(Illustrated above) An architect typically works with other architects on her team, project managers and partners within her studio, a variety of specialized external consultants, and her clients. As a broad generalist, she has different goals, expectations, and methods of working with each of these groups, and she wants to use computing tools that will not get in the way of these differing approaches.

A financial trader typically works with other traders, back office support, several levels of management, and many business contacts outside his firm. The technologies and processes that his company has built up over time express underlying, top down — yet shared — norms and values about how these different groups should formally interact.

A scientist typically works with other researchers in her clinical lab, the lab’s technicians, representatives from regulatory bodies, a number of vendors, principle investigators at other labs, and members of the scientific community at large. As the head of her lab, she wants to have some measure of control over all of its key internal and public interactions.

How are workforces divided up in the organizations that your team might be targeting with your interactive application?

What roles do different groups of knowledge workers play in the context of different activities?

How do these groups of workers overlap and interrelate? How could your team characterize their goals and attributes based on observed relations in real world settings?

Which social network ties and interpersonal interactions are the most important for successful work practice?

Which ties do targeted workers enjoy and value?

Which interactions are problematic? Could these breakdowns represent opportunities for your product?

What directions are these interpersonal connections trending in? What changes in organizational relationships have occurred in the recent past?

What overriding management attitudes about workers’ interrelations could influence the success of your computing tool?

How might different models and understandings of these social factors allow your team to envision application concepts that could improve valued interpersonal interactions for all involved?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?