The purpose of this qualitative study is to gain a better understanding of how the implementation of a welfare technology (WT) may affect the daily work of unit managers and social care staff in social care homes. It also aims to explore how service users ability to participate, exercise self-determination, and be independent in their daily activities may be affected by this WT, as perceived by staff. The study focuses on one WT Boet, a digital support tool, created for care professionals and service users with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. Boet is a WT that comprises a staff application and an individual application for service users. The study is based on the experiences of care professionals working in social care homes in three Swedish municipalities covered by the Act (1993:387) on Support and Services for Certain Disabled People (LSS). Over a period of six months in 2023, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 social care staff and three unit managers. The analysis highlights trust as a central theme and identifies three aspects that influence professional discretion: transparency, shifts in power, and safety. In conclusion, it can be assumed that the level of trust among staff plays a crucial role in establishing the framework for professional discretion concerning digitalisation, WT, and its additional working methods. This study indicates several different shifts in the professionals’ discretion that may require trust in one’s ability, the residents, the WT, management, and organisation. 

In Sweden digitalization is taking place at a rapid pace within social services' social care activities and various types of new digital operational support and welfare technology are being introduced. Based on the rapid development, digitalization is particularly interesting to study from a professional perspective regarding the professional discretion. In the field of disability, it includes people of a broad spectrum and with different experiences of digital technology, which the social care professionals meet in their daily life.  

This is a qualitative study on how the implementation of welfare technology (WT), a digital operational support tool, affects the care professional’s discretion. The WT in this case has a staff application for the care professionals (users) and an individual application for the residents (end-users) within the social care’s LSS-accommodations in three Swedish municipalities. The end-users of the WT have intellectual disabilities (ID) and/or autism.

The study builds upon experiences from the users who work within social care accommodations that are statutory according to the Swedish Act (1993:387) on Support and Service for Certain Disabled People (LSS). The study was performed within three Swedish municipalities and four social care accommodations with special services according to LSS. Semi structured interviews, open observations and group interviews were performed during six months with care professionals, managers and business developers. The selection of LSS accommodations in this study is primarily based on which municipalities have chosen to implement the WT investigated within the project's data collection period.

The purpose of the study is to identify opportunities and challenges that arise from the introduction of the WT into the professional’s daily work. The research question we investigate is: How does the professional discretion change when introducing digital operational support? 

The analysis highlights trust as a central theme and identifies three aspects that affect the professional discretion: transparency, conflicts and safety. An overall conclusion is that the level of trust among users sets the framework for the professional discretion in relation to digitalization, WT and its additional work methods. How far an organization has come in the transition from a caring controlling approach to a more supportive approach is important for how the staff feels that the professional discretion is affected by digitalization. The digital literacy of the staff, i.e., digital competence and attitude towards digitalization, can be an obstacle in the implementation. Finally, the organizational conditions regarding the division of responsibilities, involvement of staff and users as well as peer support, are important. This study indicates that there are several different shifts in connection with the professionals' discretion when introducing the WT. It requires trust in one's own ability, in the end-user, in the digital tool and in the organization. Research on WT in social services and social care is in its infancy, and it can be stated that technological development is moving faster than the research on it. Thus, more studies are needed of both implementation processes and consequences of the introduction of various forms of welfare technology in the social field.

Mental health issues are on the rise, and more healthcare resources are needed to address existing needs. The digitalization of mental health care can enable easier access to much-needed treatment. Still, little is known about how to successfully design digitalized health care, especially from a human–computer interaction perspective, even though digital mental healthcare options are currently available for healthcare seekers. The purpose of this article is to explore how currently available digital care apps are designed, outline design strategies used, and identify opportunities for improvement. In this article, we use design patterns from five digital healthcare center mobile applications in a design critique approach to explore digitalized self-triage journeys that are available to users in Sweden. We showcase the diverse design solutions through pre-patterns identified from digitalized self-triage steps of prelogin, selecting your health issue, answering questions, and filing a case. We then discuss identified design challenges in relation to (1) calibrating appropriate expectations, (2) health literacy requirements, (3) transparency of information, and (4) expected risk-taking behaviors. We end with implications for future design-oriented research to complement clinical, financial, and technological perspectives on digital mental healthcare centers and implications that can improve the design of digital self-triage for mental health applications.

This conceptual paper aims to explore judgment in the context of automated decision-making systems (ADS). To achieve this, we adopt a modern version of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis to understand judgment. We delineate seven elements of judgment which provide insights into what humans are better at, and what AI is better at in relation to automated decision-making. These elements are sources of knowledge that guide action including not-knowing, emotions, sensory perception, experience, intuition, episteme, and techne. Our analysis suggests that most of these attributes are not transferable to AI systems, because judgment in human decision-making requires the integration of all which involves considering the contextual and affective resources of phronesis, and the competence to make value judgments. The paper contributes to unpack human judgment capacities and what needs to be cultivated to achieve ‘good’ AI systems that serves humanity as well as guiding future information systems researchers to explore human-AI judgment further.

