# Towards a Movement-sensitive Approach for Collaborative Digital Transformation in Ecologies of Artifacts

Lisa Formentini, Francois Charoy, Matthieu Tixier

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Lisa Formentini, Francois Charoy, Matthieu Tixier. Towards a Movement-sensitive Approach for Collaborative Digital Transformation in Ecologies of Artifacts. 2026. hal-05534846

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# Towards a Movement-sensitive Approach for Collaborative Digital Transformation in Ecologies of Artifacts

Lisa Formentini* · Université de Lorraine, Inria, LORIA, Université Technologique de Troyes, Tech-Cico, UTT, France · lisa.formentini@inria.fr

Francois Charoy · Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Inria, LORIA, France · francois.charoy@loria.fr

Matthieu Tixier · Université Technologique de Troyes, Tech-Cico, France · matthieu.tixier@utt.fr

**Abstract.** Today's digital transformation projects are scarcely beginning from a blank page as they should deal with an installed based of artifacts and practices. The concept of Ecology of Artifacts (EoA) provides an interesting framework highlighting how collaborative activities span over multiple tools that belongs to the participants and their organizations. EoAs are dynamic and undergo evolution over time. These evolutions can be accounted for as movements where the introduction, the replacement or decommissioning of a tool can impact practices and other artifacts, like ripple effects. This exploratory paper presents an under development workshop-based method that aims at supporting collaborative reflection about EoA evolutions. The workshop is structured into two phases: the description of the practice's EoA and the collaborative analysis of its transformations with the participants. We report about a formative expert evaluation of our method with a group of academics engaged in hybrid meetings interested with changing their tools. The participants feedback indicates that the approach is useful for describing the EoA of a collaborative practice and for analyzing movements within them. Their feedback also suggest improvements for future development of our movement-sensitive approach.

**Keywords.** Ecologies of Artifact, Computer-supported collaborative work, movement-sensitive approach, digital transformation, method

## 1 Introduction

Ecologies of Artifact (EoA) are defined as "a heterogeneous dynamic space rich in artifacts (i.e. software, hardware, physical objects, etc.) with an interactive aspect between them and with their environment (i.e. physical, social, cultural, etc.)" (Formentini et al., 2025b). This concept groups all types of artifacts, actors, practices, etc. involved in one's activity. As studied in the field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), EoA are continuously evolving in response to emerging technologies, shifting work practices, and unforeseen challenges. While a majority of research focus primarily on creating and introducing new tools, contributing to an increasingly dense and complex EoA (Lyle et al., 2020; Oleksik et al., 2012), evolution focused research show that adding new artifacts is

<footnote>* All authors contributed equally to this article.</footnote>
not always an appropriate design response (Bødker and Klokmose, 2012; Bødker
et al., 2016; Munkvold, 2023). Transformations, or "movements" (Formentini et al.,
2025a,c), often extends beyond the replacement of a single digital tool, affecting the
entire work environment from practices to use, inducing involuntary "ripple effects"
(Formentini et al., 2025a,c). Said consequences should be taken into account when
planning to disturb the EoA's constitution, working with the current ecology and
acknowledging already adopted tools rather than working against it.

Still, no standardized digital transformation methodology currently ensures systematic consideration of tools transformation's consequences within existing EoAs. At best, these effects are addressed ad hoc, in response to user feedback, leading to familiar challenges: underutilized functionalities, persistence of unused tools or "zombie artifacts" (Formentini et al., 2025a,c), and so on. By designing as though new systems are entering a "blank slate", developers ignore the pre-existing sociotechnical landscape, creating tools that work against rather than with the ecology ((Wulf et al., 2018)). So how can we evolve, rather than disrupt, existing EoAs? How can digital transformation projects account evolutions in their planning or design processes?

