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About the Book
This book is organized in three parts. Part I introduces four essays that explore research and practice in more general terms. The first essay "The Curious Case Of 'Small' Researchers-Practitioners" discusses the difficulties of doing research outside mainstream research laboratories and universities. In the essay "The Hawthorne Studies And Their Relevance to Computer Science Research" I discuss the groundbreaking contribution of the Hawthorne studies, and why I think they are still relevant for computer-science research. The essay "Is Academia Guilty of Intellectual Colonization of Practice?" discusses one of the common anti-patterns of research-practice collaboration. The essay "The Four Points of the Research Compass" explores the research motivation behind our research efforts, arguing that research can be motivated by vision, curiosity, doubt or skepticism. The essay "*Insights from the Past*" discusses the value of studying the past so that it might not be reinvented but become a source of inspiration for the present and future.
Part II focuses of relation of design and research. The first essay "Design-Based Research" discusses what we can learn when we engage in design of computer systems, promoting design-based research as a first-class research method. The second essay "Doing Design-Based Research in Practice" presents more practical advice about how to do design-based research in practice. The essay "Design As a Political Activity" presents often overlooked aspect od design activities - politics.
Part III presents some of my new ideas. Doing research in practice is based on learning from experience and intensive experimentation. Consequently, two remaining essays cover these two topics. The essays "Teaching Based on Experiential Learning Paradigm" presents some of my ideas and attempts to use experiential learning paradigm in education. Last essay "Bringing Innovation into Software Development" presents my work on stimulating software designers to spend more time experimenting and considering alternative ideas before making a decision to proceed with engineering.
About the Author
Željko Obrenović (http://obren.io) is a Chief Architect at AVIV Group. Before joining AVIV Group, he worked as a Principal Architect at eBay Classifieds, a CTO of Incision, a principal consultant at the Software Improvement Group (SIG) in Amsterdam, a consultant at Backbase, an assistant professor at the Technical University in Eindhoven, and a researcher at CWI.