Human Technology, 2007 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2 (The entire issue) : Special Issue on Design-Use Relationships Sociotechnical Change

Volume 1, Number 2, October 2005 Marja Kankaanranta, Editor ISSN: 1795-6889 Volume 3, Number 2, May 2007 SPECIAL ISSUE ON DESIGN-USE RELATIONSHIPS IN SOSIOTECHNICAL CHANGE Sampsa Hyysalo, Mikael Johnson, and Eva Heiskanen, Guest Editors Pertti Saariluoma, Editor in Chief An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments Volume 3, Number 2, May 2007 Contents From the Editor in Chief: Open Access Publishing as a pp. 116-119 Bridge Across the Digital Divide Pertti Saariluoma Guest Editors’ Introduction: Design-Use Relationships in Sociotechnical Change pp. 120-126 Sampsa Hyysalo, Mikael Johnson, and Eva Heiskanen Original Articles: Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel pp. 127-153 Mikael Johnson User Orientation Through Experience: A Study of Hobbyist Knowing pp. 154-166 in Product Development Tanja Kotro User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action pp. 167-187 Eva Heiskanen and Petteri Repo eHealth Services and Technology: Challenges for Co-Development pp. 188-213 Hannele Hyppönen Using/Designing Digital Technologies of Representation in Aborginal pp. 214-227 Australian Knowledge Practices Helen Verran and Michael Christie Versions of Care Technology pp. 228-247 Sampsa Hyysalo Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments Editor in Chief: Pertti Saariluoma, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Board of Editors: Jóse Cañas, University of Granada, Spain Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Center of Advanced European Studies and Research, Germany Jim McGuigan, Loughborough University, United Kingdom Raul Pertierra, University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines Lea Pulkkinen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Howard E. Sypher, Purdue University, USA Human Technology is an interdisciplinary, scholarly journal that presents innovative, peer-reviewed articles exploring the issues and challenges surrounding human-technology interaction and the human role in all areas of our ICT-infused societies. Human Technology is published by the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä and distributed without a charge online. ISSN: 1795-6889 Submissions and contact: [email protected] Managing Editors: Barbara Crawford and Terhi Pennanen www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 116–119 116 From the Editor in Chief OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING AS A BRIDGE ACROSS THE DIGITAL DIVIDE In today’s world of snappy catchphrases, the complexity of a phenomenon is often hidden behind the simplicity of the terminology. Take, for instance, the concept of the digital divide. In short, the term means that there is a gap between those people who have effective access to digital technologies (and all the benefits that brings) and those who do not (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2001; Selhofer & Hüsing, 2002). While the definition seems simple enough, in fact, there are numerous reasons for the technology gap among people in the world. Typical reasons for the digital divide include material access (i.e., no access to a computer, lack of access to specific software programs or related technologies), usability or usage access (i.e., lack of qualified instruction or environmental issues that limit access, such as an erratic electrical power supply or an underdeveloped Internet infrastructure), or mental access (i.e., a lack of digital experience resulting from disinterest or computer anxiety; Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003). Because the digital divide is such a complex phenomenon, it needs a complex approach to bridging this gap. A multilayered approach to address this multifaceted problem has been proposed by both individuals and organizations (Arunachalam, 2003; Oyebode, 2002; Papin-Ramcharan & Dawe, 2006). The digital divide creates implications for human development. Throughout the millennia, humans have used varying types of technology to support their economic and social existence. Often, scientific development has underpinned economic growth. Science is the frontrunner of human development, and one of the significant means of addressing human problems in a diversity of areas, such as health, education, social development, technology, and communication, to name a few. It forms the border between what we know now, what we are learning at this moment, and what could be as a result of current learning. The production of new knowledge is built upon prior knowledge (Arunachalam, 2003). No other human institution provides such systematic, practical, and progressive stepping stones to bridge the past © 2007 Pertti Saariluoma and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007275 Pertti Saariluoma Cognitive Science, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Jyväskylä, Finland OA Publishing and the Digital Divide 117 to the future. Scientific knowledge forms the foundation for new ideas and applications in industry, and thus for economic life. All peoples, no matter what the economic nature of their society, need the opportunity to access scientific knowledge. For this simple reason, the free flow of knowledge remains essential for development of all societies. In both developed and developing countries, smalland medium-sized enterprises play an enormous economic role, by generating new ideas, designing new products, and addressing the human needs to benefit their own society, and perhaps others as well. Therefore the digital divide is more than simply an academic discussion, but rather a vital issue to allow all peoples to participate in the contemporary information society and global economy. One major challenge facing many developing countries is that their researchers have very little access to contemporary scientific literature. The majority of research is published in the hundreds of journals that require a subscription fee. The costs of maintaining an adequate library is often out of reach for universities in developing countries, where governments must prioritize the distribution of limited funding to address multiple, equally demanding social needs within the surrounding society (Fourie & Neale-Shutte, 2006; Oyebode, 2002). Yet, even universities in developed countries face similar budgetary constraints, and thus either do not have the funds to subscribe to new journals or need to reduce the number of journals to which they can subscribe (Arunachalam, 2003; Welch, 2002). Limited access results in a limited scope of knowledge. In addition, the digital divide does not stop just the flow of know-how from more experienced to less experienced researchers; it keeps knowledgeable researchers in developing countries from contributing to their scientific fields. Because many researchers in developing countries face an unreliable electricity supply, poor Internet connections, as well as a lack adequate computer equipment, appropriate software, and even technological expertise (Arunachalam, 2003; Fourie & Neale-Shutte, 2006; Papin-Ramcharan & Dawe, 2006), the opportunities to get their research into the international arena is severely compromised. In addition, some journals—even some open access journals—charge authors a page fee when their article has been accepted for publication, with these funds serving as the financial income for the journal (Papin-Ramcharan & Dawe, 2006). Because of these constraints, not only are researchers in developing countries less able to access research, but they also are less able to contribute papers, participate fully in collaborative research, or receive peer support or acknowledgment as compared to those in more IT-connected countries. As a result, qualified scientists in developing countries can find themselves outsiders in international scientific discussions (Arunachalam, 2003; Langer, DíazOlavarrieta, Berdichevsky, & Villar, 2004). This is to the detriment not only of their own research and to their colleagues and local societies, but to all humankind. Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments has, from its very inception, envisioned open access to knowledge and collaboration among multiple disciplines as its key benefits. Funding from the Agora Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, has allowed, so far, articles from around the world to be considered, peerreviewed, accepted, and published without the need for author-funded page fees and for the content of all articles to be fully available to individuals in higher education and industry no matter what the economic status of a researcher’s country. We seek to bring the perspectives of multiple disciplines and multiple cultures into dialogue regarding the interplay between Saariluoma 118 humans and technology. Knowledge is not neutral, and in fact it is culturally based (Volet, 2004). By allowing a free and open forum for many voices and many perspectives on developments in science and technologies—as well as many manifestations of the human experience—all societies benefit. That is Human Technology’s focus in the pursuit of science. Of course, publishing a journal does take financial resources. Therefore all open access journals remain ever challenged in maintaining the necessary funding flow. But we at Human Technology know the vital role we play in serving the scientific community, and so we continue to pursue the means it takes to allow researchers, no matter what their financial circumstances, to submit quality articles and engage their peers in the multidisciplinary discussion about the role of humans in the application of technologies. We can’t fully resolve the complexity of the technical, material, and access the issues of the digital divide faced by researchers in developing countries. But we can—and do—address some of the strain by lifting somewhat the burdens of access to quality research and in providing the opportunity for any knowledgeable researcher to contribute to the international discussion. We can bridge two gaps within the digital divide by making quality research available, and in encouraging an international discussion of the essential human element within technological development. Both of these roles are essential to the economic and human development in a globalized world. REFERENCES Arunachalam, S. (2003). Information for research in developing countries: Information technology–Friend or foe? Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Jun-03/arunachalam.html Fourie, J. & Neale-Shutte, M. (2006). Challenges to Internationalisation in African Higher Education: A Case Study. South African Journal of Higher Education, 20, 118–142. Retrieved on August 15, 2006, from http://www.interaction.nu.ac.za/saardhe2005/full%20papers/NEALE-SHUTTE%20AND%20FOURIE.doc Langer, A., Díaz-Olavarrieta, Berdichevsky, K., and Villar, J. (2004). Why is research from developing countries underrepresented in international health literature, and what can be done about it? Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 82(1). Retrieved on April 12, 2007, from http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S0042-96862004001000022&script=sci_arttext Organization for Economic and Development [OECD]. (2001). Understanding the Digital Divide. Retrieved on April 4, 2007, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/57/1888451.pdf Oyebode, F. (2002). Free access to online journals for developing countries. Psychiatric Bulletin, 26, 41. Retrieved on April 12, 2007, from http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/26/2/41 Papin-Ramcharan, J. I., & Dawe, R. A. (2006). Open access publishing: A developing country view. First Monday, 11(6). Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/papin/index.html Selhofer, H., & Hüsing, T. (2002). The Digital Divide Index: A measure of social inequities in the adoption of ICT. Retrieved April 4, 2007, from http://www.sibis-eu.org/files/Huesing_Selhofer_DDIX_2002.pdf Van Dijk, J., & Hacker, K. (2003). The digital divide as complex and dynamic phenomenon. The Information Society, 19, 315–326. Volet, S. E. (2004). Challenges of internationalisation: Enhancing intercultural competence and skills for critical reflection on the situated and non-neutral nature of knowledge. In P. Zeegers & K. Dellar-Evans (Eds.), Language and academic skills in higher education (Vol. 6; pp. 1–10). Adelaide, Australia: Flinders University. OA Publishing and the Digital Divide 119 Welch, A. (2002). Going global? Internationalizing Australian universities in a time of global crisis. Comparative Education Review, 46, 433–471 All correspondence should be addressed to: Pertti Saariluoma University of Jyväskylä Cognitive Science, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems P.O. Box 35 FIN-40014 University of Jyväskylä, FINLAND [email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 120–126 120 Guest Editors’ Introduction DESIGN–USE RELATIONSHIPS IN SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE The last decades have witnessed a significant shift in the orientation towards users in management, design, and innovation research. “Science discovers, technology applies, man conforms,” the motto of the 1933 Chicago World Fair, was for long the received view on the design–use relationship. The linear model of innovation was the norm in textbooks up until the 1980s. Its legacy is still strong. Tens of thousands of large marketing departments in both corporations and universities churn out technologies and research on technologies. In contrast, only a few hundred programs explore what happens with technology after it is purchased and how those events translate back to production. A further twist in this imbalance is that, by far, the most common social science approach to technology focuses on “technology diffusion.” Here, technology is expected to be diffused as is, and the main research methods, such as the diffusion surveys, were until the late 1980s structured so that the practices of using—that is, the local variations and modifications—do not easily come to the fore (Rogers, 1995). The significance of users in innovation has remained below the radar because of these widely held assumptions. When Eric von Hippel interviewed R&D managers in the 1970s, they were firmly convinced that their products originated in their internal research labs. It was a great surprise to all, for example, that a closer scrutiny revealed that 80% of inventions in medical instruments were in fact initiated by users (von Hippel, 1988). Today many companies and policy makers argue for a drastic transformation in innovation and design–use relations. Open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003), living labs (Living Labs Europe, n.d.), user innovation communities (von Hippel, 2005), open-source © 2007 Sampsa Hyysalo, Mikael Johnson, Eva Heiskanen, and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007276 Sampsa Hyysalo Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies University of Helsinki Finland Mikael Johnson Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Helsinki University of Technology and University of Helsinki, Finland Eva Heiskanen National Consumer Research Centre Helsinki, Finland Design–Use Relationships in Sociotechnical Change 121 software, and the proliferation of various user-centered design methods (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998; Kuniavsky, 2003) are said to have revolutionized the way innovation takes place. Two things capture our attention here. First is the “re-invention of novelty” in the recent enthusiasm for users in innovation. The Italian scooter Vespa, VW Beetle, and “Ripple Bonnet” Citroën 2CV clubs were marketed ages ago, and recognized for creating much of the value of these vehicles. Mountain bikes; most modern equipment in surfing, windsurfing, and sailing; environmentally friendly home fixtures, and so on were invented by users, not manufacturers. Tinkering with technology and hacking code are by no means new practices (Ratto, 2003). Influential emancipatory initiatives include the 1950s sociotechnical design approach at the Tavistock Institute in London and the participatory design movement since 1970s. And there always were companies that were quick to get the drift or were founded by user-inventors themselves. The second noteworthy facet is the relation between the research and events “out there,” in the real world. The previously mentioned user innovation studies by von Hippel were an offshoot of a 1970s debate over whether the science push or the market pull was more important in creating inventions (Freeman, 1979; Pavitt, 1984; von Hippel, 1988, 2005). Another strand of management studies showed that some users make or demand a significant number of modifications. Together, such demands or applications create a great proportion of the eventual economic and practical usefulness of a product, even when they involve only routine engineering (Gardiner & Rothwell, 1985; Leonard, 1995; Rosenberg, 1982; von Hippel, 2005). Such findings were certainly key in laying out the terrain for attempts to tap the innovativeness of users and they reinforced the idea that technically savvy and demanding users are at the core of achieving such benefits (von Hippel & Tyre, 1995). Meanwhile, in design and computer sciences, research on computer–human interaction and user-centered design has broken into the mainstream, especially under the title of usability (Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 2004; Nielsen, 1993). Characteristically, this research has relied on cognitive psychology, human factors, and ergonomics in explaining how humans behave with interfaces and in drawing implications for design improvements (Dix et al., 2004; Sinkkonen, Kuoppala, Parkkinen, & Vastamäki, 2006). Since the late 1980s, recurring attempts have been made to expand the cognitive paradigm and to overcome its limitations in understanding complex interactions (Carroll, 2003), especially in multiuser groupware applications (Grudin, 1994) in the research field of computer-supported cooperative work. In addition to this “turn to the social,” another important development has been a “turn to context” in gathering information on what the users of particular products do by means of observation, interviews, and other kinds of fieldwork (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998; Kuniavsky, 2003). Also here, attention to postmarket launch improvements and value creation can be found in the “design for communities” initiatives (Hagel & Armstrong, 1997; Kim, 2000; Preece, 2000), as well as the current Web 2.0 debate (Wikipedia, 2007). The imprint of these lines of research is becoming increasingly visible in how design–use relations are discussed and practiced on company shop floors. Along these lines of research, social and cultural studies of technology have increasingly been seen as a potential source for insight on technology design and use. While the economic importance of users’ contributions to innovation is increasingly clear, it remains rather unclear how these contributions are made (von Hippel & Tyre, 1995). The processes and practices of designers, users, and various third parties thus need to be understood more in depth than has Hyysalo, Johnson, & Heiskanen 122 been possible with traditional quantitative research designs (Miettinen, Hyysalo, Lehenkari, & Hasu, 2003; Pantzar & Shove, 2005; Williams, Slack, & Stewart, 2005). The findings from these studies show that usage is more than a matter of adopting or rejecting given technologies. It concerns the very shape of technologies, as users tend to subvert, reinvent, and recontextualize designs. This processual approach to consumption can be illustrated by Igor Kopytoff’s concept of “the biographies of things” (Kopytoff, 1986, 6667). He asks us to consider “the biography of a car in Africa… the way it was acquired… the uses in which the car is regularly put, the identity of its most frequent passengers and of those who borrow it, the frequency of borrowing, the garages to which it is taken… and in the end…the final disposition of its remains. All of these details would reveal an entirely different biography from that of a middle-class American, of a Navajo, or French peasant car” (Kopytoff, 1986, p. 67). Such biographical differences have encompassing significance for design, production, and sales as well. In turn, studies on the actual practices of product developers have shown that they are indeed active—even if not always very successful or skillful—in preparing for the prospective use and in responding to users’ actions. Explicit investigations, such as market research or usability tests, have been shown to be merely one of the means in which future use is represented (Akrich, 1995; Hasu, 2001; Hyysalo, 2004; Oudshoorn, Rommes, & Stienstra, 2004; Woolgar, 1991). The relationships between design and use are critical in the creation of the economic and societal impact of new technology. Often various forms of social learning— learning about the appropriate functions, form, uses, values, styles, and so on, of products or concepts—between stakeholders play a key role at this (Williams et al., 2005). However, the prevailing models of innovation and technology policy still foster somewhat more rigid and linear views of what constitutes “designing,” “using,” or “regulating” within the various venues and times in the life-span of new technology. In contrast to the “received” innovation models, our emerging understanding of actual design practice forces us to reopen the question regarding the actual roles played by product developers, consumers, citizens, activists, and government officials (Sorensen & Williams, 2002). This special issue of Human Technology hopes to foster multidisciplinary discussion that refines our understanding of how technology is shaped in the different phases of its existence. The issue grew out of a track of papers in the international “Innovation Pressure” conference, held in Tampere, Finland, in March 2006. Examples of the questions that we set out for the conferences and this special issue were: • How is use anticipated and “designed in” during product development? From where and how do designers draw their understandings? How realistic (or fluid) are these conceptions? What are the possibilities and limits of user involvement? To what extent does prior design determine the eventual use? • What is “using” and how does it affect design? What happens when people appropriate technologies? How do technologies, people, and organizations shape one another? Is “the critical and active consumer” merely a fashionable slogan? • How should the models of technological change, innovation, and consumption be refined? Is there an overemphasis on design in most current models of innovation and, if so, in which ways? How should we conceptualize social learning between producers, Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 129 In interviews I conducted with Habbo developers, I learned that the fansites have become an important source for user feedback. The fansites were a frequent topic during the interviews, and in this paper I reflect on one developer’s statement about the community members participating in the fansite discussions. The developer referred to the Habbo Hotel’s “average user,” which at first seemed like a strange category, especially since humancomputer interaction (HCI) literature discourages design for the average user. However, in this paper the developer’s reference to the average user is taken seriously. This concept of average user has been analyzed to understand which subcommunities are given voices through the fansites. Especially interesting is the developers’ agency, or their ways of shaping the user groups while they speak. First, this paper begins with a literature overview of different approaches to users. It continues with a brief introduction to the fansites, to contextualize the text extract from the interviews with Habbo developers. After the analysis of one developer’s reference to the average user, these findings are related to the other Sulake developers’ ways of speaking about the users. WHO IS THE “USER”? User is a highly controversial and ambiguous term in computing. Recent user-centered design literature defines the user in two major ways. First, users are defined