Short position paper for a 2019 workshop on the future of work. It applies a view of skill as collaborative practice to two examples.
Theories of skillDraws on Tim Ingold's work on skill, workplace studies and Wanda Orlikowski's theories of practice.
A surgical vignetteFrom earlier fieldwork in a neurosurgery department at a large UK hospital, where a wire failed to grip a patient's spine.
A Slack exampleA public Slack channel where a team sorts billing issues, a practice Slack's developers suggest.
Reading the examplesReads both examples to ask what being skilled at work means, and what that implies for AI.
BWhat the paper argues
In the operating theatrewhat the surgical vignette suggests
•The paper argues the surgical team's skill was spread across people and equipment.Skill emerged through repeated trial and error involving the surgeon, the wire, the spine, the technician and the X-ray machine.
•The paper argues the surgical team made its skill visible in action.Skill showed in talk, silent contemplation, moving bodies for a better view, and prodding again with the wire.
•The paper argues skill is continually enacted in collaborative practice, so it cannot be packaged.On this view, skill is not an attribute of a person or of a job description.
In team chatwhat the Slack example suggests
•The paper argues a chat tool's structure is part of how a team is skilled.The tool makes timely answers that refer back to earlier messages possible. The paper poses this mainly as open questions.
•The paper argues AI designers should ask whether tools extend people's skill or stand in for it.The paper presents early thinking, not a general model of skill.
CKey takeaway
Skill at work can be understood as something done together with colleagues and tools. AI designers may ask whether tools extend that shared skill or replace it with blackboxed intelligence.
Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.
Abstract
In this short paper, we introduce work that is aiming to purposefully venture into this mesh of questions from a different starting point. Interjecting into the conversation, we want to ask: 'What is it to be skilled at work?' Building on work from scholars like Tim Ingold, and strands of longstanding research in workplace studies and CSCW, our interest is in turning the attention to the active work of 'being good', or 'being skilled', at what we as workers do. As we see it, skill provides a counterpoint to the version of intelligence that appears to be easily blackboxed in systems like Slack, and that ultimately reduces much of what people do to work well together. To put it slightly differently, skill - as we will argue below - gives us a way into thinking about work as a much more entangled endeavour, unfolding through multiple and interweaving sets of practices, places, tools and collaborations. In this vein, designing for the future of work seems to be about much more than where work is done or how we might bolt on discrete containers of intelligence. More fruitful would be attending to how we succeed in threading so many entities together to do our jobs well - in 'coming to be skilled'.
Research brief
By Axel Niklasson, Sean Rintel, Stephann Makri, and Alex Taylor.
Takeaway: Being skilled at work is something people do with colleagues and tools, not a trait they own. In team chat, for example, skill shows in timely replies that build on earlier messages. So AI designers should ask whether collaboration tools extend that skill or stand in for it.
Why this matters
What was known
Online collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams claim a place at the centre of modern work, promising to gather all of work's communication and resources in one place. all these services are moving into the heady world of AI, where automation and modelling are set to support decision-making and put the right information at one's fingertips exactly when needed.(§Introduction, p. 1)
What this paper adds
We start from a different question (what it is to be skilled at work), and use skill as a counterpoint to the blackboxed intelligence of collaboration tools. designing for the future of work seems to be about much more than where work is done or how we might bolt on discrete containers of intelligence(Introduction, p. 2)
Who it matters to
Researchers who study collaboration at work, and people designing the role of AI in team collaboration tools. (§Conclusions, p. 4)
Research questions
What is it to be skilled at work?
How might these ideas of skills sit in relation to the corresponding practices and say something about the role of AI?
Method and data
Design
Short position paper for a CHI 2019 workshop on the future of work, applying a perspective of skill to two examples.
Setting
A vignette from earlier fieldwork in a neurosurgery department at a large UK hospital, in which a wire fails to grip a patient's spine during a keyhole procedure. And a public Slack channel for triaging billing issues, a practice suggested by Slack's developers.
Participants / data
One surgical vignette and one Slack example.
Analysis
Conceptual reading of the examples drawing on Tim Ingold's work on skill, workplace studies and CSCW, and Wanda Orlikowski's practice-oriented theories.
