Paul Luff
Biographic Data
| ID | 287792 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Luff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Luff |
| SIGNATURE | LUFF P |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5046-2279 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 282 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Recipient design in human–robot interaction: The emergent assessment of a robot’s competence
People meeting a robot for the first time do not know what it is capable of and therefore how to interact with it—what actions to produce, and how to produce them. Despite social robotics’ long-standing interest in the effects of robots’ appearance and conduct on users, and efforts to identify factors likely to improve human–robot interaction, little attention has been paid to how participants evaluate their robotic partner in the unfolding of ac…
Introducing Moving Back to the Control Room—Revisiting Centres of Coordination
Living Through a Crisis: How Covid-19 Has Transformed the Way We Work, Live, and Research
Embodied Action, Projection, and Institutional Action: The Exchange of Tools and Implements During Surgical Procedures
There has been a long-standing interest in projection and the resources on which participants rely to produce and recognize the import and organization of turns at talk. Less attention has been paid to the character of the activity in which utterances form part and the ways in which embodied action enables the intelligibility, coordination, and in some cases, coproduction, of particular actions. In this article, we focus on specialized forms of e…
Visible objects of concern: Issues and challenges for workplace ethnographies in complex environments
Over the past few decades, we have witnessed the widespread deployment of technologies that enable real-time interaction between co-located and remote participants. These technologies and their accompanying organisational arrangements have created new forms of cooperation and collaboration. They also present challenges for ethnographers seeking to understand the practices, the ‘lived work’ of the participants. In particular, they demand a concern…
Exchanging implements: The Micro-Materialities of Multidisciplinary Work in the Operating Theatre
Surgical procedures rely upon an array of commonplace tools, implements and materials that mediate practice and disciplinary collaboration within the operating theatre. Substantial time is dedicated to the issue and provision of these artefacts and their timely exchange is critical to the successful accomplishment of surgical procedures. In this article, we consider the practice, knowledge and agency that informs how particular implements and mat…
Creating Interdependencies: Managing Incidents in Large Organizational Environments
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of large-scale centers of command and control that bring together a range of personnel from various services responsible for the management of day-to-day incidents and events. These multicenter control rooms stand in marked contrast to what Suchman termed ‘centers of coordination’ (Suchman 1997), which have typically formed the focus of much research within HCI and Computer supported co-operative w…
Embedded Reference: Translocating Gestures in Video-Mediated Interaction
Audiovisual technologies can enable informal communication akin to face-to-face interaction. However, they prove less successful when deployed to support work and organizational activities. This is, in part, due to the limited ways such technologies provide access to the materials, objects, documents, and the like that are critical for supporting work activities as they emerge and unfold. What is often neglected in these new technologies is a con…
Playing with words: Creativity and Interaction in Museums and Galleries
There is growing interest within museums and galleries in enabling visitors to contribute thoughts, reflections and materials and to make these available to the wider public both within the museum space and beyond. It is widely recognised that digital technologies and developments provide unprecedented opportunities to facilitate engagement and provide new and distinctive forms of participation, sociality and creativity. In this paper, we explore…
Assembling Collaboration: Informing the Design of Interaction Spaces
Over the past 20 years or so, researchers have, in a number of ways, considered how studies of talk and interaction might inform the design of new technologies. In this article, we discuss a “technical intervention” where studies of visual and material conduct informed by conversation analysis shaped the design and development of a prototype communication system: a “media space.” We conclude by briefly discussing some of the challenges and opport…
Embodied action and organisational interaction: Establishing contract on the strike of a hammer
Some 'technical challenges' of video analysis: Social Actions, Objects, Material Realities and the Problems of Perspective
Unlike the wide-ranging methodological debates surrounding the accomplishment and analysis of interviews, fieldwork and focus groups, the discussions concerning the use of video data tend to focus on a few frequently rehearsed issues. In this article we wish to broaden the consideration of methodological concerns related to video. We address the problems faced when collecting data, particularly on how to select the framing for the recordings. We …
Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design
Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life
Video, Analysis and the Social Sciences Access, Ethics and Project Planning Collecting Audio-Visual Data Analyzing Video: Developing Preliminary Observations Matters of Context: Objects, Participation and Institutional Practice Preparing Presentations and Publications Implications, Applications and New Developments Appendix 1: Transcription Notations Appendix 2: Example of an Introductory Letter Seeking Access to Record Appendix 3: Tips for Data …
Transforming Scholarly Practice: Embedding Technological Interventions to Support the Collaborative Analysis of Ancient Texts
Video in Qualitative Research
Embedding instruction in practice: Contingency and Collaboration During Surgical Training
In this paper we address the ways in which surgeons, in collaboration with other members of the surgical team, create occasions for demonstration and instruction within the highly complex and demanding tasks of a surgical operation. Drawing on video recordings of surgical operations, augmented by field studies, we examine how particular phenomena and procedures are made accessible and intelligible to trainees and the ways in which brief episodes …