in terms of their knowledge of computers or of a particular computer program: as novice, intermittent, or expert users (Shneiderman, 1998). Second, a distinction is often made between those who actually operate the computer, the primary users, and the secondary users, who are indirectly affected by the computer system (Courage & Baxter, 2005; Hackos & Redish, 1998). In addition, Courage and Baxter (2005) recommend considering anti-users, who would not buy or use the product. Hackos and Redish (1998) warn against confusing users with buyers, against interacting with surrogate users only, and recommend studying users as members of communities. Table 1 summarizes these viewpoints. However, outside local design contexts and for research purposes, there is a need to define the user more carefully to achieve a shared understanding. This has been a challenge, since different fields of research discuss users differently. In HCI, user traditionally referred to a person sitting in front of a computer in an office, completing tasks by entering information and commands and using the output. In contrast, the information system (IS) user refers to a beneficiary of the computer output, who might be a person (or even an organization) not directly interacting with the computer. To distinguish the person sitting in front of the computer, IS researchers talk about “end users” (Grudin, 1993). Table 1. Users in a Sample of the User-Centered Design Literature. Hackos & Redish (1998) Shneiderman (1998) Courage & Baxter (2005) Primary users Secondary users User communities ¬Users as buyers ¬Surrogate users Novice or first-time users Knowledgeable intermittent users Expert frequent users Primary users Secondary users Tertiary users Anti-users Johnson 130 Over time, these differences have changed, since the HCI researchers have followed the user outside the office, into mobile technologies, and the use of computers in leisure contexts. In particular, research on user experience and mobile HCI puts the user in mobile contexts of use (Maguire, 2001; Toiskallio, Tamminen, Korpilahti, Hari, & Nieminen, 2004) with a focus on fun and pleasure (Blythe, Overbeeke, Monk, & Wright, 2003), instead of the traditional effectivity and efficiency focus within work contexts. Also, some researchers report that the term user is understood differently in the USA as opposed to Scandinavia. Carmel, Whitaker, and George (1993) find an unambiguous definition of user impossible: The North American reader understands “user” to mean any non-IS/nontechnical individual in the organization who is affected by the system—this includes managers. The Scandinavian reader understands “user” to mean any operational worker who is affected by the system—this does not include managers. (p. 40) Friedman and Cornford (1989, p. 274) report similar differences, stating that Scandinavians seem to be more likely to consider power relations between users and system designers in their definitions, whereas American analyses tend to focus on personality conflicts and differences in cognitive styles. However, these generalizations have exceptions (Kling & Gerson, 1977; Lamb & Kling, 2003; discussed below), so it is not clear to what degree these cultural aspects have shaped or continue to shape research on the user. The globalization of research and the increase of the number of both publications and researchers have probably made the fields more heterogeneous. Another difficulty in defining the (computer) users is that the computer technology has changed a lot since its invention. From being room-sized and expensive equipment available only to a few, the hardware innovations and mass production of computers have made them smaller, mobile, and more affordable. This shift is noticeable in the change of the meaning of the term user. In the early days of computing, the user referred to those who used computer hardware, in other words, software developers (Friedman & Cornford, 1989; Westrup, 1997). In sum, user is a complex term. So far, one can only say that it is used in the context of computer systems development, and its meanings have changed over time and space (e.g., USA vs. Scandinavia). This encourages a further look into different approaches to users. Without aiming for completeness, I will explore three approaches in which users can be distinguished: as social actors, as participants, and as co-constructed and configured. Users as Social Actors The definition of users within the HCI and IS fields has been challenged because of its implicit technocentrism (Kuutti, 2001). Those opposing the use of the term argue that when a person is defined with respect to a technological system, as a computer user for instance, this represses other more relevant identities as well as the multiple and intertwining reasons for use. In contrast to many car owners, who identify themselves as owners, few computer users make a lifestyle (or identity) of being someone who uses computers (Grudin, 1993). More important identities are their professional identities, the relation to their family and special someone(s), hobbies, and so on. Most people who use computer applications utilize multiple Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 131 applications, in various roles, and as part of their work or leisure activities, while interacting with a variety of other people in multiple social contexts (Lamb & Kling, 2003). This critique is noted in some studies on designers’ conceptions of the users (Dagwell & Weber, 1983; Isomäki, 2002; Kuutti, 2001; Nurminen, 1988), arguing that these conceptions influence the design more fundamentally than do applying human-centered design methodologies. The fear is that the designers cannot contribute to the humanization of computer systems with socially thin concepts of the users. Lamb & Kling (2003) have responded to the critique of those user concepts that include only individualistic or cognitive dimensions, by reconceptualizing the user as a social actor. Their view of a social actor is based on four dimensions: affiliations, environments, interactions, and identities (see Table 2). Their concept has clear benefits: It is “1) predictive without being deterministic, 2) scalable, based on the multilevel explanatory power of institutional theory, and 3) extensible in multiple ways” (Lamb & Kling, 2003, p. 221). This critique intentionally leads away from the reference to systems development in defining users, which can be fruitful in studies of ICT use. Research in the field of information systems is influenced by and related to both the “social shaping of technology” approach (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985) and the “social construction of technology” program (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch 1987)4. These approaches shared the aim of criticizing technological determinism by coupling technology to designers’ conceptions and values. In addition, political, economic, and cultural interests as well as established social categories, like class and gender, were seen as shaping technology (Sørensen, 2002). However, even in these more nuanced models of the user, the perceived “problem” with current design processes seems to be the designer. Seeing the designers as almighty heroes or demons, either praising or blaming only them, has been criticized as the “design fallacy” by Stewart & Williams (2005). They argue that a design-centered view describes technology as finished when leaving the hands of the designers, which ignores the innovation that takes place in use. If technology is seen as influenced by designers only, this also ignores user involvement in design. These shortcomings are partly resolved if the users are seen as participants in design, as in the next subsection. Table 2. Social Actor Dimensions (Lamb & Kling, 2003). Affiliations organizational and professional relationships that connect an organization member to industry, or national and international networks Environments stabilized, regulated, and/or institutionalized practices, associations, and locations that circumscribe organizational action Interactions information, resources, and media of exchange that organization members mobilize as they engage with members of affiliated organizations Identities avowed presentations of the self and ascribed profiles of organization members as individual and collective entities Users as Participants The definitions of users can also be seen as reflecting design philosophies, as has been the case particularly in the computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) field (Mackay et al., 2000). For instance, Mike Hales (1994, p. 155) discusses different conceptions of users based on Johnson 132 different design styles: users as clients (the “specify and deliver” style), users as actorconstructors (the “enable and empower” style), and users as codesigners (the “reflect and reinterpret” style). These distinct design styles designate the different ways of users participating in the design. The multiplicity of actors in design is highlighted by Kling and Gerson (1977), who distinguish 14 major orientations that people may adopt within the computing world (Table 3). They are arranged by their closeness to the center of the computing world (Kling and Gerson’s concept for all those people and groups that collectively produce computers and computer-based services). The first eight orientations are insiders, while people who adopt the last six positions are more in the margins. From this perspective, the term user is not about identification but participation in the technology production. The user is seen as a very established category referring to a particular way of participating in technology production. It is not a very favorable position, since traditionally the innovation is seen to flow from the developers via the other stakeholders to the users, and not vice versa. The interests of the users traditionally are not served first, because business and technology production are primary, which leaves the user interests in a challenging position. In Hales’ (1994) view, where the users’ relation to production becomes visible, emancipating the users becomes less a question of finding other labels for this group and more a question of organizing the production differently. Friedman and Cornford (1989) have studied the history, organization, and implementation of computer systems development. They found a six-fold typology useful to explain the changes of the computing world over time: a) patrons, who initiate the system, b) clients, for whom the system is intended and designed, c) design interactors, who are involved in the systems design process, d) end users, who directly operate the man/machine interface, e) maintenance/enhancement interactors, and f) secondary users (both the system victims and those who benefit indirectly from it). According to Friedman & Cornford (1989), the user relation became the biggest critical factor constraining development in the early 1980s, after the hardware and software constraints were mitigated in earlier phases. To decrease the distance between programmers and end users, five major strategies emerged to reorganize technology production: a) user involvement, b) end-user computing, c) decentralization, d) prototyping, and e) job rotation (p. 271). Table 3. A Sample of Research on Users as Participants. Kling & Gerson (1977) Friedman & Cornford (1989) Hales (1994) technology stimulators innovators diffusers vendors service providers educators system architects application architects users feeders tenders sustainers hobbyists consumers patrons clients design interactors end users maintenance or enhancement interactors secondary users users as clients (the “specify and deliver” style) users as actor-constructors (the “enable and empower” style) users as co-designers (the ”reflect and reinterpret” style) Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 133 These and other movements strive to give the users greater influence in the technology production. Some aim to influence the process: involving the users early on, demanding a multidisciplinary development team, or applying iterative design cycles with prototypes and user evaluation in all phases. As