Randy Trigg

I work on databases and IT in the non-profit sector. My regular job is with the Global Fund for Women, a non-profit that supports international groups working for women's human rights. I also do consulting with Firelight Foundation, which supports children affected by HIV/AIDS in sub-saharan Africa. In these heartwarming organizations, I'm responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining FilemakerPro databases for fundraising, grantmaking, and HR. In my work, I follow a participatory design approach, that is, I engage the folks who (will) use the technology in its design as early in the process as possible. This means that the resources of more people are involved in the development process, but with the benefits of greater buy-in and much more effective and useful systems as a result. See the "From Sandbox to 'Fundbox'" paper cited below for more details.

In my previous life, in the Work Practice & Technology group at Xerox PARC, I worked as a research computer scientist. Our group conducted studies of work practice with a focus on changing technological and organizational environments. Our way of working often involved participatory design interventions with participants at the work site. My last project, together with Lucy Suchman and Jeanette Blomberg, was conducted at the California Department of Transportation. In collaboration with the members of a bridge design team, we built a web-based scanned document repository giving them online access to their engineering "project files." See the paper "Moving document collections online" which we presented at ECSCW'99 (full reference given below).

For details on my educational and professional background and a more complete list of publications, see my vitae. My research interests have included participatory design and the evolution of tailorable computer systems, document repositories and document classification systems, connections between social science and system design, hypermedia and open object-oriented system design, computer support for collaboration, and human-computer interaction.

Outside of work, I serve on the board of the East European Folklife Center, a non-profit devoted to educating the general public about Balkan music, dance and culture, particularly in the form of their wonderful music and dance camps each summer. I belong to the Balkan bands, Rumeli where I play accordion and percussion, Zaedno where I play percussion and bass, Brass Menagerie where I play accordion and baritone horn, and a chorus, Mosaic. I also love jazz (that's Thelonius Monk up there above my head) and try to keep up my piano chops...

Like most of the rest of the web, this page is forever under construction.

Selected publications

Trigg, R. H. (2000). From Sandbox to "Fundbox": Weaving participatory design into the fabric of a busy non-profit. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC 2000). T. Cherkasky, J. Greenbaum, P. Mambrey, J. K. Pors (eds.). Palo Alto, CA, USA: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). 174-183.

Grønbæk, K., & Trigg, R. H. (1999). From web to workplace: Designing open hypermedia systems. MIT Press.

Trigg, R. H., Blomberg, J., & Suchman, L. (1999). Moving document collections online: The evolution of a shared repository. Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW'99). S. Bødker, M. Kyng, K. Schmidt (eds.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. 331-350.

Suchman, L., Blomberg, J., Orr, J. E., & Trigg, R. (1999). Reconstructing technologies as social practice. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 392-408.

Trigg, R. H. (1996). Hypermedia as integration: Recollections, reflections and exhortations. Keynote address: Hypertext '96 Conference, Washington, DC.

Blomberg, J., Suchman, L., & Trigg, R. (1996). Reflections on a Work-Oriented Design Project. Human-Computer Interaction, 11(3), 237-265. Earlier version appeared in R. Trigg, S. I. Anderson, & E. Dykstra-Erickson (Eds.), Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference (PDC'94). Palo Alto, CA, October. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, CA 94302-0717, 99-109.

Grønbæk, K., & Trigg, R. H. (1996). Toward a Dexter-based model for open hypermedia: Unifying embedded references and link objects. In Proceedings of Hypertext'96. Washington, DC, March 10-14. ACM Press, 149-160.

Blomberg, J., Suchman, L., & Trigg, R. (1995). Back to Work: Renewing Old Agendas for Cooperative Design. In Proceedings of Third Decennial Conference on Computers in Context: Joining Forces in Design. Aarhus, Denmark, August 14-18.

Trigg, R. H., & Bødker, S. (1994). From implementation to design: Tailoring and the emergence of systematization in CSCW. In R. Furuta & C. Neuwirth (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'94). New York: ACM Press, 45-54.

Grønbæk, K., & Trigg, R. H. (1994). Design issues for a Dexter- based hypermedia system. Communications of the ACM, 37(2), 40-49.

Suchman, L., & Trigg, R. (1993). Artificial Intelligence as Craftwork. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 144-178.

Suchman, L., & Trigg, R. H. (1991). Understanding Practice: Video as a Medium for Reflection and Design. In J. Greenbaum & M. Kyng (Eds.), Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 65-89.

Trigg, R. H. (1991). From trailblazing to guided tours: The legacy of Vannevar Bush's vision of hypertext use. In P. D. Kahn & J. Nyce (Eds.), From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine. Academic Press.

Trigg, R. H. (1988). Guided Tours and Tabletops: Tools for Communicating in a Hypertext Environment. In Proceedings of ACM CSCW'88 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM Press, 216-226.

Trigg, R. H., & Irish, P. M. (1987). Hypertext Habitats: Experiences of Writers in NoteCards. In ACM Hypertext'87 Proceedings. New York: ACM Press, 89-108.

Trigg, R. H., Moran, T. P., & Halasz, F. G. (1987). Adaptability and Tailorability in NoteCards. In Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'87: Human-Computer Interaction , 723-728.

Trigg, R. H. (1983). A Network-Based Approach to Text Handling for the Online Scientific Community. Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland (University Microfilms #8429934), November.

A few links

Global Fund for Women: Established in 1987, the Global Fund makes grants to women's groups outside the US working on women's human rights. We operate on the principle that women themselves know how best to address the severe problems they face on a variety of fronts, ranging from girls' education and economic opportunity to domestic violence and reproductive rights.
Firelight Foundation: Firelight gives grants to NGOs in sub-saharan Africa working on behalf of children affected by HIV/AIDS.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR): If you're interested in the implications of technology for society and the way people work, and what we all can do to help, please check out this organization.
Hypertext '91 Keynote: At the Hypertext '91 conference in December, 1991, Frank Halasz gave a landmark keynote address on the state of the hypermedia field. Remarkably, his appraisals and predictions grow ever more on target in today's world of "the web."
DEVISE Hypermedia (DHM): This project is based at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark. DHM is an open framework for building object-oriented hypermedia systems. Implementations exist for several platforms. The main contact person is Kaj Grønbæk.
The East European Folklife Center: This wonderful organization educates the general public about the folk music, folk dance, and folklore in the Balkans through promoting and sponsoring activities that honor and celebrate the richness of these cultures; and fosters understanding and respect of all peoples through shared experiences of Balkan cultures. They conduct several music and dance camps every summer that I highly recommend.

Contact Information

Randall H. Trigg
Work Practice & Technology Associates

phone: +1-650-325-1639
email:
web: www.workpractice.com/trigg