologies. In a recent publication, we discuss handovers with the goal to broaden how we think about them in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)—especially now that Generative AI (GenAI) is entering many workplaces. The paper is co-authored by Ece Üreten (University of Oulu), Rebecca Cort (Uppsala University), and Torkil Clemmensen (Copenhagen Business School).

Traditionally, HCI research has looked at handovers as the moment when control of a system, like a semi-autonomous car or a VR headset, passes from one person to another or from a machine to a human. However, handovers are more than just “passing the baton.” In today’s digital workplaces where AI, automation, and human collaboration blend, handovers are crucial moments of communication, coordination, and shared understanding. Accordingly, in this publication, we argue that handovers are more than technical events and should be viewed as complex socio-technical interactions involving people, technology, organizational structures, and tasks.

With GenAI tools becoming more widespread, the rules of handovers are changing. These tools can summarize data, generate content, and even adapt to different communication styles—all of which could make handovers smoother and more reliable. But GenAI also raises new questions such as: How should we design AI tools that understand the context of a handover? Can AI support empathy and human connection in teamwork? How do we make sure AI does not confuse, overwhelm, or mislead during critical transitions? To tackle these questions, we propose a research agenda focused on the following key dimensions:
1. Technology – What tools and formats make handovers effective?
2. Tasks – What exactly is being handed over, and under what conditions?
3. Actors – Who is involved? (It is not just humans anymore.)
4. Structure – How are handovers shaped by organizational rules and culture?
5. Cross-domain – How can we understand the distinctions of handovers across domains?

In this paper, we emphasize that handovers are not the same across domains and therefore, we call for cross-domain studies and more nuanced thinking about who (or what) is involved in these critical moment of communication, coordination, and shared understanding. The paper invites the HCI community to take handovers seriously, study them across different industries, and design future technologies with this human (and increasingly non-human) interaction in mind.

The full paper can be found here

One early morning, a freight train got caught in the overhead electrical wire, causing a large traffic disruption which affected all train traffic in the area and resulted in delays and cancelled trains for almost 24 hours. This is what one of our most recent publications is about: the incident, the effects it caused on the traffic flow, and more specifically, how the situation was handled and solved from within the traffic control room.

The train traffic system, like most infrastructures in society, plays an important role in everyday life by facilitating a continuous flow of people and goods. What is unknown to many is the very large and complex organisation of work that lies behind a functioning train traffic system. In the Swedish context, the organisation of train traffic involves numerous stakeholders and one of the main actors is the traffic controllers. Although much less studied than traffic control for aviation, the tasks and responsibilities are very similar—as are the challenges. These challenges are very much characterised by the fact that the control task is done remotely from a centralised control room, and that the traffic controllers are dependent on train drivers and others situated along the railway to act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the control room. These people, together with advanced technologies, make it possible for the control room to stretch out and reach through time and space, making coordination the core task of traffic control.

The publication reports on a unique case study in which an unexpected real-time incident is described and analysed as the situation unfolds. Most reports on accidents and incidents are conducted in retrospect, but not this case study as I happened to be present in the control room at the particular time when the incident took place.  Accordingly, this paper provides novel insights into how the incident was handled and with the use of participant observations and informal interviews, a rich understanding of the work practices was captured. The analysis resulted in a detailed description of the work in the control room which can be divided into three phases: grasping what has happened and the severity of the incident, handling the incident and the immediate effects it had on the traffic, and finally mitigating the long-term consequences of the incident as these affected the traffic for almost 24 hours.

The unfolding of the incident repeatedly revealed that the workers had to cope with challenges related to time and space and as a way to describe and understand this aspect of the work, we turned to a concept originally used in the agricultural, landscape, and geographical domains, namely the concept of ‘sense of place’. The concept describes a certain meaning and relationship beyond the mere spatial between humans and places. A place is thus conceptualised as a centre of cognitive, affective, or attitudinal meaning. Although not previously applied to control room research, this study shows that ‘sense of place’ is something the workers actively strive to develop and that supports them in handling the situation although they were 150 kilometres away from the situation they were to handle. In future work, we aim to continue to explore how, and to what extent, the ‘sense of place’ concept can aid a deepened understanding of the control room work.

For those interested in the details, you can find the full paper here.

Reference

Cort, R. & Lindblom, J. (2023). Sensing the Breakdown: Managing Complexity at the Railway. Culture and Organisation, DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2023.2266857.

As many of you know, writing is not always easy and it can sometimes be challenging to find the time or space to focus on your writing. That’s where a writing retreat can come in handy. The HTO research group has a long history of arranging writing retreats and this year is no exception. A writing retreat is essentially a dedicated time and place for you to write and last week, people from the HTO research group and people from our networks came together for two full days with the sole purpose to write.

The underlying idea of our writing retreats is that everyone decides for themselves what to write and then we sit together and work on our texts. The key to any writing retreat is that it should take you away from your usual responsibilities and commitments, and it should allow you to focus on your writing. This year, we arranged the retreat in our usual building but booked a room on another floor to help us focus on nothing else but writing. To further increase our potential to be truly productive, we keep to a schedule in which we start by setting writing goals and making plans for the writing we’ll do. This is followed by writing sprints and a few check-ins throughout the day. Of course, this schedule also has plenty of dedicated time for rest and delicious fika.

Besides having time and space to write, the benefits of attending a writing retreat are many. To meet other writers and talk about writing is rewarding in itself and the social pressure of hearing others tap away on their keyboards is quite helpful to get you started with your own writing. The retreat also creates space for reflection on your writing habits and many of us find that it encourages commitment to your writing which hopefully spills over to when you’re not at the retreat. Finally, a writing retreat is really fun and a valuable investment of your time.

“Have you ever felt like a robot at work? Well, with the rise of AI and automation, this feeling might become even more common. That’s why we’re launching a research project to investigate how AI@work affects work engagement.”

chatGPT

The words above are how the renowned AI tool chatGPT summarises our new research project which aims at investigating how increased AI/automated-supported work influence work engagement. Alarming reports show that negative work-related emotions are climbing and we ask if increased AI and automation has a role in this.

The use of robots, automation, and AI in the workplace has become increasingly common in recent years. While there has been a significant interest in the technical development, the impact of these technologies on work engagement is not well understood. Similarly, we see multiple theories on work engagement in psychological and organisational research, but these say very little about the digital aspects of a workplace. How may technology affect a sustainable and productive state where employees are present and truly engaged in their work tasks? In our newly initiated research project, we intend to address this knowledge gap.

With a human-centred approach and research methods such as ethnographic field studies and interviews, we will conduct studies across three different sectors: the IT sector, the agricultural sector, and the metallic industry sector. These three sectors have been selected to ensure a broad context for our research. At a first glance, the sectors might seem to have nothing in common but they are all currently exposed to automation and AI, although the technology has completely different purposes across the sectors. For example, the use of AI tools in programming, or automated milking systems used in the agricultural sector.

What we learn from studying AI and automated-supported work and its influence on work engagement in different sectors will be used to develop a theoretical framework. This framework aims to be a useful tool for organisations to embrace opportunities while mitigating risks related to increasingly digital work environments and work engagement. Accordingly, we intend for the project to have both scientific, practical, and societal impact and look forward to continuing blogging about updates as the project progresses.