Hales (1994) noted, the emphasis put on participation, democracy, and emancipation varies in different approaches. For instance, participatory design (Ehn, 1988; Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991; Schuler & Namioka 1993) gives the users the status of codesigners, whereas many user-centered design techniques (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998; International Organizations for Standardization [ISO], 1999; Norman & Draper, 1986) maintain that consulting the users is enough. Others initiatives try to influence the product by making sure that the division of labor between people and machines is appropriate (Mumford, 1983), or making it flexible to support customization (Andersen, 1999; Kay & Goldberg, 1977; Laukkanen, 2005; Mørch, 1997; Nardi, 1993). A third focal point is the methods and techniques to represent the work processes and their relations to the computer system (Bødker, 1998; Checkland & Scholes, 1981; Mumford, 1983; Suchman, 1995), as well as the models of the user and contexts (ISO, 1998, 1999; Maguire, 2001). However, despite the good intentions and the recognition of the multiplicity of actors involved, these participatory and user-centered design initiatives have been criticized due to lack of impact on system design overall. Stewart and Williams (2005) note many obstacles to the wider applicability and uptake of the initiatives, and strive to broaden the understanding of the design process. They argue against too simplistic models of the design process and point to studies where many aspects of it have been problematized. One important point is to rely not on armchair philosophy regarding the user, but rather to ground the term user empirically in order to understand design practices. Users as co-constructed and configured Since the early 1990s, some researchers have shaped an approach that studies the “configuring of the user,” which can be seen as an extension of the broader social shaping research community (Sørensen, 2002) mentioned above. It takes as its starting point that there are no users prior to the conception of a particular computer system. The argument is that qualitative research should not take a category such as the user as given, but instead acknowledge the considerable work that has gone into its constitution (Westrup, 1997). This implies a distinction between the users as imagined by the developers and the users who actually use the system, including an analysis of their interrelations. Woolgar (1991) coined the notion of configuring for the process of “defining the identity of putative users, and setting the constraints upon their likely future actions” (p. 59). His work is an important theoretical move for studying how users are imagined in computer systems development (Mackay et al., 2000). It is one alternative to study the interrelations of the social and the technical in design, especially regarding the construction of “affordances” (Norman, 1988) and “mental models” (Norman & Draper, 1986), both practical and widely used design concepts. Woolgar’s (1991) work on the configuring of the user in a microcomputer manufacturing company has been both extended and criticized. Among others, Westrup (1997) noted that not only are the users configured, but so are the developers. He used his extended version of Woolgar’s work to examine two approaches to requirements analysis in a novel way. He argued that the categories of users and designer are constituted by the techniques that seek to Johnson 134 represent them, in this case Mumford’s (1983) influential ETHICS/QUICKethics methodology and the techniques of the participatory design project UTOPIA (Bødker, Ehn, Kyng, Kammersgaard, & Sundblad, 1987). Westrup (1997) also highlighted difficulties in the very vocabularies of systems development. Many authors (Hyysalo, 2004; Mackay et al., 2000; Williams, Stewart, & Slack, 2005) criticized Woolgar in that he stopped his analysis too soon, not giving room for the process of consumption work by the users. Woolgar’s (1991) approach, together with similar initiatives from Akrich and Latour (Akrich, 1992; Akrich & Latour, 1992; Latour, 1992), are termed material semiotics by Oudshoorn and Pinch (2003), as they outline influential approaches to the co-construction of users and technologies. Another approach has emerged from gender studies, where the focus is on the mutual shaping of gender and technology, as well as an inclusion of more invisible or implicated actors. Consumption and domestication studies de-emphasize the developers and focus on active consumers using products in ways that might not have been imagined by developers. Agre (1995) suggested that developers do not intentionally try to configure users, and Hyysalo (2004) has drawn attention to the imaginaries bound in the professional practices of developers. Williams et al. (2005) warn against the tendency of the early work (Akrich, 1992, 1995; Bijker et al., 1987; Woolgar, 1991) to demonize designers as omnipotent manipulators of users, which they see as a consequence of studying snapshots of design or use processes. They argue that technologies should be seen and studied as sums of many projects, configurations of previous technical frameworks, and never complete. All actors involved at multiple locations need to be considered, as well as their interrelations, while remembering that information about the users is typically incomplete and uncertain. To sum up, there is no general answer to the question “Who is the user?”: It is up to the researcher to make the relevant aspects of the user explicit, both theoretically and empirically. I have outlined three different approaches to the user, finding that especially the reconceptualization of the user as a social actor is appropriate if the focus is either on design or use alone. When users are seen as participators in computer systems development, the point is that not all stakeholders can participate on an equal basis. When users, designers, technology, organizations, and so on, are seen as co-constructed, the point is that the distribution of agency, power and actors are empirical questions. METHOD AND DATA This paper is part of a larger research undertaking where I study the slowly paced dialogue between different developers and users through material software. Because the Habbo software has several design cycles in a year, it has been possible to study a dialogue that starts from the developers’ vision of future use. The vision is realized during game development into Habbo features. Next, the users appropriate the hotel features for their own purposes and invent their own ways of using it. Soon after, the developers learn a little about these more or less unexpected use practices through various forms of user feedback. This feedback modifies the designers’ original vision about future use and, as new features are developed, the cyclical dialogue continues with the next loop. In this paper, I freeze the moment when a developer talks about user feedback. Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 135 One developer’s reference to the “average user” is carefully scrutinized. It is studied as an example of a general dilemma for people engaged in creating products for mass consumption: There is no single “correct” way of categorizing users. Still, all of us act in worlds where we must use categories, and the question is how to manage this dilemma. In this study, the text extract around the “average user” is analyzed with the interview data analysis technique called membership categorization (Baker, 2004). The interviews are not treated as simple reports on some state of affairs (representationalism), but talk is considered as social action. This makes it possible to analyze not only the meanings of the categories, but the work the categories do and how they influence development. The categories referred to in the interview talk are treated as empty at first, giving them only the meanings emerging from the particular situation. During the interview the membership categories are elaborated on and refined; the established categories might even be internally conflicting. The point is to understand why conflicting categories are needed to communicate. In this case study, we (Johnson & Toiskallio, in press) had the opportunity to conduct both quantitative and qualitative research to understand the Finnish Habbo communities. We started with an explorative survey on the visitor profiles (N = 10,000), because no use statistics were available. In 2004 we identified 173 Finnish Habbo fansites, and we analyzed 23 that were written for a large Habbo audience (Johnson & Toiskallio, 2005). The survey findings provided background statistics, whereas the fansites and forum discussions allowed us to distinguish user groups and popular activities. During the spring of 2005, we conducted 10 themed interviews, lasting 2 to 3 hours each, with 10 Habbo developers, or about two thirds of the Habbo game development organization. Six of the interviewed developers (graphical designers, and client and server developers) had been in the organization since the beginnings, 5 years earlier, while four developers had about 1 year of Habbo experience. In addition, we conducted individual, pair, and group interviews, 2 to 3 hours in length, with a total of 12 Habbo community members (users) from different subcommunities. These interviews made further elaboration of membership categories possible. The interviews were conducted in Finnish, as all developers and the author are fluent speakers of Finnish. All of the interviews were recorded and content logs created. The interviews were transcribed in detail and excerpts translated to English by the author as needed. The different data sources have afforded triangulation (Yin, 1994) of the slowly paced user-developer dialogue. Preliminary results include conference talks on the design reasons behind the retro look of Habbo (Johnson, 2006a), user categorization practices (Johnson, 2006b), and stereotypical images in membership categorization practices (Johnson, 2006c). The approach adopted here is informed by qualitative research (Silverman, 2004) in HCI (Thomas, 1995) and IS (Lee, Liebenau, & DeGross 1997), as well as science and technology studies on the social shaping of information and communication technologies. CASE HABBO HOTEL Habbo has its origins in the experiences drawn from two Internet chat rooms, Mobiles Disco and Lumisota. In terms of Internet technologies, Habbo is a graphical chat environment on the Web that can be accessed with a Web browser with the Shockwave plug-in. This chat Johnson 136 environment is designed as a virtual world where people can hang out and make new friends. When checking in to the virtual hotel, one creates one’s own cartoon-like Habbo avatar (Figure 1) that can walk, dance, eat, drink, and chat in the cafés (Figure 2), restaurants, swimming pools, and games rooms. Besides experiencing these common rooms in the hotel, one can decorate and furnish a room of one’s own. In contrast to many on-line games, there is no entrance fee to the virtual world, which allows the majority of the users to chat for free. Instead, the profit model is based on micropayments in the hotel. Virtual furniture, minigames, and membership in the Habbo club are bought with so-called Habbo credits. These credits can be purchased with prepaid cards, bank transactions, or special text messages that add a specified amount of money to the customer’s mobile phone bill. Figure 1. A Habbo avatar. The image © by Sulake Corporation. Used with permission5. Figure 2. The welcome lounge in Habbo. The image © by Sulake Corporation. Used with permission5. Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 137 During the early Habbo days, the hotel was developed by a handful of game developers with their core competencies in graphic design, macromedia flash clients, and java server programming. At first they developed a hotel called Kultakala (goldfish in Finnish) for themselves and their friends but, already within a year of the launch, the site became popular among teenagers. According to our survey in 2004, 75% of the visitors were between 10 and 14 years old. Later, with the internationalization of the hotel, the organization grew and, in every country where the Habbo Hotel operates, a local office was started with a few employees working on the site moderation, community management, customer relations, and marketing. More administration and business people have joined the headquarters in Finland, and the game development division now includes more than a dozen game developers. Based on developer interviews, it became clear that the original group of Habbo developers had made use of their own retrogaming subculture. Video games from the 1980s are and have been a great source of inspiration (Johnson, 2006a). This is of course easily deducible by looking at the retro appearance of the Habbo lounge in Figure 2, but there is more to it. The benefits of making Habbo retro include positioning Habbo as original compared to other games that strive to be photorealistic. It also avoids pressure to follow fast-changing 3D graphics techniques, which in turn allows for Habbo to stay popular for a longer time. In addition, there are reduced performance requirements for both client computers and network bandwidth. Finally, the retro look encourages a simplistic design making Habbo easy to use. Learning from the Habbo Fansites We (Johnson & Toiskallio, 2005) studied 173 Finnish Habbo fansites in 2004. The focus was on what could be learned about the Habbo visitors and their Habbo practices from user research (Hackos & Redish, 1998; Kuniavsky, 2005), focusing on the membership categories visible through the fansites. Since the fansites are accessible without research intervention, the risk of distorting the data by the presence of the researchers is reduced. The most popular fansites are usually made by a small team of Habbo fans with different expertise and roles. For example, one designs the look and layout of the site, another one writes the stories, and a third has the technical skill to publish the site on the Web. The most active fansites have small updates (such as news and rumors about Habbo) several times per week, but publish reviews and articles once a week or bi-weekly. Some fansites group their articles together and publish them as an issue of a Web magazine. The Web magazines seem to follow a rhythm of one issue per one or two months. The fansite contents were classified and a list of common fansite elements was produced (Table 4). Based on the fansites, we clustered the hotel residents into eight groups: a) furniture traders and collectors, b) chatters (in public rooms), c) gang-members and VIPs (insider groups not open to everyone), d) supervisors with administration powers, e) cheaters, f) quiz-makers and players, g) the hotel manager (a Sulake employee), and h) celebrities. Similarly, 11 popular activities were identified: trading furniture, casinos, dating, beauty contests, competitions, dice games, team sports, formula tracks, talk shows, clubs & hotels, and orphanages. More important than the exact details of these listings are two observations about Habbo that they convey: the diverse and commonplace qualities of Habbo. First, there is not one particular Habbo activity that attracts all Habbo visitors, but many different ones. Second, the activities Johnson 138 Table 4. Common Habbo Fansite Elements (based on Johnson & Toiskallio, 2005). Fansite Elements Description News and rumors Fansites are convenient for Habbo visitors who want to reach a large audience, a fast way of spreading information about Habbo happenings (e.g., competitions, pop idols visiting Habbo), new features, news about Sulake Corp. Participation The fansite audience is provided ways to comment on the fansite through discussion forums, guest books, polls, etc. Links The fansites link to relevant Habbo places: other fansites, and to the hotels in other countries. Hints, secrets, guidelines Fansites teach newcomers both basic and advanced tricks with which to impress others. Guidelines on acceptable behavior are frequent. Reviews and lists The fansites keep track of the features and possibilities in Habbo: public spaces, different furniture items, pets, etc. Histories Two major histories are told on the fansites: the history of Habbo and the history of that particular fansite Fashion and celebrities Habbo “journalists” interview Habbo celebrities, avatars who have become famous in Habbo, and report on fashionable clothing and activities. Graphics Edited screenshot pictures are an integral part of many fansites, some even provide pixel graphics drawing schools. Habbo fiction A few fansites write fictional stories about characters in Habbo. About Who comprises the fansites staff, number of visitors, updates, banners, etc. Real life Habbo meetings “in real life,” stuff not about Habbo that is important to teenagers, as well as blogs, e-cards, etc. going on in Habbo resemble games with rules and pretend play familiar from schoolyards, playgrounds, youth clubs, and so on. The Habbo visitors and their practices seem to be strongly influenced by the fansites. They complement Sulake’s official Web site by providing more detailed information about the hotel from an experienced visitor’s point of view. Hints, secrets, and guidelines, and stories about Habbo fashion influence the boundaries for acceptable behavior in Habbo. The fansites improve the Habbo visitors’ awareness of the fan cultures around Habbo, and also reproduce and reinforce social positions (like potential Habbo career paths or legitimized visitor groups). Membership Categories The membership categories from the fansites were further developed, based on interviews and artifacts analyses (Johnson, 2006c). In a discussion on the influence of images on membership categorization, Johnson discussed visual and nonvisual categories (Table 5). Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 145 Now, that the “average user” has been unscrambled, this paper will conclude by zooming out from this particular situation and this particular developer. This analysis is related to the other Sulake developers’ ways of speaking about the users. HOW FAR DOES THE “AVERAGE USER” REACH? How far does the agency of the average user reach? Do all designers at Sulake talk about the average user? Does it shape other different representations of the user? When reviewing my interviews with the designers other than GD8, I did not find exactly the same configured actor of “average user”: The others did not talk about the average user as such. However, when considering the different aspects of the average user, I found similar configurations, such as the “typical user” and the “normal user.” One developer discussed the importance of fixing problems for certain users, favoring the normal user over trouble-causing users. “It is perhaps less important... if they [the troublemakers] get some problems from causing problems to other users. Then it is not necessarily as serious as when the normal user gets problems from using Habbo normally” (Game Developer 7). Here, normal again designates everybody else, except for the troublemakers. The category “normal users” is not locatable in user practices, while the trouble-causers are. This developer also shapes the categories, giving the normal users a higher priority than the troublemakers. At the same time, these categories shape the developers’ actions, freeing the developer to design for the normal use, instead of the exceptional and generally not desired use. Another developer discussed a “typical user” when asked whether enough is known or not about the users. GD9: ...but, when we think about a new big feature... we should know how large a group, or how large the number is, absolutely, who would use it then. Another thing is that we don’t really know how lasting they [the groups] are, that for how long-term one can design something.... So the user, the typical user, is still a little bit hazy at this time. A: The typical user isn’t visible in the forums or the statistics? GD9: It isn’t visible anywhere. Some kind of an age group exists and the boy-girl distribution is fairly clear, but [these] are limited to terribly high-level things. On this occasion, typical user became a category for the unknown, but perhaps also a wish for regular use patterns. In contrast to the previous quotes, this typical user did not free the developer to do something else, but stayed as an obstacle for design. Creativity in the Developer–User Dialogue While the shapeless average user leaves room for the creativity of the designers, the designers are also careful not to restrict the users in their design. Designing for open-ended use leaves room for creativity among the users. This has been possible due to the kind of product Habbo is: a software product that can be frequently updated without requiring the user to do Johnson 146 anything. The Habbo development process started out with very frequent release cycles. Even though the product was on-line, during the first year it was continuously updated, sometimes several times a week. Gradually the development process became more complex, as the product grew and more people were involved. A developer describes the transformation from on-line prototyping to robust release processes as follows: Kultakala was done very, very quickly, in a fairly, so to speak, feeling-based way, or, organically. It was up; then we started to fix it, or develop it.... Today we talk about totally different numbers of users, amounts of money. We simply can’t afford to have [a situation where], in tens of countries around the world, everything would stop. (Game Developer 1) This on-line prototyping stage gave the users lots of space to explore the design and take advantages of things not yet considered by the developers. One famous bug that turned into a feature was a way to lift things up in the room and leave them floating. It was possible because the world model was not that well thought through in the early days. Lifting up furniture can seem harmless, but as a piece of furniture is moved out of reach, it becomes a way of destroying furniture. That is a serious threat to the world model and also the business of selling virtual furniture. One developer explained how this user creativity influenced the world model: “You can put things on a table, and tables have a height. But then, we hadn’t programmed that kind of a model; so that when you took the table away, the thing [on the table] stayed in the air. From this followed that the users lifted up furniture with the aid of two stackable objects, by rotating them in peculiar ways. Other people’s things [were lifted] over that box, so high in that room that [they] moved up over the upper edge of the room, which made them gone in practice; they were destroyed. Then we had to make a limit, so no thing could rise up more than to the height of three or something. (Game Developer 1) Some features were developed for a certain use, but the users were able to use the features in their own way to create unexpected phenomena. The teleport is perhaps the prime example, as one developer described it: We had the idea that, we thought the users would start creating homes: There would be a bedroom and a kitchen and that they would jump between these with the teleports, a kind of a door metaphor to the rooms. But they [the users] are much more inventive than we: They made up all those teleport racing games. ... There is this room, two teleports, and two users start running and who comes back first from the other teleport, they must run a race following a route.... And perhaps the first thing that emerged with teleports was the teleport centers, a whole room filled with teleports leading somewhere else, so it was quite a “wow” effect when I first saw it, so “Oh, they did it like that!” We hadn’t thought about someone building link-places for everyone else. (Game Developer 3) Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 147 On several occasions, many developers tried not to restrict the user too much. GD3 stated that he expects the users to do “unexpected things” with the features he develops, while GD4 noted that, “We create the environment and the building blocks, letting the users exercise their own creativity.” Clearly there is an affinity between the average user of one developer and the user