Formentini, Charoy and Tixier (2025c) propose a framework for studying
movements in EoAs and a **movement-sensitive digital transformation approach**.
It aims at accompanying evolving work practices by enabling smooth digital
transformations (i.e. introduction of new collaborative software system, replacement
of technologies, withdrawal of obsolete tools). This approach builds upon the
concepts of **movement and ripple effects** (Formentini et al., 2025a,c), situated
within the theoretical framework of practice-centered computing (Wulf et al., 2018).
The concept of movements draws attention to voluntary changes such as the
addition, removal, or modification of one or more artifacts, while ripple effects
describe the involuntary consequences that propagate throughout the ecology as a
result of these movements.

This paper develop an operationalization of this movement-sensitive approach
through a collaborative workshop for supporting digital transformation of an EoA.
We also present a formative expert evaluation of this workshop based method with a
team of real-life academic collaborators (Scriven, 1967). Our method proposal aims
to enable multiple participants (for instance, policy makers, users, designers) to
anticipate the systemic consequences of a movement in their EoAs and identify its
ripple effects on the same EoA.

We start by providing more detail about the concepts of EoA, movements, ripple
effects and introduce the main inspirations for our workshop approach. We then
present the proposed workshop material and methodology. In order to evaluate and
improve our approach, we have conducted a formative workshop session on the
collective practice of running hybrid monthly meetings by a research team, from
scheduling to sharing the minutes. we report on how the workshop was prepared
and its chronological unfolding as well as the main findings. We conclude by
discussing about the method's strengths, limits, and future work.
# 2 Related work

This section starts by defining Ecologies of Artifact (EoA) as a concept, followed by movements and ripple effects and finally our inspirations for the workshop approach.

## 2.1 Ecologies of Artifact (EoA)

Several successful Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) projects illustrate how accounting for the pre-existing socio-technical environment can facilitate smoother adoption. For example, Valès (2025) conducted an extensive year-long ethnographic study of French RATP control room before redesigning their network system. The resulting prototype replicated key affordances of the previous paper-based system, thereby minimizing disruption to the existing EoA, a design that has remained in operation since the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Similarly, the Catala system<fnref n="1" /> (Merigoux, 2023) extends, rather than replaces, the tools used by financial case evaluators in the French CAF. By integrating established spreadsheets and documentation workflows into an automated interface, it builds directly upon existing practices.

In order to a method accounting for those environments, we must define what said complex evolving computer-supported sociotechnical environment is. We decide to use the concept of Ecologies of Artifact (EoA), which definition sparks debate, depending on the theoretical perspective (i.e. Activity theories of Bødker and Klokmose (2012), distributed cognition of Vasiliou (2017)) or what the researchers focuses on (Lyle et al., 2020).

We decided to go with the practice-based approach (Cormi et al., 2022; Formentini et al., 2025b; Rossitto et al., 2014; Suchman, 1987; Wulf et al., 2018), focusing on digital transformation consequences. (Rossitto et al., 2014) explore the EoA assembled by academic students working repeatedly across different locations. They study the integration into practices internal dynamics within the EoA, as adding an artifact to the ecology generates technical compatibility issues, principled opposition from a member, or requires familiarization efforts and training. In this perspective, the EoA is defined by the relevant artifacts (social relationships, digital software, hardware, materials, etc.) for one situated observed practice. Therefore, we define EoA following Formentini and collaborators (Formentini et al., 2025a,b,c) as "a heterogeneous dynamic space rich in artifacts (i.e. software, hardware, physical objects, etc.) with an interactive aspect between them and with their environment (i.e. physical, social, cultural, etc.)". It allows more of a dynamic observation of the EoA evolution (Formentini et al., 2025b,c).

EoAs can be observed on different scales (Formentini et al., 2025c):

* **personal EoA**: focuses on the practices and tools of a single person, in its private environment (Jung et al., 2008);

* **group EoA** or collective EoA (Korsgaard et al., 2022), coordinated EoA (Bardram and Bossen, 2005) or community EoA (Bødker et al., 2016): focuses on shared EoA among multiple individuals (Lyle et al., 2020; Vasiliou et al., 2020);

* **organizational EoA**: focuses on work-related EoAs, in the professional space, generally concerning multiple individuals ((Bødker and Klokmose, 2012; Bødker et al., 2020).

