Our time at the helpdesk has been completed we are able to offer up some interesting conclusions based on this ethnography:
We believe our study is valuable in several respects: highlighting the ability of technology to break down generational and cultural boundaries, illustrating the deficiency of systems to provide accurate feedback and self troubleshoot for users, the reliance users have on technical support staff, and the issue of blame in technology related failures.
First, our study provides numerous instances of technology breaking down the divide which can be formed by cultural or generational issues. The technicians and supervisors we observed spanned many cultures and several generations yet were all compatible because of their shared interest in technology. Their common interest created a common language and a common ground for them to become familiar with one another on. Though we believe any common ground interest is capable of this, we find that technology is unique in that it inspires users to create custom content which is a reflection of their own cultural and generational backgrounds. As a simple example, the desktop background a user chooses can be used to express motivations, political beliefs, religious values or creative expression. When another user views this background it usually will spark some conversation related to the content. This discussion would probably not have started if there was not already the common interest in technology. Technology allows the expression of content and inspires a conversation around that content. From our observations we believe we can confirm the novelty of technology in inspiring the flow of ideas and removal of cultural and generational barriers.
A major highlight of our studies was the instance of users who could not successfully mediate small mishaps with technology, and often relied on technicians to do so. Though there are many simple reasons this could be true, we believe that systems are not designed with the proper feedback and self-preservation mechanisms which could assist the user in self-diagnosing and fixing the problem. Especially considering the domain we were observing, the development of some sort of expert system which could aide users would be relatively trivial. Users of presentation systems rarely want to do more than project their desktop onto a larger display and have a wireless controller for advancing slides. While there are many possible points of failure even in a simple system, adding a bit of intelligence into the system itself would be of great assistance to users and to technicians should the issue require their assistance. We also see in this respect a need for a methodology to teach users how to use systems without drawing attention to the fact that they are being taught how to use a system. From our experiences we gather that many users have become complacent and accepted the idea that they are not capable of navigating and using systems to their fullest capability. An interesting fact of our study is that most of these users are individuals who have obtained at least a PhD level of education and often have completed activities to become tenured professors. These feats indicate attitudes of perseverance and determination must have existed within these individuals, yet they are unable to learn how to use a simple projection system. This confound seems to indicate that the technology is not providing a sufficient means of educating users about itself.
The users we observed were heavily reliant on technical support staff, with very few even willing to postulate a possible reason for the failure or a solution to the failure. We find this disappointing and see it as a call for technology to work to better inspire its users to understand its workings and transitively better understand why a failure has occurred. In the systems we observed it is very clear that the user has little knowledge of the system’s state or the way the system actually works. It is our recommendation that systems attempt to better model their internal state to end users, giving users a more firm grasp on the reasons behind potential failures. We believe this would improve the users overall understanding of computing while decreasing the need for excessive technical support staff.
Finally, issues of blame and trust become highly visible in the world of the helpdesk employee. A higher percentage of the time, users seemed to attribute blame or at least responsibility of a system failure to the technician aiding in fixing the technology. This often leads to a more hostile attitude towards experts who are fixing a technological failure. We believe this indicates the need of systems themselves to absorb responsibility for their failures. It has been shown that users are less likely to criticize a computer directly, as they attribute social attributes to it. Perhaps by employing more social computer systems, which take on responsibility for system failures, some of the tension between those repairing the systems and those using the systems could be reduced
Through the exploration of a helpdesk technician’s role in aiding in repairing presentation systems at a major university we have identified several areas of computing that could benefit from innovative thinking and novel implementations of software. This study has shown value in highlighting the issues which occur between technical support staff and end users. Additionally, we have examined the ability of technology to break down cultural and generational divides between those who are working to improve or repair it. Future studies may wish to focus on specific elements identified in this study, such as the problem of blame and trust surrounding users, technicians, and computer systems.