in other developers’ speech. In addition, two particular configurations seemed to be widely known, stabilized, and discussed among the original developers. First, there is the “Easy access, easy play” maxim: The users should be guided step by step into the game environment, without letting any step be too large. One developer explained it like this:“[The] easiest possible login, you can create an character, basic navigation... the first contact to another user, first friend on the friends-list, all sorts of playing, then the own room and decoration, then various groups that you gradually join” (Game Developer 2). Second, there is the “Where else?” maxim: New feature developments in Habbo should be unique and personal. If something exists on some other site already, copying it directly to Habbo is not an option. We have always regarded those [simple feature requests] critically. We want an intentional pursuit for something special in these cases. We don’t make the obvious choices but rather something personal that gives the Habbo world oddity and its own thing, creates its own such persona. (Game Developer 2) This maxim was also called the “Habbo Way” by some developers. However, the “Habbo Way” also denotes the rules listed on the official Web site that new users should approve when becoming habbos. Mixing “I-methodology” and Feedback on Experience Akrich (1992, 1995) argued that successful artifacts depend on the ability of developers to generate user representations and integrate them into their design. She observed many different techniques for creating user representations, both explicit and implicit. The explicit techniques included market surveys and consumer testing, whereas the implicit were the I-methodology, experts, and other products. The term I-methodology exists when the designer puts him/herself in the position of the user and uses his/her own knowledge as a base for design. On the one hand, the concept of the average user could be seen as manifesting Akrich’s I-methodology: When things are uncertain, the designers go with their intuition or feelings based on their own experiences. On the other hand, their knowledge seems to be grounded in their proximity to the users: They can go and look at what’s happening in the hotel and they can read the fansites. The fansites give the developers a way of getting a feeling for what the users want by reading between the lines, as a developer said when reflecting on how often he visits the fansites and which fansites he follows: It depends on the situation. It might be a week or two that you don’t have the time because you know that you’d become immersed totally in the wrong way. It’s HabboForum ... and of course these Finnish ones, from them it is even easier to Johnson 148 see between the lines the feeling, as they are domestic users: There’s no language [problems] .... (Game Developer 5) The developers draw on their cumulative experience, as they were the users themselves in the early Habbo days, and they have been there since. One developer reflected on the developers’ way of knowing the design history, compared to most users who have not been there as long: An active user probably thinks about it [a new feature: rollers]—this is totally speculation—probably thinks about it in the context of his/her own rooms, what s/he has done so far and how could these [rollers] fit into that, reflecting on when you add a new thing, what more can it give. Whereas we think about it from a little broader perspective—where these and these phenomena have emerged previously and they were based on the teleport, and the dice and these, then reflecting on what if the roller is brought in, what could one do with it, from a different perspective but still.... (Game Developer 4) As a consequence, here in the Habbo case, it becomes hard to tell the difference between I-methodology and feedback from use, since the designers’ reflections repeatedly refer to feedback from experience of use over time. Those who follow the fansites and the activities in the hotel appear as legitimate representatives for the users. The designers balance being representatives for the users, for the business, and for their own interests. DISCUSSION As a usability designer and researcher, I have been taught that one should never design for the average user. Doing so would probably result in a design that does not fit anyone, because the users are always a heterogeneous group. My first reaction when the game developer started discussing the average user was to shut my ears because it did not make sense. The use of the term average user seemed to contradict HCI guidelines, such as “know the user” or “define the user groups.” It seemed like the user opinions at hand were not followed, and the developer designed for the unknown average user. However, by using a membership categories analysis and extending the timeframe of the analysis, I realized that my initial reaction was wrong. When considering the development history and the developer’s experience of feedback from use, it made more sense to see the developer as a representative of the silent majority of the users. The developer brought in the users who did not voice themselves and denoted them by the category “average user.” In this way, he accomplished his goal of not having to strictly follow the immediate user feedback, which may not reflect the opinions of the majority of silent users, but he also accomplished his goal of considering the previous user feedback based on his experience. The rhetoric about the silent majority and the user is familiar from other contexts, for instance, in politics. The politicians often argue that they themselves represent the (mythical) citizen and give voice to the silent majority of voters. This might, or might not, be the case; it depends on the politician’s own agenda and its proximity to that of the voters. While the citizen Unscrambling the “Average User” of Habbo Hotel 149 as a concept decontextualizes individual human beings, it also makes it possible to talk about the broader concepts of the rights of citizens and human rights. It appears that the concept of the user works in a similar way, giving developers a way of discussing possibilities and restrictions for all users (e.g., in terms of user access rights, user profiles, and groups visible to the computer system). In addition, as some citizens need more empowerment than others, so do some user groups. In this case study, the “average user” was not literally the average user of the Habbo population, but denoted those who needed to be voiced. This study on the developer–user dialogue highlights the importance of the fansites as one user proxy for the Habbo developers. In this case, rather than describing developers as “malevolent manipulators of users,” the case points out their role in balancing and governing different user interests. Digging into the practices of design brings forth its complexity and shows how design and use are intertwined. Over time, the knowledge of the designers is not easily separable into “own” knowledge versus feedback from use, as design and use knowledge becomes mixed. The results of this study can be generalized to user categorization practices in the design of other heterogeneous and complex virtual worlds and communities. If the product or service becomes a commercial success, the sheer number of users makes the user categorization and control more difficult. Designers have to invent categorization strategies of coping with complexity: Fuzzy user configurations can work if there is frequent interaction between designers and users. The virtual world itself and the discussion arenas around the product are important sites for designer–user interaction and sources of user knowledge. Besides, as a company grows, the role of the user representations in the internal communication increases, since not everyone in the company can be tightly involved with the user communities. Implicit user representations, such as gut feelings and design intuition based on long-time experience with users, might need to be made more explicit to function as convincing arguments. Finally, a small comment to the game developers who might ask what they can do about the situation where some user groups are not visible through the monitored fansites. Of course, keeping up with other user feedback channels, like spending time in the virtual world, is important. Another option is to find fansites that attract different user groups. In the Finnish Habbo fansite scene, for instance, the former official fansite Nefekala used to attract a younger age group and many girls. Even though this particular fansite does not exist anymore, new fansites seem to emerge all the time. Following a variety of fansites allows for more diverse user feedback, which can ground the gut feelings of the designers. ENDNOTES 1. Habbos are what the Habbo Hotel visitors are commonly called. One becomes a habbo when checking in at the virtual hotel for the first time, then creates one’s own cartoon-like on-line character (avatar). 2. The standard definition of the user as a “person who interacts with the interactive system” (ISO, 2006, p. 3) leaves it open for the researchers and practitioners to contextually agree on whether the user is understood as particular human beings in particular settings, or target groups imagined by the developers. Standard context of use models (ISO, 1998) on the other hand, provide listings of potentially relevant relations: goals, tasks, equipment, and the physical and social environments. Johnson 150 3. Details available at http://mc2.soberit.hut.fi 4. For an introduction to the initial differences, and later convergence and extensions to the social shaping versus the social construction of technology approaches, see Sørensen (2002). 5. Images used with permission. ©2006 Sulake Corporation Ltd. HABBO, HABBO HOTEL, SULAKE and associated logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sulake Corporation Ltd. in the U.S., the European Union, China and various other jurisdictions. All rights reserved. 6. I left the more exact job description out for anonymity reasons. 7. In Finnish, the hän pronoun is not gender specific and stands for he or she. 8. Actually once, but I interpret normal as a qualitative version of the more statistical average and analyze them together. REFERENCES Agre, P. 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Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination (pp. 57–102). London: Routledge. Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research, design and methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA, USA: Sage Publications. Author’s Note All correspondence should be addressed to: Mikael Johnson Helsinki Institute for Information Technology PO Box 9800 02015 TKK mikael.jo[email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 154–166 154 USER ORIENTATION THROUGH EXPERIENCE: A STUDY OF HOBBYIST KNOWING IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Abstract: Those who are involved in hobbyist communities and share the values and practices of these communities often also innovate new products. Users are important actors in innovations. Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to users in relation to product development processes and especially user innovations. This article points out that product development team members are often simultaneously users themselves and they can be important translators of “hobbyist knowing” into organizational practices. Hobbyist knowing refers to the practice of making sense of situations through concrete activities and participation in particular social and physical circumstances and practices. This article studies Suunto, the Finnish designer and manufacturer company of sports and precision instruments, and the product development team of wrist computers. Keywords: hobbyist knowing, product development, sports instruments, knowledge management, user involvement, user innovation. INTRODUCTION User orientation and user involvement are widely discussed themes in recent product development and design literature and practice. This paper discusses users and their knowledge in organizations and therefore also addresses the question of organizational knowledge. User-centered design, participatory design, ethnography, and contextual design are often-used terms connected to user orientation (Kujala, 2003), all aiming at developing usable products by taking both explicit and implicit users’ needs into account. Participatory design also refers to the worker participation that is considered central to the value and success of projects within organizations (Kensing & Blomberg, 1998). In participatory design, according to Kensing and Blomberg (1998), workers take part, for example, in the analysis of © 2007 Tanja Kotro and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007278 Tanja Kotro National Consumer Research Centre Helsinki, Finland Hobbyist Knowing 161 visualizations, prototypes, and decisions are made based on this tacit knowledge inherent in communities of practices of sports. HOBBYISM AS SHARED KNOWING The outcome of my analysis is to suggest that business organizations need to recognize what tacit knowledge about users currently exists within their company, and how this knowledge works within the company. Companies should ask how their designers meet and interpret the culture of use. And, more importantly, how do designers meet the different needs of users if there is hobbyism within the company? Is hobbyist knowing tied to one specific sport or can it be used as a source for understanding users across different sports? In an example from a different field, Nokia’s product development of the portable Internet tablet (Nokia 770) has involved hackers who have made changes to the product and hence influenced the product development process. Most of these hackers do not work for the company but some of them are also part of the official product development process because they work for Nokia on a permanent basis (Mäkinen, 2006). Hobbyism can thus be recognized as a resource for product development in other areas and products than the sport industry. As I define hobbyism, the sports communities serve as an important reference for the product development team members in understanding peer users when designing sports instruments. Turning hobbyism into a method in product development simply means acknowledging those resources and experiences that the product team members bring into the design processes other than their professional backgrounds only. The question of turning hobbyist knowing into a design method is complex and challenging because hobbyist knowing is partly tacit by nature. Based on the Suunto study, I defined hobbyist knowing as active knowing, in that knowing and practice are intertwined (Blackler, Crump, & McDonald, 1998; Cook & Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2002). It is an alertness and sensitivity within a social and material context (Schön, 1991), a knowing and doing together (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), and a stepping over and over again into the situations of use of a product (Schön, 1991; Suchman, 1987). Hobbyist knowing is difficult to communicate because it is embodied and embedded in action (Blackler et al., 1998; Carlile, 2002; Schön, 1991) but, at its best, it is interwoven into the product development process (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka et al., 1998) as a generative and creative resource of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) within an organization. Hobbyist knowing is thus defined as a type of knowledge—or rather a type of knowing—that emphasizes its active and long-term nature. Based on the case of Suunto, I argue that hobbyist knowing is an alertness among product development people who are passionate sports enthusiasts to acknowledge the differences in practices and in physical environments among different sports, that is, an alertness in recognizing what these tacit and intangible differences are. It can, at its best, help in understanding the implicit user needs and requirements. Hobbyist knowing is not, however, a method among other user-centered methods for product development, or similar to the lead user method (Lüthje & Herstatt, 2004). Hobbyists are people who are voluntarily involved in the practices of users of a certain industry through their own long-term hobby activities and are working for the companies for years rather than for a few projects. Kotro 162 Researchers interested in users as innovators suggest that involving lead users in product development can be a successful method. Lead users are defined as individuals who have “sticky,” use-related information, are ahead of the market with respect to needs-related trends, and are capable of conceiving substantial new products for future markets. The lead user method refers to the identification and involvement of lead users “in a multi stage [sic] approach aiming to generate innovative new product concepts and to enhance the effectiveness of cross-functional innovation teams” (Lüthje & Herstatt, 2004, p. 554). In practice, the lead user method means observing lead users or arranging workshops with these end-users when conducting concept designing in firms. Hobbyists, therefore, are actually lead users who work within organizations. Both hobbyists and external lead users are at the leading edge of markets. The lead user method has been developed to bring to companies without hobbyists the tacit knowledge that hobbyists bring to their daily work. The main difference between hobbyists knowing in organizations and the lead user method and is that, through hobbyism (having hobbyists employed), hobbyist knowing is present on a long-term basis. This is important since, in relation to user-centered design methods, hobbyist knowing can lead to specified and concrete methods of user-centered design and to the lead user method being introduced into the product development process on a regular basis, and not only now and then. When there are changes in the target sports market, knowing well and being a hobbyist of one sport does not help in knowing intimately another sport, but it can help in appreciating methods for recognizing what is specific to other circumstances. Hobbyism can be recognized as a phenomenon in other industries also—for example, in product development in mobile technology (Mäkinen, 2006). Although hobbyist knowing is not suggested as a substitute for design methods, it is possible that hobbyist knowing can serve—because of it is social nature—to overcome factors that hinder the use of usercentered design methods. Such difficulties include recognizing and gaining access to user communities and the knowledge embedded and embodied within them (Kujala, 2003). Since my study, new design methods have been adopted in product development processes at Suunto. For example, Suunto design management, together with a group of researchers from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, developed and introduced a method called probes (see Mattelmäki, 2006). According to designers at Suunto, probes can be used to understand and define the sociocultural contexts of sports enthusiasts. For example, probes contain indirect questions of what kind of equipment is considered valuable among sports enthusiasts, such as by suggesting different brands. Probes view the sociocultural context as including an understanding of the social practices, the specific terms used, the material environment, and the talent that is recognized in a sports community. It varies from wearing the “right” t-shirts to doing the “right” stunts and having a certain attitude, as illustrated by the following comment: “Those guys who do snowboarding say that they do not practice. They do not consider themselves as sportsmen. However, they go skiing every day” [Suunto Designer]. According to Schön (1991), practitioners work in conversation with the situation, which requires stepping into the situation. User-centered design methods developed to improve the usability of products are implemented to help analyze human-machine interaction, and they have thus been product-centered. It has been suggested that emotional and experiential properties should be taken into account alongside the rational product properties (Jordan, Hobbyist Knowing 163 1999). Recent studies also suggest that another important dimension of usability research is analyzing the situations in which the product is in use (Hasu et al., 2004; Keinonen, 1998, 2000; Koskinen, Battarbee, & Mattelmäki, 2003). The crucial question to me is how local interactions within a given situation can be understood, for example, within the sport context. I suggest that hobbyist knowing involves a different understanding of local practices and communities than design methods. Attempts within design practice and studies to overcome the gap between designing products and understanding the contexts of their use can be helpful, but they are also different from hobbyist knowing, since they are mostly methods used for a short time only. The ideal of many user-centered design methods is to focus on users and tasks early in the product development process, do empirical measurements, and then work with iterative methods. What has been suggested as a practice for meeting these ideals is to allow potential users to use simulations and prototypes, so that their actions and performance can be analyzed. User involvement is considered to provide valuable knowledge about the context of use, the user’s tasks, and how the users will probably work with the emerging product (Säde, 2001, p. 29), as well as help in analyzing the user experience. Among design method studies, there is also an interest towards not only user experience, but also users’ co-experience (Battarbee, 2003a; 2003b). This means seeing the user not as one entity but as a member of group of people who share and create experiences together, and interpersonally and interactively with the products. What remains to be discussed is the nature of knowledge produced by design methods. Does hobbyist knowing involve also knowledge that escapes the design and lead user methods? Brown and Duguid (2001) note that joining a community of practice gives access to that community’s identity and, through that, its collective knowledge. They also point out that learning does not just involve acquisition of facts about the world; it also involves acquiring the ability to act in the world in socially acceptable ways. From their perspective, knowing is always linked to practice. Therefore hobbyists probably know more than can be fully understood by using design methods, although these methods acknowledge practice. Being simultaneously a user and a producer, that is, having users who work on the product development team, is different from studying users with design or lead user methods, most particularly because of the stickiness (von Hippel, 1995) of hobbyist knowing. This does not inevitably mean that having users on the design team is a better way to understand the use context of a product than using design methods or involving lead users into the design process, because hobbyist knowing can sometimes be too one-sided to fully understand the diversity of the context of use. The stickiness of hobbyist knowing means that hobbyist knowing is difficult to transfer (von Hippel 1995) and it is more than its current externalization—the transformation from tacit to explicit (Nonaka, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka et al., 1998). I would argue that hobbyist knowing covers areas that escape current user research methods and documentation and remain at the margins of consciousness although would be shared by hobbyists within their work practices. CONCLUSIONS The point in user innovation literature is that not only do individual innovators and manufacturers innovate but users are the source of many innovations across a wide range of Kotro 164 products. These users form their own communities, and are sometimes also supported by firms. This paper focuses on the subset of users who form their own communities but also work within companies designing and manufacturing products for those communities, sport instruments, in this case. This paper details how user needs are present in the new product development process when the product developers are users themselves. Therefore the process of product design touches, on the one hand, user innovations and, on the other, the body of organizational knowledge. The concept of organizational knowledge is replaced with that of “knowing,” thereby emphasizing activity. Orlikowski (2002) points out that tacit knowledge is a form of knowing that is inseparable from action because it is constituted through such actions. Through hobbyist knowing in my case study of the Suunto sports equipment company, product developers are intimately familiar with users’ needs, including the technical requirements and cultural values and practices of sports communities, because of their longterm participation in the communities of practices of sports enthusiasts. This paper discusses hobbyism in relation to design methods. Hobbyism is a long-term relation to the intended contexts of use of the product, while user-oriented design methods often form a short-term relationship in order to study users. It was brought forth here that acknowledging hobbyism within the company can be a resource for successful product development. This means appreciating employees’ personal knowledge as well as their professional knowledge. 