<footnote n="1">¹ https://catala-lang.org/</footnote>
et al., 2016; Korsgaard et al., 2022));

Artifacts can be shared between EoAs, interconnecting levels, as apparent in co-working communities (Bødker et al., 2016) and collaborative-writing settings (Larsen-Ledet et al., 2020). Artifacts can also be part of multiple EoAs, as in (Larsen-Ledet et al., 2020)'s aligned EoAs where one's personal EoA adapts to a group's EoA. Our work focuses on collective EoAs, as we are looking into shared collaborative ensembles. We focus on collaborative EoAs, involving multiple actors working towards a common goal (Korsgaard et al., 2022), applying to various use-cases from urbanism architectural work (Schmidt and Wagner, 2004), firefighters crisis management (Ramírez Zúñiga, 2012) and hospital workers (Cormi et al., 2022).

By using the concept of EoA, our work builds on already existing scientific literature describing complex socio-technical environments and providing already tested dynamic representation of digital transformation. It also allows us to use related concepts such as movements and ripple effects.

## 2.2 Movements and ripple effects

Building on the concept of EoA, Formentini and collaborators (Formentini et al., 2025a,b,c) define the idea of movements, as "a deliberate change of the Ecology of Artifacts through the addition, removal and/or change of one or multiple artifacts. Movements entail consequential changes on the rest of the EoA's uses, practices and relationships between people and artifacts". They present 8 movements in civil security (see Figure 1):

* Personal-to-organizational, when the new artifact comes from a personal EoA;

* Outside-introduction, when the new artifact comes from an external actor;

* Top-down introduction, when the new artifact comes from a higher form of authoritarian command part of the organization;

* Bottom-up introduction, when the new artifact comes initially from a local user;

* Horizontal introduction, when the new artifact is consensually shared with no sense of status;

* Replacement, when an artifact is pushed aside to make space for a new one;

* User-motivated suppression, when an artifact is erased from the EoA by the users;

* Realignment, when the practice or use of an artifact changes;

From movements emerge ripple effects, identified in scientific literature by Duckert et al. (2025) and defined in relation to EoAs by Formentini and collaborators (Formentini et al., 2025a,c) as "involuntary consequences inside the EoA following a movement's apparition, generating indirect changes to relationships, artifacts, etc. above the movement's directly implicated artifacts". Ripple effects may be seen as minor changes needed to adapt the practices to the newly formed EoA, mostly unavoidable as they are uncontrolled and depending on the involved actors.

As our method aims to support collaborative EoA's digital transformation through a practical workshop, we chose to use the concepts of movement and ripple effects as a way to identify and study said transformations. By using the movements and ripple
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Summary figure of all identified movements in civil security's EoA, found in Formentini et al. (2025c)</figcaption></figure>

effects classification by Formentini and collaborators (Formentini et al., 2025a,c), we exploit a common glossary based on real-life observations that might assist the participant's understanding of what transformations are being analyzed.

