Basic summary details
Why drawn attention to
The pattern has been documented in two settings so far. One setting - telephone banking - is seen as a successful example of the pattern while the other - 911 emergency services. - is seen as problematic. The focus is on the practices employed to make the system and the actor's interaction with it visible. These are multiple in one setting and fairly non-existent in the other. Both are broadly speaking, customer service situations where the operator interacts with a system while speaking to a customer/caller.
This pattern is illustrated with vignettes from the following field work:
* TelephoneBanking. An instance where the accounting for an unseen computer system is successful in promoting better mutual orientation to the system and the process between a call operator.
* 911EmergencyServices. An instance where a 911 caller is clearly not oriented to the system requirements for logging a call and the operator does little to promote them.
What mean for dependability and design