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Using visual metaphors with physical artefacts can improve collaboration planning processes in strategic meetings. The study presented here aims to examine these processes.

In this study, the participants used the LEGO® Serious Play® method in strategic planning meetings. The meetings were video recorded, and a thematic analysis method was applied to produce coded themes and narratives of collaboration planning based on the visual metaphors used in the meetings.

The study participants built LEGO artefacts representing three primary visual metaphors of collaboration focussing on landscapes, interaction processes and shared goals. The participants began with building landscapes by stacking and connecting LEGO base pieces as surfaces to build on, and to represent separate physical locations and more abstract business concepts. Alternatively, landscapes were built to centre activities around key business stakeholders. In terms of interaction processes, the participants lined up LEGO character pieces to explore communications between product developers, salespersons, customers and external partners. As for shared goals, tower-like high structures were created to represent open discussions, data sharing, prototyping and threats that should be avoided.

This study shows that using visual metaphors with physical artefacts provides an effective method for planning strategic collaboration areas, communications and future goals. Creating and communicating visual metaphors using physical artefacts enhances the creativity and participation of the meeting participants. Our future work will focus on studying the use of physical artefacts other than LEGO pieces in different group meetings contexts to better understand the role of visual metaphors.

This article aims to describe how people manage to integrate their use of paper and electronic documents in modern office work environments.

An observational interview type study of 14 participants from 11 offices in eight organizations was conducted. Recorded data were analysed using a thematic analysis method. This involved reading and annotation of interview transcripts, categorizing, linking and connecting, corroborating, and producing an account of the study.

The findings of the study can be categorized into four groups: the roles paper and electronic documents serve in today's offices, the ways in which these documents are managed, the problems associated with their management, and the types of fragmentation that exist in terms of their management and how these are dealt with.

The study has identified the need for better integrated management of paper and electronic documents in present-day offices. The findings of the study have then been used to propose a set of guidelines for the development of integrated paper and electronic document management systems.

Although similar studies of offices have been conducted in the past, almost all of these studies are prior to the widespread use of mobile and network-based shared technologies in office environments. Furthermore, previous studies have generally failed to identify and propose guidelines for integration of paper and electronic document management systems.