## 2.3 Inspiration for the workshop approach

We build a workshop using the future-workshop perspective, presenting possible future scenarios and getting the user's perspective on how it should go. Originally developed by Jungk and Müllert (1987) to incorporate citizen groups in decision making processes, Kensing (1987) adapted it for system development. According to Kensing and Madsen (1991), a future workshop is run by one or two "facilitators", familiar with the method, no more than 20 participants with equal contribution and presence. In our method, one facilitator should be verbally interacting with the participants, managing the workshop, explaining the tasks and managing time. The second one should be acting as a passive observer, taking notes without interacting with the participants, taking notes of their observations. Kensing and Madsen (1991) also present 3 phases in a Future workshop: the critique phase, when participants draw specific issues about the current work practice; the fantasy phase, allowing participant to imagine how different the workplace should be; and the implementation phase, when participants choose what resources would be needed to make realistic changes; and all phase should be surrounded by preparation and follow-up periods. We drew inspiration from these phases as our method offers multiple phases allowing a descriptive/ critique time with the first support, and a descriptive/ analytic second support mixing the fantasy and the implementation phases. We also explored social and ergonomic literature, such as Van Belleghem (2012)'s work surrounding organizational simulation for social and ergonomic innovation or Bobillier Chaumon et al. (2018)'s work on activity stimulation.
Regarding the supports, we drew inspiration from previous state of art work around operational models for practical EoA analysis (Formentini et al., 2025b). We built the first support following Bødker and Klokmose (2011)'s Human-Arifact Model, an operational model to analyze EoAs following the Activity theory prism. It considers multiple points of view and allows the participant to describe every practical use of a tool (see Table 1). In comparison to the second support, it is more literate and detailed. We built the second support based on the EoA map by Bødker et al. (2017), exploiting "layers" and interconnections between EoA scales. It also presents a clear visual representation of complex EoA, allowing multiple real-life users to handle it at once through stickers and drawings, which shows great adaptability.

We also created transparent cards and the movement memos inspired by Bornes et al. (2024) (see Figures 8, 12, 10 and 13). Their work used cards to present rebound archetype cards for the participants to read and chose from, which is especially relevant when there's multiple movements to present in a restricted amount of time.

Our workshop demands a pre-study investigation around the studied practice, following Wulf et al. (2018)'s practice-based approach. The organizers need to know about the observed practice, as they must partially fill example supports before the workshop and provide ideas of movements and scenarios of digital transformation. It assists the participant's appropriation of the supports and initiates discussion, based on Erickson (1995).

We chose to do a formative evaluation following Scriven (1967)'s description in the education evaluation processes, defining formative evaluation as "the simple outcome evaluation at an intermediate stage in the development of the teaching instrument", aiming to "discover deficiencies and successes in the intermediate version of new curriculum". It fits our objectives of improvement when asking a team of professionals to probe our method and offer feedback during the movement-sensitive approach building process.

# 3 A Movement-sensitive Workshop Method Proposal

In this section, we present the goals and the unfolding script of our movement-sensitive workshop for collaborative digital transformation in EoAs.

## 3.1 Goals

The movement-sensitive approach for digital transformation in EoAs aims to be a practical method supporting the introduction, suppression and/or other type of voluntary change in the EoA, or "movement", identifying consequential involuntary changes or "ripple effects". This method aims to be an alternative solution to the "blank space" environment perspective of most digital transformation projects. New artifacts are not introduced into an empty slate, but rather into already established collaborative environment composed of previously adopted artifacts. Rather than asking the users to change their ways, it adapts to the user's practices and habits, building on what is already integrated in their collaborative work practices, exploiting user's adaptability and practice's knowledge in order to adapt to increasingly complex dynamics and restore homeostasis.
It is build for policy makers, designers, users, engineers and/or any other actor implicated in a common digital transformation to use during pre- or post-digital project time to either take pre-existing EoAs into consideration before transformation, or check for ripple effects and control areas after. As it represents an additional dialogue between multiples scales of professionals, it might also uncover "invisible workers" (Muller, 1999), unthought interactions between software or inter-dependencies between tools, and many other discrete aspects of the observed collaborative work.

## 3.2 Workshop organization and material

The preparation of the workshop suppose from the organizers a preliminary inquiry work into the participants settings in order to understand their current EoA and identify potential relevant practices for the workshop. These elements are helpful for preparing the workshop material as well as for sustaining the exchanges during the workshop. The participants are also familiarized with the movement sensitive approach with a short introduction about the context, goals and organization on the day of the workshop.

On the basis of the previous work that inspired our approach, the workshop is organized in three main phases.

The first phase is entitled "Remembering and describing the practice at stake" and involve a collective discussion triggered by the organizer with the objective to describe as precisely as possible every aspect of the practice based on the different participants’ perspectives. For so doing, we are currently using a table-sized representation of the Human-Artifact Model (Bødker and Klokmose, 2011) that can be filled out with sticky notes by the participants alongside the discussion (see Figure 8 in Appendix). Sticky notes of different colors for tools, actions and actors are used as modeling primitives.

