Virtual world affordances for people with lifelong disability

One article © 2014 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from : Stendal, K., Molka-Danielsen, J., Munkvold, B.E., & Balandin, S. (2013, 7-10 Jan. 2013). Social Affordances for People with Lifelong Disability through Using Virtual Worlds. Paper presented at the System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2013.485 "The findings from this thesis show that virtual worlds offer valuable affordances for people with lifelong disability and identify six affordances offered: communication, mobility, personalization, social inclusion, personal development, and joint activity. The study also concludes that the affordances identified may represent …

Capabilities and Affordances of Virtual Worlds for People with Lifelong Disability

Using technology is of great value for people with lifelong disability (PWLD). The Internet can help PWLD to be more independent, to be socially active, and to participate in a range of activities. Virtual worlds (VWs) offer an environment with technology capabilities for interaction, rendering, and communication. The ability to take advantage of these capabilities may depend on the technology and the ability of the person utilizing it. Using a qualitative study we aimed to explore the differences of ability required to use these capabilities and make capabilities into affordances for PWLD. We found there were differences in PWLD’s ability to utilize the capabilities offered and conclude th…

Mutual informing between IS Academia and Practice: Insights from KIWISR-5

Publisher's version of an article published in the journal: Communications of the Association for Information Systems. Also available from the publisher at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol29/iss1/7 The relationship between Information Systems (IS) scholars and IS practitioners has been debated since the birth of the IS discipline. How are academics interacting with practice, and how should we? In this article we propose that academia-practice collaboration, namely “mutual informing,” is an existential aspect of the Information Systems field. This article is based on presentations, discussions, group work, and a debate that took place during the Fifth Kristiansand International Workshop on …

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A multi-case study of CRM and privacy in three organizations

Masteroppgave i informasjonssystemer- Universitetet i Agder 2009 Privacy has been described as one of the major ethical concerns in the electronic society we experience today. Companies and organizations are collecting considerable amounts of data about their customers. Because of this, the need to keep the customer’s personal information protected has become an important issue. The topic of identity theft and misuse of personal information has been thoroughly covered in the literature. Many researchers state customers are growing more concerned of how the companies they conduct business with are using and storing their personal information. CRM, Customer Relationship Management, is a conce…

When Is an Affordance? Outlining Four Stances

Part 3: Exploring Affect and Affordance; International audience; Affordance has emerged as a core concept in information systems (IS) research during the last decade. This relational concept is applied to understand and theorize the relationship between the social and the technical. In the works of the concept originator James Gibson, the relation was mainly portrayed as an ever-existing fact between the natural environment and an animal. In contrast, IS research focuses on relationships in-the-making between artificial things and human beings. In the IS context, we have identified vagueness in temporal and relational ontology: when do affordances exist and between whom or what? In this pap…

IMPLEMENTING CLOUD BASED BIG DATA PLATFORMS – A CASE USING MICROSOFT AZURE

Digital transformation and implementation of big data platforms are inevitable in any industry. Big data constitutes an important area of research, however, implementation of platforms like Microsoft Azure have yet to be explored. Through a narrative case study, we aim to explore the implementation of such big data platforms in the power industry. Our case is based in a Norwegian power company who are early movers in implementing Microsoft’s Azure platform across multiple units in the organization. With the support of top management and eager business units one would expect this process to be fairly straight forward. Our findings show that the maturity of the technology, in addition to chal…

Analyzing the Concept of Affordances in Information Systems

The affordance concept has penetrated the Information Systems (IS) scholarship as a lens for theorizing the relationship between technology and its users. However, what exactly is it that the researchers are trying to capture when they use this concept? For this essay, we carefully read IS literature to reveal underlying assumptions behind this lens and how it has been adopted. This article reveals three assumptions: 1) whether affordances are identified as intended prior use or emerging in action, 2) whether affordances are functional or non-functional, and 3) whether affordances are potential or actual. We dig into these assumptions and suggest alternatives for further enquiry.

Social Affordances for People with Lifelong Disability through Using Virtual Worlds

In the information age, information and communication technology (ICT) is an asset for supporting people with disability to participate and be included in society. Research indicates that virtual worlds may help this group to gain independence and improve social participation. The aim of the present research was to explore the role that virtual worlds play in facilitating people with disability to experience a self-perceived improvement of social participation, independence and well-being. Using qualitative methods our results indicate that people with lifelong disability perceive that they reach a larger and more diverse network through the use of virtual worlds. Based on identified Qualit…