Vignette 2: Emergency Services (Whalen et al., 1988)
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Cooperative Arrangement
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Interaction between an organisational representative (emergency line operator) and a caller conducted on the telephone.
Operator and caller are located at different sites. Operator interacts with a computer system. Focus on the difficulties that
arise in a situation where the operator is focused on the system information requirements to be provided by the caller. The
caller, on the other hand, in attempting to have an ambulance summoned to the incident is shown to be more concerned with
the incident (his mother is having difficulty breathing) and as such is not oriented to the informational requirements of the system.
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Representation of Activity
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Of particular interest, here, is that the emergency phone call operator determine a particular representation of the incident
through asking questions of the caller and record these on the system. Particular characterisations of the victims physical state
which are recorded determine the type of emergency response that can be provided for the customer. The customer's highly
emotional characterisation of an urgent need for assistance is not satisfactory for this purpose and consequently the call
becomes lengthy as the operator continues to request information that is not readily supplied leading to a delay in the dispatch
of an ambulance. The victim tragically dies before assistance arrives.
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Ecological Arrangement
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Picture: Operator and Computer - Customer.
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Coordination Techniques
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This situation can be contrasted with the telephone banking situation and can be seen as an anti pattern or a
pattern of cooperative interaction that works poorly. Clearly the call differs from telephone banking in that it is clearly
a much more emotive subject than the average telephone banking call and that since calls to 911 are unlikely to
become routine activities for callers there is not the opportunity for callers to learn what is required over repeated interactions.
However, the call is marked by the lack of clear articulation in the operators talk that the questions being asked are
system requirements that must be fulfilled if an ambulance is to be dispatched. It is only with the knowledge that the
operator is trying to input these details that one can see that the questions implicitly provide details of what the system
requires. The operator never explicitly states that they are interacting with a system and that the questions must be
answered in order to dispatch the ambulance.
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Community of Use
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Organisation-client interaction between an emergency centre phone operator and a caller.
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