The second phase aims at "Modeling the EoA of the considered practice". The organizers are presenting a partial restitution of their analysis of the EoA with a table sized representation of the identified artifacts that are parts of the practice at stake for discussion and completion with the participants (see Figure 9 in Appendix). The different scales (personal, group, organization, external) of the EoA are reviewed. This episode allows the organizers to check whether one artifact has been forgotten or mispositioned as well as the participants understanding of the EoA concept.

The third phase consists in collectively "Transforming the EoA". Once all the participants had agree on the EoA modeling, the organizers introduce the concept of movements through a set of cards providing typical examples of movements in EoAs (Formentini et al., 2025c). One movement is collectively chosen or selected by the organizers for triggering the analysis of the consequences of this movement on the EoA model from the second phase. The participants are considering the change in tools, actions or actors as well as subsequent movements and ripple effects. The sticky notes on tools, action or actors are moved along the exchanges about the movement potential impact.

Picture are taken of the different table are taken along the workshop for the workshop report summary to be shared with the participants. The movements card and associated notes are kept apart for recording key issues in the transformation of the considered practice. These issues can support the later writing of a deployment
or suppression plan for the participating collective.

# 4 Workshop implementation on a collective practice of hybrid monthly meetings

In order to better convey the, we present the participants of the workshop, what was done in preparation for the workshop, and its chronological unfolding.

## 4.1 Participants

In order to get a formative evaluation of our method, we organized a workshop with a group of volunteers coming from an academic research team. The participants were contacted through the research team's recruiting mailing list. A survey for availability was send for the volunteers to register. 4 participants registered through this survey, and one joined through direct email contact when introduced to the workshop by a registered participant. The organizers were part of the method creator's team. The workshop happened in a room in the participant's workplace. All participants signed consent forms prior to the workshop. We recommend

## 4.2 Preparing the workshop

Before the workshop, the research members did an observation of the participants collaborative practices. We decided to focus on the practice of hybrid monthly meetings, from scheduling to the sharing of the minutes, focusing on the movement "replacing Microsoft Teams<fnref n="2" />". This practice is interesting because it's build on multiple individual and collective parts (i.e. organization, planing, reporting), it's shared by all the participants and it happens monthly. This allowed the organizers to prepare a few scenarios of EoA transformation (movements) to pick on the participant's brains and partially fill example supports to guide the participants in their uses.

## 4.3 Workshop's chronological unfolding

The real-life workshop probe happened January 2026 during a 2-hour long meeting at the participants workplace (see Figure 2).

Participants were introduced to the workshop by the organizers and signed consent forms. They interacted with the first support, Table 1, 6 minutes in. They took individual time filling out and placing sticky notes on the support during 5 minutes, then resumed exchanging together and rearranging the support 21 minutes in (see Figure 4). They jumped to the modeling part 31 minutes in. The organizers presented the different accessories (see Figure 8 in appendix) and the instructions for the first sub-phase 35 minutes into the workshop. The participants filled each section of the support 2 with stickers, drawings, etc. representing every artifact (i.e. actors, tools, actions, relationships, etc.) implied in the practice's EoA. They chose one post-it color per type of artifact (i.e. actors in green). They also circled each

<footnote n="2">² https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/microsoft-teams/log-in</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Visual representation of the January 2026 workshop chronological organization</figcaption></figure>

scale of EoA with a different color and name them (i.e. organizational EoA is their university). 48 minutes into the workshop, the participants were presented with the concept of movements and the transformation scenario of Microsoft teams disappearing (see Figure 8 in appendix). The organizers added a suppression movement on the Table 2 and suppressed the Microsoft Teams sticker and participants started changing the support 57 minutes into the workshop (see Figure 3). The organizers also presented an alternative tool to Microsoft Teams named LaSuite Visio<fnref n="3" />, a nationally recommended tool, as food for thoughts. The active part of the workshop ended 1 hour and a half after its beginning when the organizers asked the participants for feedback (i.e. what movement should be prioritized ? what ripple effects have to be taken into consideration? Who has to be involved in the deployment?, etc), concluding the workshop 30 minutes after that. 2 weeks after the workshop, the participants received a deliverable build by the research team stating the workshop results.