Using big data in organizations has the potential to improve innovation, accuracy, and efficiency. Big data is also connected with risks for both the organization and society at large. It is therefore vital to improve our understanding of the potential consequences of implementing and using big data. The researchers studied the Swedish Transport Administration to understand their attitude towards implementing big data to predict, for example, the need for road maintenance. The analysis identified four moral dilemmas that the organization deals with in connection to big data. The researchers discuss these dilemmas from the perspective of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is manifested in context-dependent actions connected to open-mindedness, reflection and judgment. It can be summed up as “the reasonable thing to do” in a unique situation where “not-knowing” is a helpful resource when making wise decisions. This paper seeks to shed light on the importance of practical wisdom when implementing big data. Copyright © 2022, IGI Global.

This paper uses the pre-renaissance philosopher Nicolas Cusanus (1401-1464) and his concepts of ratio (calculating rationality) and intellectus (a relation to not-knowing) to assist in understanding the differences between human and artificial intelligence. The intention is to contribute to the ongoing discussions and debate pertaining to AI implementation and use, arguing that philosophy can be of ample use when it comes to understanding different types of intelligence in the digital world. The presented conceptual framework outlines the human and the artificial intelligence in terms of their characteristics in relation to Cusa’s ratio and intellectus. This helps to apprehend the different forms of intelligence and, more specifically, their strengths and how they operate.

Using big data in organizations has the potential to improve innovation, accuracy, and efficiency. Big data is also connected with risks for both the organization and society at large. It is therefore important to improve our understanding of potential consequences of implementing and using big data. We studied the Swedish Transport Administration to understand their attitude towards implementing big data for prediction of, for example, the need for road maintenance. The analysis identified four moral dilemmas that the organization deals with in connection to big data. We discuss these dilemmas from the perspective of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is manifested in context-dependent actions connected to open-mindedness, reflection and judgment. It can be summed up as “the reasonable thing to do” in a unique situation where “not-knowing” is a helpful resource when making wise decisions. This paper seeks to shed light on the importance of practical wisdom when implementing big data.© 2021 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved. 

This paper reports on how gamification was used to promote Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in a course at a Swedish university. SDL is a strategy to lifelong learning [1], and essential in today's fast-changing society. However, it is challenging to achieve in higher education due to an emphasis on extrinsic motivation, and a tradition of the teacher being in control. Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts [2] and has been used in educational contexts to motivate and engage students. Based on six years experience of teaching a gamified course, this paper seeks to answer the question: How can gamification support Self-Directed Learning in higher education?

Self-directed learners continue to learn after the formal education has ended, which is essential in most professions today. The concept was described by Garrison [1] as having three dimensions: self-management (control), self-monitoring (responsibility) and motivation. This paper focuses on SDL as one perspective on learning, exploring the possibility for using gamification to support SDL.

The paper reports on the experiences from the past six years of teaching a gamified course for first-year interaction design undergraduate students. A total of 253 students have taken the course, which implements several game elements: points, levels, choice, boss, collaboration, player status, and feedback. The students' experiences have been evaluated in several ways: the university’s standard summative evaluation form, since 2015 also a summative oral evaluation, and during 2016 and 2017 oral evaluations were also performed halfway through the course. The experiences from teaching the course are analysed using the three dimensions of SDL.

For example, self-management is supported by the use of choice and the transparency of the player status page. In this case, the students were able to strategically choose some of their assignments, based on their level of ambition, through the overview of their current points. Self-monitoring is for example supported by the transparency of the reward structure and frequent external feedback; in this case, the point system and associated profile page.

Furthermore, the reward structure, levels, choice, bosses, and the overall novelty of the concept supported motivation. The challenge in SDL is to internalise extrinsic motivation [1], and in this case the overall strong grades of the students, and their continued motivation to participate in course activities show that this was at least partly successful. In this case, the challenge was how to balance the game elements in order to achieve SLD, yet still maintain the structure of formal education.

We formulate four ways in which gamification can support SDL: feedback can support all three dimensions of SDL and is one of the essential game elements in higher education; game elements can be used to direct students towards critical thinking activities, and thus support self-monitoring; choice can be used to support self-management, but is the most difficult to design; and intrinsic motivation can be supported by using appropriate reward structures and frequent feedback. 

References:

[1] Garrison, D.R., Self-directed learning: Toward a comprehensive model. Adult education quarterly, 1997. 48(1): p. 18-33.

[2] Deterding, S. et al. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. in Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments. 2011.

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor