243 -3  /-- :- $",  24 . Mark Zachry University of Washington 14 Loew Hall, Box 352195 Seattle, WA 98195)2195 206)616)7936 zachry@u.washington.edu William Hart)Davidson Michigan State University Suite 7 Olds Hall East Lansing, MI 48824 517)432)2560 hartdav2@msu.edu Clay Spinuzzi University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station B5500 Austin, Texas 78712)1122 512)471)8707 Clay.Spinuzzi@mail.utexas.edu + Extending our ongoing investigation into the communicative practices of knowledge work, we have made recent advances on three different fronts: methodological framing, investigation of work practices and potential support tools, and application development. Each of these advances is considered in this experience report, which concludes with a brief discussion of where such research might most productively advance next. !  7  K.4.3 [!1 ] // Computer(supported collaborative work 0  Documentation, Design, Economics, Human Factors, Theory 5’% Knowledge work, genre ecologies, communicative event models 9.+" Knowledge work encompasses a complicated, ill/defined set of activities that make organizational activities possible in the global information economy. In multiple domains, researchers operating along different axes are actively engaged in making sense of such work. A particularly promising approach to understanding knowledge work is to frame and consider such work in terms of the communicative practices through which it is mediated [8]. Because knowledge work is fundamentally tied to communication, research that yields insight into how communication facilitates knowledge work seems to hold some promise for conceptualizing key dimensions of knowledge work as it is enacted through multiple means (e.g., digital and traditional physical forms) and in varied contexts (e.g., distributed spaces). Pursuing such an approach to understanding knowledge work, we have made advances during the last year that are described in this experience report. :.50+" As a group of researchers interested in the relationship between the design of communication and the communicative practices supporting knowledge work, we have been working together for several years to develop useful tools for facilitating investigations in this area. This work has included the development of theoretical concepts [3], [12], [14], [17], methodological approaches [5], [13], and modeling techniques [2], [4], [6], [9], [18]. This research corresponds to work by others in the design of communication (e.g., [1], [7], [15], [16]), but it is a complex project with considerable work to be accomplished in several areas. Most recently, we have found it productive to expand our collaborative efforts in three inter/related areas. First, we have started to refine our methodologies so that they will yield more accounts of the communicative dimensions of knowledge work. Second, we have conducted new primary research with a larger and more diverse population of knowledge workers than we have worked with in the past in order to better understand tools and practices across different professional categories. And, finally, we have initiated work in interface and application development to anchor our investigations in the realm of practice based on our overarching commitment to making this work relevant to those who are engaged in the increasingly difficult activity of thinking and functioning productively as a knowledge worker. Our research work in these three areas is reported below, followed by a brief discussion of where this work is moving next. ;.00 $+5  +,, )+ ;.9.!’ In terms of methodology, we have found that writing researchers have tended to draw on qualitative research methods that were not developed for writing research and that have not been integrated to provide a holistic picture of how people and texts interact in knowledge work environments [11]. Consequently, interventions in these environments—finding holistic improvements, fostering horizontal learning—have been undersupported. So in our recent work, we have focused on how the environments and circumstances of knowledge work imply methodological innovations in terms of concepts, data collection, and data Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. SIGDOC'08, September 22–24, 2008, Lisbon, Portugal. Copyright 2008 ACM 978/1/60558/083/8/08/0009...$5.00..