# 5 Findings

Participants filled two supports (see Figure 4 and 3) in order to describe the practice "Hybrid team meetings: from planning to report" and analyze the movements and ripple effects related to a hypothetical replacement of one major management tool, Microsoft Teams. We will present replacement movements, identified ripple effects and emerging questions identified by the participants during the workshop.

They identified a great amount of software (i.e. yellow post-its), but also specific actions (i.e. green post-its) and issues (i.e. pink post-its). They spend time on finding

<footnote n="3">³ https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/produits/visio</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3.** Picture of the completion of Table 2, focusing on the practice of “Hybrid team meetings: from planning to reporting.” It represents the practice's EoA, the Microsoft Team's replacement movement and ripple effects.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 4.** Picture of the completion of Table 1, focusing on the practice of "Hybrid team meetings: from planning to debriefing". It described and discussed the practice and the user's issues.</figcaption></figure>

possible software replacements for Microsoft teams, as shown in the following quote from the workshop:

"There is also the Infomaniac suite, which is very similar to Teams, and even the Google suite." Speaker 4

This workshop allowed 3 key movements and ripple effects to be identified:

First, Microsoft Team's suppression became a replacement movement, participants listing and exploring multiple replacement options: La Suite Visio⁸; Jitsi⁴; Big Blue Button⁵; Zoom⁶ and Infomaniak⁷ (see Figure 5). They present similar characteristics to Microsoft teams: videoconferencing tool, invitation sending feature, etc. centralizing multiple steps of the hybrid meeting practice:

"It's true that Teams has the benefit of being able to centralize all the information a little bit. It's a bit like a Swiss Army knife in the sense that you can plan, but at the same time store documents and share them more easily. It's not easy to find an equivalent or several tools that would make up for it." Speaker 3

Some are part of the organizational EoA (i.e. La Suite Visio), some are part of personal EoAs (i.e. Suite Infomaniak), leading to different movements categorization (i.e. top-down or personal-to-professional):

"It's interesting to consider different options. If I understand you correctly, let's say we put Visio Teams of the Visio suite, and we see that
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 5.** Picture of the Table 2 detail related to the personal-to-professional movement of Suite Info-maniak</figcaption></figure>

one thing leads to another, and we have to make three moves. That requires three... actions, a bit of reorganization, and if we introduce this infomaniac suite, we basically only need to make one move, which covers file sharing, planning, and the Visio channel." Speaker 2

Second, the replacement of Microsoft teams will lead to a replacement ripple effect. As the current transmission of reports is done through Microsoft Teams (i.e. send reports after meetings) and none of the previously mentioned replacement tools have this feature, the university drive (see Figure 6) will have to be used in replacement to share documents. It seems like it's not currently used by the team, making it a zombie artifact ((Formentini et al., 2025a); (Formentini et al., 2025c)), but the members know about it and are considering using it:

Speaker 1: "[For] the report transmission. So we could do that on the university drive."

Speaker 4: "Does it exist? I mean, do we all have access to it?"

Speaker 3: "Yes, and especially when you're in the authorities. I think the doc school has migrated to it"

Third, participants identified a realignment ripple effect around the planning aspect (see Figure 7). They already use Zimbra as a mailing tool, and with the disappearance of Microsoft Teams, it should also start being used to plan meetings (i.e. set meeting times and days, access the videoconferencing link). Participants consider using personal software, coming from a personal EoA, as described in the following exchange:

<footnote n="8">⁸ https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ https://jitsi.org/</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ https://bigbluebutton.org/</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ https://www.zoom.com/fr</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ https://www.infomaniak.com/fr</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 7.** Picture of the Table 2 detail related to the realignment ripple effect related to planing with Zimbra.</figcaption></figure>

Speaker 1: "in reality, there are certain groups within the organization that break the rules."