Gesture and institutional interaction: Figuring bids in auctions of fine art and antiques
Despite the growing body of research concerned with talk and interaction in institutional settings, the ways in which complex forms of organisational activity are accomplished in and through gesture remain relatively neglected. In this paper, we consider auctions of fine art and antiques and examine the ways in which auctioneers deploy an organisation that creates competition and enables the price of goods to be rapidly escalated in a systematic …
Ordering competition: The Interactional Accomplishment of the Sale of Art and Antiques at Auction
Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buye…
Espaces configurants: Le déploiement de l'organisation
Configuring Spaces : Deploying Organisation. Despite the wide-spread deployment of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) throughout most major cities Western Europe, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the ways in which these technologies are used to oversee and manage complex spatial environments. In this paper, we examine how personnel…
Fractured Ecologies: Creating Environments for Collaboration
It is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration rely on the participants' abilities to access and use a range of resources including objects and artifacts from within the immediate environment. In recent years, system support for remote collaboration has begun to address this issue, and we have witnessed the emergence of a number of technologies designed to provide remote participants with access to (features of) each othe…
Technology and medical practice
One of the most significant developments in healthcare over the past 25 years has been the widespread deployment of information and communication technologies. These technologies have had a wide-ranging impact on the organisation of healthcare, on professional practice and on patients' experience of illness and its management. In this paper we discuss the ways in whichSociology of Health and illnesshas provided a forum for the analysis of these n…
Analysing Interaction: Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct
Configuring Awareness
Crafting participation: Designing ecologies, configuring experience
There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing art works which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent, the social and cognitive sciences have paid less att…
Technology and social interaction: The Emergence of 'Workplace Studies
Despite the substantial body of literature concerned with the ways in which digital media are transforming contemporary society and institutional life, we have relatively little understanding of the ways in which new technologies feature in day to day organizational conduct and interaction. There is however a growing corpus of empirical research which places the situated and contingent character of new technologies at the heart of the analytic ag…
Technology and medical practice
One of the most significant developments in healthcare over the past 25 years has been the widespread deployment of information and communication technologies. These technologies have had a wide-ranging impact on the organisation of healthcare, on professional practice and on patients' experience of illness and its management. In this paper we discuss the ways in whichSociology of Health and illnesshas provided a forum for the analysis of these n…
Embedding instruction in practice: Contingency and Collaboration During Surgical Training
In this paper we address the ways in which surgeons, in collaboration with other members of the surgical team, create occasions for demonstration and instruction within the highly complex and demanding tasks of a surgical operation. Drawing on video recordings of surgical operations, augmented by field studies, we examine how particular phenomena and procedures are made accessible and intelligible to trainees and the ways in which brief episodes …
Ordering competition: The Interactional Accomplishment of the Sale of Art and Antiques at Auction
Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buye…
Exchanging implements: The Micro-Materialities of Multidisciplinary Work in the Operating Theatre
Surgical procedures rely upon an array of commonplace tools, implements and materials that mediate practice and disciplinary collaboration within the operating theatre. Substantial time is dedicated to the issue and provision of these artefacts and their timely exchange is critical to the successful accomplishment of surgical procedures. In this article, we consider the practice, knowledge and agency that informs how particular implements and mat…
Overseeing organizations: Configuring Action and Its Environment
Despite the widespread deployment of CCTV through most major cities and towns in great Britain, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the practical use of these technologies in the workplace. In this paper, we examine how personnel in the operation rooms in London Underground use CCTV and related equipment to identify problems and eve…
Interaction in Isolation: The Dislocated World of the London Underground Train Driver
We have recently witnessed the emergence of a range of naturalistic studies concerned with work, interaction and technology in complex organisational environments. In this paper we examine a seemingly individual and isolated activity, which involves the use of relatively basic technology to guide a vehicle in accord with a highly regulated signalling system. The paper considers the ways in which operating a vehicle is systematically co-ordinated …
Some 'technical challenges' of video analysis: Social Actions, Objects, Material Realities and the Problems of Perspective
Unlike the wide-ranging methodological debates surrounding the accomplishment and analysis of interviews, fieldwork and focus groups, the discussions concerning the use of video data tend to focus on a few frequently rehearsed issues. In this article we wish to broaden the consideration of methodological concerns related to video. We address the problems faced when collecting data, particularly on how to select the framing for the recordings. We …
Crafting participation: Designing ecologies, configuring experience
There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing art works which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent, the social and cognitive sciences have paid less att…
Activité distribuée et organisation de l'interaction
Il existe encore peu de recherches sur les activités de coopération dans des environnements technologiques complexes. Or l'une des raisons des échecs technologiques actuels est l'absence de prise en compte du contexte dans l'analyse des activités de travail et des interactions. Les auteurs préconisent une méthodologie «naturaliste » d'observation, utilisant l'enregistrement audio-vidéo pour décrire les processus de coopération. Ils montrent, dans…
Embedded Reference: Translocating Gestures in Video-Mediated Interaction
Audiovisual technologies can enable informal communication akin to face-to-face interaction. However, they prove less successful when deployed to support work and organizational activities. This is, in part, due to the limited ways such technologies provide access to the materials, objects, documents, and the like that are critical for supporting work activities as they emerge and unfold. What is often neglected in these new technologies is a con…
Embodied action and organisational interaction: Establishing contract on the strike of a hammer
Broadcast Talk: Initiating Calls Through a Computer-Mediated Technology
In this article we examine the use of radio, long-serving communications technology. We consider how personnel who operate a rapid urban transport system use radio to identify and manage problems that inevitably arise in the operation of the service. We examine how participants organize their talk with regard to the idiosyncrasies of the system, and how the technology is configured in and through their interaction. The article interweaves 2 rathe…
Gesture and institutional interaction: Figuring bids in auctions of fine art and antiques
Despite the growing body of research concerned with talk and interaction in institutional settings, the ways in which complex forms of organisational activity are accomplished in and through gesture remain relatively neglected. In this paper, we consider auctions of fine art and antiques and examine the ways in which auctioneers deploy an organisation that creates competition and enables the price of goods to be rapidly escalated in a systematic …
Playing with words: Creativity and Interaction in Museums and Galleries
There is growing interest within museums and galleries in enabling visitors to contribute thoughts, reflections and materials and to make these available to the wider public both within the museum space and beyond. It is widely recognised that digital technologies and developments provide unprecedented opportunities to facilitate engagement and provide new and distinctive forms of participation, sociality and creativity. In this paper, we explore…
Assembling Collaboration: Informing the Design of Interaction Spaces
Over the past 20 years or so, researchers have, in a number of ways, considered how studies of talk and interaction might inform the design of new technologies. In this article, we discuss a “technical intervention” where studies of visual and material conduct informed by conversation analysis shaped the design and development of a prototype communication system: a “media space.” We conclude by briefly discussing some of the challenges and opport…
Embodied Action, Projection, and Institutional Action: The Exchange of Tools and Implements During Surgical Procedures
There has been a long-standing interest in projection and the resources on which participants rely to produce and recognize the import and organization of turns at talk. Less attention has been paid to the character of the activity in which utterances form part and the ways in which embodied action enables the intelligibility, coordination, and in some cases, coproduction, of particular actions. In this article, we focus on specialized forms of e…
Some Lessons From an Exercise in Specification
Formulating precise descriptions of human-computer interactions is a prerequisite for the principled design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive systems. This article reports an exercise in interaction specification using Foley and Van Dam's (1982) multilayered method of documenting the design of a user-computer interface. The specification was used to communicate the intended behaviour of a Forms Helper system from a design team to an …
Media Space and Communicative Asymmetries: Preliminary Observations of Video-Mediated Interaction
Despite the growing interest in using audio-visual technologies to support communication and collaborative work among individuals in different locations, we still have relatively little understanding of the organization of video-mediated interaction. In the following article, we discuss some findings of recent research concerning interpersonal communication in a sophisticated multimedia office environment. Based on the detailed naturalistic analy…
On the social organisation of organisations
Collaboration and controlCrisis management and multimedia technology in London Underground Line Control Rooms
Unpacking collaboration: The interactional organisation of trading in a city dealing room
Activité distribuée et organisation de l'interaction
Il existe encore peu de recherches sur les activités de coopération dans des environnements technologiques complexes. Or l'une des raisons des échecs technologiques actuels est l'absence de prise en compte du contexte dans l'analyse des activités de travail et des interactions. Les auteurs préconisent une méthodologie «naturaliste » d'observation, utilisant l'enregistrement audio-vidéo pour décrire les processus de coopération. Ils montrent, dans…
Interaction in Isolation: The Dislocated World of the London Underground Train Driver
We have recently witnessed the emergence of a range of naturalistic studies concerned with work, interaction and technology in complex organisational environments. In this paper we examine a seemingly individual and isolated activity, which involves the use of relatively basic technology to guide a vehicle in accord with a highly regulated signalling system. The paper considers the ways in which operating a vehicle is systematically co-ordinated …
Technology in Action
Despite the extraordinary advances in digital and communication technology over recent years, we know very little about the way these complex systems affect everyday work and interaction. This book seeks to explore these issues through a series of video-based field studies. It begins by discussing the introduction of basic information systems in general medical practice and ends with an exploration of interpersonal communication in advanced media…
Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design
This ground breaking new book brings together key researchers in Europe and the US to discuss critical issues in the study of the workplace and to outline recent developments in the field
Textuality and interaction: The collaborative production of news stories
Textualité et interaction : la production coopérative des reportages journalistiques. On assiste depuis quelques à l'émergence d'une gamme d'environnements technologiques et organisationnels où le personnel doit gérer en vitesse un grand nombre de données de type et de provenance variés. Dans cet article, nous examinons un domaine de ce type : la section éditoriale d'une agence de presse internationale qui fournit des informations en temps réel à…
Technology and social interaction: The Emergence of 'Workplace Studies
Despite the substantial body of literature concerned with the ways in which digital media are transforming contemporary society and institutional life, we have relatively little understanding of the ways in which new technologies feature in day to day organizational conduct and interaction. There is however a growing corpus of empirical research which places the situated and contingent character of new technologies at the heart of the analytic ag…
Analysing Interaction: Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct
Configuring Awareness
Crafting participation: Designing ecologies, configuring experience
There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing art works which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent, the social and cognitive sciences have paid less att…
Broadcast Talk: Initiating Calls Through a Computer-Mediated Technology
In this article we examine the use of radio, long-serving communications technology. We consider how personnel who operate a rapid urban transport system use radio to identify and manage problems that inevitably arise in the operation of the service. We examine how participants organize their talk with regard to the idiosyncrasies of the system, and how the technology is configured in and through their interaction. The article interweaves 2 rathe…
Overseeing organizations: Configuring Action and Its Environment
Despite the widespread deployment of CCTV through most major cities and towns in great Britain, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the practical use of these technologies in the workplace. In this paper, we examine how personnel in the operation rooms in London Underground use CCTV and related equipment to identify problems and eve…
Fractured Ecologies: Creating Environments for Collaboration
It is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration rely on the participants' abilities to access and use a range of resources including objects and artifacts from within the immediate environment. In recent years, system support for remote collaboration has begun to address this issue, and we have witnessed the emergence of a number of technologies designed to provide remote participants with access to (features of) each othe…
Technology and medical practice
One of the most significant developments in healthcare over the past 25 years has been the widespread deployment of information and communication technologies. These technologies have had a wide-ranging impact on the organisation of healthcare, on professional practice and on patients' experience of illness and its management. In this paper we discuss the ways in whichSociology of Health and illnesshas provided a forum for the analysis of these n…
Espaces configurants: Le déploiement de l'organisation
Configuring Spaces : Deploying Organisation. Despite the wide-spread deployment of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) throughout most major cities Western Europe, and the importance of surveillance to contemporary debates within the social sciences, there remains relatively little detailed research concerned with the ways in which these technologies are used to oversee and manage complex spatial environments. In this paper, we examine how personnel…
Gesture and institutional interaction: Figuring bids in auctions of fine art and antiques
Despite the growing body of research concerned with talk and interaction in institutional settings, the ways in which complex forms of organisational activity are accomplished in and through gesture remain relatively neglected. In this paper, we consider auctions of fine art and antiques and examine the ways in which auctioneers deploy an organisation that creates competition and enables the price of goods to be rapidly escalated in a systematic …
Ordering competition: The Interactional Accomplishment of the Sale of Art and Antiques at Auction
Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buye…
Embedding instruction in practice: Contingency and Collaboration During Surgical Training
In this paper we address the ways in which surgeons, in collaboration with other members of the surgical team, create occasions for demonstration and instruction within the highly complex and demanding tasks of a surgical operation. Drawing on video recordings of surgical operations, augmented by field studies, we examine how particular phenomena and procedures are made accessible and intelligible to trainees and the ways in which brief episodes …
Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design
Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life
Video, Analysis and the Social Sciences Access, Ethics and Project Planning Collecting Audio-Visual Data Analyzing Video: Developing Preliminary Observations Matters of Context: Objects, Participation and Institutional Practice Preparing Presentations and Publications Implications, Applications and New Developments Appendix 1: Transcription Notations Appendix 2: Example of an Introductory Letter Seeking Access to Record Appendix 3: Tips for Data …
Transforming Scholarly Practice: Embedding Technological Interventions to Support the Collaborative Analysis of Ancient Texts
Computer Science (31 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Political science (20 works) · Engineering (17 works) · Information Systems Theories and Implementation (14 works) · Public relations (14 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (10 works) · Knowledge management (10 works) · Business (9 works)