Failte Ireland Thematic Grant successfully concluded

The Failte Ireland Thematic Grant Project, which the IDC had been involved in for the past two years, was successfully concluded this week with the handing over of the report to Failte Ireland, the funding agency, and an open seminar to representatives from the tourism industry in Ireland. The report, titled "Enhancing the Visitor Experience at Visitor Attractions through the Adoption of Information and Communication Technology". was presented by the team: Prof. Jim Deegan, Director of the National Centre for Tourism Policy Studies, Kemmy Business School, Martin Hayes, Wireless Access Research Centre, Dept. of ECE, and IDC's Luigina Ciolfi and Marc McLoughlin, who together with Prof. Liam Bannon, worked on the project case study at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. UL's Vice President Research, Prof. Brian Fitzgerald opened the seminar.



Pictured above are (front): Prof. Jim Deegan, Prof. Brian Fitzgerald, Kevin Moriarty (Failte Ireland); (back) John Ruddle (Shannon Heritage), Martin Hayes, Marc McLoughlin and Luigina Ciolfi.

Visit by Jaana Parviainen, in Collaboration with Daghdha Dance Company

The IDC has co-hosted with Daghdha Dance Company a public lecture by Dr. Jaana Parviainen, University of Tampere (Finland), on “The Crisis of Knowledge: How We Know In and Through the Moving Body”. Jaana talked about her inter-disciplinary excursions into the worlds of philosophy, phenomenology and most recently the world of business management and organizational relations.
Jaana, together with Steve Valk and a group of Daghdha Artists in Residence also visited the IDC studio space, discussing possible future collaborations.

IDC workshop on the empirical value of the concept of practice

The second workshop focusing on the concept of practice - organised by Dr. Cristiano Storni-took place today in the IDC . During the first one - back in July- we focused more on the theoretical aspects (some resources are listed here).



Guided by a list of questions formulated by Cristiano, Anders Sigfridson and Parag Deshpande presented their own perspectives on the concept and the way they each use it in his PhD work.

Here are Cristiano's questions:

• What are straight forward illustrations of a "practice" in my data, research, field notes?
• What does the concept add to my understanding of my empirical problem?
• What do I gain using this concept/lens in my case study/research?
• What are the limits of the concept and how do my data and case study challenge its aspects?
• What it would mean to design for a practice?
• What it would mean to design a practice?

Anders' perspective is connected to his previous participation in the socGSD project that studied globally distributed software development (GSD) projects, and looked at it as a social activity in an environment mediated by information technology and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools. The aim was to unveil and explain the non-canonical work practices (as compared to espoused practices) through which people actually achieve GSD. Within this frame, Anders' thesis work investigates the locally situated practices through which members of software development teams in global projects build up and apply knowledge.

On the other side, Parag's perspective has its foundations in his own practice in architecture for over 15 years, following what it is known as the self-conscious (Alexander, 1964) view on design which relies on the architect/designer to guide him during the activity of design. Looking at interaction design as a design discipline, his PhD thesis is aimed to critique how design and the activity of design are understood in interaction design research.

The nine participants had a very interesting debate trying to unveil the intricacies of the concept.