Speaker 3: "it also shows that from another point of view, the organization could, if everyone agrees and negotiates all this, find alternatives without having a negative impact on people's work in general."

In the event of a new do-it-all unique tool's introduction, disagreements or prospective contradictory pitches are considered:

Speaker 4: "You have to be more convincing if you want lots of little tools than if you have one suite that does everything."

Speaker 1: "But the problem is that we're not necessarily convinced by all the features."

This workshop allowed the analysis of real-life movements, ripple effects and issues that will happen if Microsoft Teams had to be replaced in this team's EoA. The reflection and shared knowledge of the current EoA will act as a support for real-life EoA hypothetical transformation. All raised question must be answered in order for the right artifact, movement and ripple effects to be identified, as greatly summarized in this quote by a workshop participant:

"around this table [we could state about] what would be best? Is it going through Zoom? It doesn't have the same implications in terms of movement, coming to convince the DNUM at the University to buy us a
> Zoom license than, for example, using the video conferencing system distributed by the government, which is ultimately a decision we can make almost without even getting involved..." Speaker 2

The deliverable for the participants draws inspiration from those key findings and acts as a reminder of what to keep in mind and what direction to take if the situation gets real.

# 6 Discussion

The formative evaluation of the movement-sensitive method for digital transformation in EoA through a real-life workshop probe allowed us to identify strengths, limits and future work, making it an important part of the workshop's improvement. We believe that this work in progress takes us a step closer to a functioning and useful digital transformation practical support methodology.

## 6.1 Strengths

The real-life probe of our workshop allowed us to get feedback on our method's strengths. The participants recognized the method's ability to support digital transformation through movement and ripple effects identification and EoA analysis, potentially preventing resource waste and sustaining long-term system capacity of adaptation. The workshop aims to become even more structured to restore homeostasis following EoA disturbances in a specific collaborative practice. On a global aspect, the workshop allowed the detailed analysis of hybrid meetings and the identification of adapted movements and possible ripple effects. The participants verbalized the usefulness of our approach to consider alternative solutions to future EoA transformation through a specific tool disappearance, along with opening dialogue about practical uses, highlighting users issues. The participants stated that the workshop will help them adapt their EoA to possible disruption, regarding replacement tools, consequences on other practices, and what actors to integrate in the process. On a material side, the small group format allows for every participant to share its own experience and knowledge, establishing multiple perspectives from divers actors in a single shared EoA. The participants enjoyed interacting with the supports and the accessories, praising them for their adaptability (i.e. movable post-it, erasable crayons).

## 6.2 Limits

The workshop also uncovered weaknesses. On a conceptual side, the workshop is limited by its focus on a specific practice's EoA, hardening its generalization to other groups or practices, leading participants to ask the organizers for limits on repeated occasions:

> "We focus on us, how we work, what we know. We can't see the big picture." Speaker 1

It should also be noted that this workshop participants were CSCW researchers, familiar with design and conception methods. Their remarks might differ from a
complete newcomer to collaborative digital transformation. We also observed that
the more complex movements, such as "personal-to-professional" or "top-down", are
not exploited by the participants, sticking to instinctive movements such as
"replacement" and "suppression". Other vocabulary (i.e. Ecologies of artifact, group
vs exterior) were sometimes too complicated. A previous presentation of the
concepts and movements might be needed for clarity purposes, along with a
follow-up analysis sessions by the organizers. On the workshop organization side, it
lasted longer than our predictions, and the participants were still frustrated by a lack
of time to go deeper, highlighting the need for a longer time slot. On the support
side, the first table confused the participants on all aspects, suggesting a total
remodeling. As (Bødker and Klokmose, 2011) mentioned, this form seems hardly
transposable to complex EoAs analysis. The first table does not read easily enough
for unfamiliar participants, leading us to propose a new table to describe the
collaborative practice, still based on professional personal experience. The second
table could also be visually redesigned to facilitate the understanding of the spaces
and groups.

