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This collaborative "essay of essays" begins with an introduction by a professor of human centered design and engineering who has been working concurrently with PhD students to study collaborative system design. We undertake widely scoped qualitative research studies, that we categorize as "extended studies," that cut across units of analysis, organizations, or time. Our research explores how people create new ways to enact systems that support the knowledge work of different stakeholders. In response to an anchor essay, the students have written reflections about the multifaceted experience of doing extended studies. Many of these studies began by focusing on a particular project to develop a particular system or information infrastructure, and associated standards. Over time the studies came to center on collaborative dynamics per se, and also how collaborative dynamics shifted the scope and functionality of products, sometimes also affecting programmatic and infrastructural level changes.