Findings
Skill is spread across people and things. We revisit fieldwork in which a wire failed to grip a patient's spine during keyhole neurosurgery. The team's skill emerged through repeated trial and error shared among people and equipment, not in the surgeon alone. #
“the repeated enactment of 'trial and error' involving the surgeon, the wire, the spine, the technician and the X-ray apparatus”
Skill shows in what people do. The team made its skill visible in action, through talk, silent contemplation, repositioning bodies in the room for a better view, and prodding again with the wire. #
“our attention was drawn to the moment the surgeon first perceives a softness of the bone, to the work of aligning what is now seen in the MRI scans with the pre-operation interpretation”
Everyone and everything takes part. Everyone and everything in the operating theatre was active at once, in a continuously unfolding sequence of verbal and physical exchanges. #
“with the patient's bone responding to the prodding, the technician providing the requested image, a glance returned, a wire held out to grip”
Skill can't be packaged. Skill, then, is not an attribute of a person or a job description that can easily be packaged up. It is continually enacted in collaborative practice. #
(§Skill, p. 3)
In Slack, the tool is part of the skill. Applied to a team triaging billing issues in a public Slack channel, the lens suggests that the structure of communication the tool makes possible is itself part of how the team is skilled. #
“The sequentiality of answers to questions, their timeliness, their indexical reference to prior turns and other resources, and so on, are made possible through the tool and become ways in which skill is conducted.”
Questions this paper answers
What does it mean to be skilled at work?
Not possessing a talent, but, in Tim Ingold's terms, continually adjusting to what is happening without breaking the flow of action. At work this happens collaboratively, so skill is better understood as something a team and its tools do than as something a person has. (See §Skill, p. 3; §Skill, p. 3.)
Is a collaboration tool just a container for team communication?
We suggest not. How a tool orders questions and answers, keeps them timely and links them to earlier messages shapes how a team works well. So the tool takes part in the team's skill rather than simply holding its conversations. (See p. 4.)
Why think about skill rather than intelligence when designing workplace AI?
Because the intelligence promised in collaboration tools is easily blackboxed, reducing much of what people do to work well together. Our interest began as a counterpoint to the 'Skills' of Amazon's Echo voice assistant. Skill instead shows work unfolding across practices, places, tools and collaborations. (See §Skill, p. 3.)
Contributions and implications
Designing for the future of work means attending to how people thread many entities together to work well, not only to where work happens or to adding intelligence. designing for the future of work seems to be about much more than where work is done or how we might bolt on discrete containers of intelligence.(Introduction, p. 2)
Skill should be put in conversation with broader questions of global labour and of what counts as modern (team) work. put skill in conversation with some of the broader questions of global labour(§Conclusions, p. 4)
Limitations
We do not offer a general model of skill. our intention here is not to formalise a general 'model' of skill to be applied across different practices.(§Conclusions, p. 4)
Moving from surgery to Slack is, as we admit, a slight leap, and the Slack discussion is posed mainly as open questions. admittedly a slight leap from our surgery example(p. 4)
This is early thinking, forming the basis of the first author's PhD research on AI in team collaboration tools. These early stages of reflecting on skill are coming to form the basis of the first author's PhD research(Introduction, p. 2)
›
Concepts
Skill
Following Tim Ingold, not a property of a person or a job description but something enacted, continuously, in practice. In Ingold's words, the skilled practitioner is: able continually to attune his movements to perturbations in the perceived environment without ever interrupting the flow of action, since that action is itself a process of attention.(§Skill, p. 3)
Professional vision
Following Charles Goodwin, the skilled seeing a surgeon builds by interweaving the wire, the patient's body, X-ray and MRI images, and talk with colleagues. (§Skill, p. 2)
Blackboxed intelligence
Our foil for skill: skill provides a counterpoint to the version of intelligence that appears to be easily blackboxed in systems like Slack, and that ultimately reduces much of what people do to work well together(Introduction, p. 2)
How to cite
Axel Niklasson, Sean Rintel, Stephann Makri, and Alex Taylor. 2019. The Future of Skill: What Is It to Be Skilled at Work?. The Future of Work @ CHI 2019 (workshop). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.10488
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{niklasson2019future,
author = {Niklasson, Axel and Rintel, Sean and Makri, Stephann and Taylor, Alex},
title = {The Future of Skill: What Is It to Be Skilled at Work?},
year = {2019},
month = {May},
url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.10488},
booktitle = {The Future of Work @ CHI 2019 (workshop)},
address = {Glasgow, UK},
note = {Posted to arXiv in 2024 (arXiv:2411.10488)},
doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2411.10488},
}