Talking to a computer is hard. Large vocabulary automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are difficult to use and yet they are used by many people in their daily work. This thesis addresses the question: How is ASR used and made usable and useful in the workplace now? To answer these questions I went into two workplaces where ASR is currently used and one where ASR could be used in the future. This field work was done with designing in mind. ASR dictation systems are currently used in the Australian Public Service (APS) by people who suffer chronic workplace overuse injuries and in the Hansard department of Parliament House (Hansard) by un-injured people. Analysing the experiences of the users in the APS and at Hansard showed that using an ASR system in the workplace follows a broad trajectory that ends in the continued effort to maintain its usefulness. The usefulness of the ASR systems is �performed into existence� by the users with varying degrees of success. For both the APS and Hansard users, they use ASR to allow work to be performed; ASR acts to bridge the gap between otherwise incompatible ways of working. This thesis also asks: How could ASR be used and made usable and useful in workplaces in the future? To answer this question, I observed the work of communicating sentences at the ACT Magistrates Court. Communicating sentences is a process that is distributed in space and time throughout the Court and embodied in a set of documents that have a co-ordinating role. A design for an ASR system that supports the process of communicating sentences while respecting existing work process is described. Moving from field work to design is problematic. This thesis performs the process of moving from field work to design, as described above, and reflects the use of various analytic methods used to distill insights from field work data. The contributions of this thesis are: � The pragmatic use of existing social research methods and their antecedents as a corpus of analyses to inspire new designs; vi � a demonstration of the use of Actor-Network Theory in design both as critique and as part of a design process; � empirical field-work evidence of how large vocabulary ASR is used in the workplace; � a design showing how ASR could be introduced to the rich, complicated, environment of the ACT Magistrates Court; and, � a performance of the process of moving from field work to design.

This thesis aims to reveal the very considerable extent of the power and influence of the clerk to the justices and court clerks in magistrates' courts, and to assess the nature of the balance achieved by clerks between the demands of the organisation of the courts which they run and their role as the court's lawyer with responsibility for upholding, inter alia, due process norms. The first section of the thesis examines the role of the clerk in the courtroom. After assessing the extent to which the clerk's behaviour is constrained by legal rules, the relationship between clerk and magistrates is examined and the impact of the clerk on the proceedings of the court and the decisions of the magistrates are considered. It is argued that the clerk has a significant effect on the experience of all of those who come into contact with the criminal justice system and to this end the relationship between the clerk and unrepresented defendants, the clerk and the legal profession, the clerk and the police, and the clerk and probation officers and social workers is assessed. The second part of the thesis deals with the role of the clerk outside the courtroom. The influence of the clerk to the justices on the attitudes of magistrates through training is considered, and the impact of the clerk on policy decisions for the court is assessed. The quasi-judicial powers of the clerk are examined and the question of whether there is scope for future extension of the clerk's role is addressed. It is concluded that the role of the clerk is one of the most significant factors in determining the nature of summary justice, that the nature of the clerk's role is ready for re-assessment and that this may be most appropriately achieved by extension of the legal role of the clerk. The clerk does play a real part in protecting due process rights, but in relation to the protection of unrepresented defendants the clerk cannot be as effective as an advocate, and as a result represents a liberal compromise of 'good enough' justice.