6.3 Future work

The movement-sensitive method for digital transformation in EoA will be improved
following this formative evaluation, especially regarding the supports and the overall
organization. Our current interests for future work is to probe the workshop with
non-academic contexts, for example with professional firefighters in a local fire
station: how should the concepts of movements and ripple effects be explained? to
what extend will they use the workshop findings? to what ongoing digital
transformations can it be applied ? and so on. In this context, the workshop might
be organized in remote settings to accommodate the expanded members of the team.
These teams should also avoid implicating direct hierarchical relationships between
the participants in order to avoid social desirability or retributions anxiety, but that
might be difficult to achieve.

7 Acknowledgment

This work is supported by a grant from the French government managed by the
National Research Agency as part of the France 2030 program, reference
ANR-22-EXEN-0003 (PEPR eNSEMBLE / PILOT).

We would like to thank the workshop participants, M., R., L., A. and J., for their
participation and their valuable feedback.

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# 8 Appendix

Appendix 1. Figure 8: material for the movement-sensitive method for digital transformation workshop.

Appendix 2. Table 1: Human-Artefact Model filling memo: mix of Bødker and Klokmose (2011)'s Human-Artefact Model filling guide and their translation of Hartson (2003)'s case study of a corkscrew in HAM as a concrete example of use.

Appendix 3. Table 9: material for the movement-sensitive method for digital transformation workshop.

Appendix 4. Figures 10, 11: Accessories to Table 2 including stickers, post-its, movement memo cards, movement plastic cards and crayons.

Appendix 5. Figure 12, 13: Movement card example related to the Replacement movement and the top-down ripple effect, accessories to Table 2.
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 8.** Support table 1: material for the movement-sensitive method for digital transformation workshop.</figcaption></figure>
<table><caption>**Table 1.** Human-Artefact Model filling memo: mix of Bødker and Klokmose (2011)'s Human-Artefact Model filling guide and their translation of Hartson (2003)'s case study of a corkscrew in HAM as a concrete example of use</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Artifact</th><th>Human</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Why?</th><td>Motivational aspects: why is the tool used ? what are its advantages ?</td><td>Motivational orientation: why can the user use this tool ? What are the user's motivations to use this tool ?</td></tr><tr><th>example of a corkscrew</th><td>Apply minimal strength to un-cork; minor damages to the bottle; cheap</td><td>Drink vine without cork piece; use the cork to close the bottle; use minimal strength to open the bottle</td></tr><tr><th>What?</th><td>Instrumental aspects: what is the attainable objective by using the tool ? What objective will be reached once the tool is used ?</td><td>Objective-oriented: what does the user intend to accomplish ? What objective will be reached by the user once the tool is used ?</td></tr><tr><th>example of a corkscrew</th><td>uncork bottles</td><td>uncork bottles</td></tr><tr><th>How?</th><td><strong>Operational aspects</strong><br/>-Handling aspects: how to practically manipulate the tool ?<br/>-Adaptive aspect : in what ways is the tool adapted to human use ?</td><td><strong>Operational orientation</strong><br/>-Learned manipulation : what must the user know to use the tool ? What skills must the user have to use the tool ?<br/>-Adaptation: how has the user to adapt to manipulate the tool ?</td></tr><tr><th>example of a corkscrew</th><td>Screw the propeller into the cap; press down on the wings.<br/>Handle and wings sized for human use</td><td>Leverage principle; screw fastening<br/>Use your fingers to turn the handle and press the wings.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.** Support table 2: material for the movement-sensitive method for digital transformation workshop.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.** Example of a movement card, replacement, for the support Table 2. They act as memos for the participants.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.** Picture of stickers for support Table 2.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 12.** Example of a movement plastic card for support Table 2. These plastic cards can be added to the support and drawn upon.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.** Example of a ripple effect plastic card for support Table 2. These plastic cards can be added to the support and drawn upon.</figcaption></figure>