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All correspondence should be addressed to: Tanja Kotro National Consumer Research Centre Kaikukatu 3 (P. O. Box 5) 00530 Helsinki Finland Tel. +358 9 7726 7703 Fax. +358 9 7726 7715 E-mail tanja.[email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 167–187 167 USER INVOLVEMENT AND ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTION Abstract: Involving users in the innovation process is a subject of much research, experimentation, and debate. Less attention has been given to the limits to user involvement that ensue from specific organizational characteristics. This article explores barriers to the utilization of users’ input in two small companies developing interactive digital applications. We contrast our findings to earlier research involving large companies to identify features of entrepreneurial sensemaking and action that influence the utilization of users’ input. We find that the small companies follow a distinct action rationality, leading to rapid implementation of some user inputs, and defensiveness toward others. Both sets of data also reveal common features that are often overlooked in the literature. We reconceptualize user involvement as a form of interaction between users and innovating companies that is facilitated and constrained by micro-sociological processes, on the one hand, and the nature of the competitive environment, on the other. Keywords: user involvement, new product development, information systems services, organizational sensemaking, entrepeneurial action. INTRODUCTION User orientation has become a popular catchphrase in innovation research and practice. Studies have documented the dangers of generalizing product developers’ own experiences to a broader population of users (Oudshoorn, Rommes & Stienstra, 2004) and identified user involvement as a key success factor (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Craig & Hart 1992). Many authors and institutions are popularizing new methods to involve users more closely in the product development process (see Goodman, Langdon & Clarkson, 2006; Kaulio, 1998; Leonard & Rayport, 1997, for reviews). The underlying assumption seems to be that designers’ lack of awareness and knowledge of how to involve users are the main impediments to user orientation. We have drawn on this assumption ourselves, as we are involved in a project aiming to enhance user orientation in small entrepreneurial companies © 2007 Eva Heiskanen, Petteri Repo, and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007279 Eva Heiskanen National Consumer Research Centre Helsinki, Finland Petteri Repo National Consumer Research Centre Helsinki, Finland Heiskanen & Repo 168 developing interactive digital applications. Yet there may be other reasons, apart from a lack of awareness of user involvement methods, for the current limited user orientation, and we believe these reasons should also be considered seriously. This paper outlines some qualifications regarding user involvement emerging from different research traditions in business administration. (Different types of qualifications, such as those raised in the sociology of technology, have been addressed by others, e.g., Rohracher, 2005.) Within strategic management, the literature on disruptive innovations, that is, innovations that allow companies to open up new markets or to change value networks and industries, sometimes views customer orientation and innovation orientation as opposing poles. Users are often resistant to totally novel concepts that challenge their everyday practices, yet many disruptive innovations have transformed markets to the advantage of the companies introducing them. From a different perspective, studies in organizational behavior highlight the limits to organizational attention and sensemaking capacity. User orientation often implies a significant inflow of new information into product development, information that may be difficult to accept, process, or absorb. Information processing may also compete for scarce resources needed for action. It is likely that these limits to user orientation might be most apparent in small companies dealing with new technologies. Such companies have limited resources in terms of time, funds, workforce, and sensemaking capacity. They also often deal with disruptive innovations, ones that are not meant to fit into existing usage patterns but actually to transform them. Such companies thus provide a critical case in which to test whether enhanced user involvement is helpful in similar entrepreneurial settings. Can the limits to user orientation be overcome by increased awareness and experience in user involvement methods and practices? Or are there cases in which user involvement is actually counterproductive, or at least a waste of time and money? We start this investigation with a brief review of central points concerning user involvement raised in the strategic innovation management literature, and in the literature on organizational sensemaking and action. We then turn to investigate our research questions in the context of an ongoing project funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes). We base our analysis on a survey of current sources of user information employed among technology entrepreneurs involved in the Tekes FENIX technology program for interactive computing, as well as on small-scale interventions to enhance user involvement conducted on our initiative with two of these companies. In order to understand some specific features of small entrepreneurial companies, we also contrast our findings with some previous experiences of user involvement with large companies. On the basis of these data, we identify circumstances and ways in which user involvement may be more or less pertinent for product development in different kinds of firms. USER ORIENTATION IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT In recent years, methods and “tools” for user involvement have proliferated, and the community developing and propagating these methods has grown. In addition to conventional methods of concept testing and usability, product developers today employ field studies, participatory design, contextual design, and user participation (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998; User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action 169 Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991; Kaulio, 1998; Kelley, 2000; Koskinen, Battarbee, & Mattelmäki, 2003). These methods involve intensified interaction between the world of designers and the world of users. Designers may go to visit the users at home or at their workplace, and use ethnographic observation to understand the users’ world. Users may join designers “at the drawing board,” for example, by participating in user groups (Tomes, Armstrong, & Clark, 1997). Workshops and various forms of idea-generating assignments for users provide a more streamlined version of intermittent or quasi-participation (Kristensson, Gustafsson, & Archer, 2004; Magnusson, Matthing, & Kristensson, 2003). Inventions by lead users are proposed as a source of innovation in both industrial products and some consumer products (Franke & Shah, 2003; Lüthje, 2004; von Hippel, 2005). For products like computer games, “user toolkits” even allow designers to outsource part of the software design to innovative users (Holmström, 2004; Jeppesen & Molin, 2003; von Hippel, 2001). All this work on user involvement methods assumes that product designers are in need of a more intimate knowledge of their users. By launching these methods and experimenting with them in companies, academics and practitioners aim to promote and enhance userinvolvement practice, and raise awareness among designers. Surveys and reviews (Bruseberg & McDonagh-Philp, 2002; Cassim, 2005; Goodman et al., 2006; Hanna, Ayers, Ridnour, & Gordon, 1995; Kujala, 2003) indicate that the available methods are often underutilized. Whether or not this results from a lack of awareness, however, is an open question. Empirical studies on new product development include those that detail the dangers of excessive reliance on designers’ own personal experience, but also studies that illustrate its successful application. Especially in the field of sports equipment and other products with clearly defined user groups, designers can often successfully extrapolate user requirements from their own experience as users (Kotro, 2005; Kotro, Timonen, Pantzar & Heiskanen, 2005). Sometimes, designing for oneself or imagining the user is actually a quite good strategy. Obviously, this depends on the distance between designers and users: In some product groups, early users have similar skills and preferences to the designers of the product. Thus companies with limited resources may actually find personal experience a cost-effective source of user information. They may, however, run into problems when attempting to expand their business model into the mass market, where user contexts and requirements may be very different from the niche market (Christensen, Anthony, & Roth, 2003). Yet a brief glimpse at other literature, outlined below, indicates that some companies may behave quite rationally by not devoting their energies to acquiring and processing user information. We outline briefly two other strands of research that could justify a somewhat contrarian perspective on user involvement. Innovation-orientation vs. Customer-orientation There is extensive literature on the potential conflict between innovation-orientation and customer-orientation. While customer-oriented companies focus on fulfilling existing needs of existing customers, innovation-oriented companies may manage to create new needs and find new customers. There is debate over whether this conflict is irreconcilable or not: Some argue that both orientations can be effectively combined through dialogue with current and future customers (Flint, 2002) or by adopting a “market shaping” approach (Berthon, Hubert, Heiskanen & Repo 170 & Pitt, 2004), or by moving from a reactive to a proactive market orientation (Narver, Slater, & MacLachlan, 2004). Creating disruptive innovations is a large organizational challenge in its own right (Damanpour, 1991; Lichetenthaler, Savioz, Birkenmeier, & Brodbeck, 2004; McDermott & O’Connor, 2002). In this context, involving users in product development involves further complexities, because users do not know what their requirements are for products that demand changes in behavioral patterns or that open up new applications (O’Connor, 1998). The literature on radical and disruptive innovations has stressed problems arising, for example, from the use of concept testing as a “screen” for new product innovations. Users are often resistant to totally novel concepts that challenge their everyday practices. It is argued that really new-to-the-world products and radically innovative concepts are discarded because users fail to understand them and thus to appreciate their benefits (O’Connor, 1998). Disruptive innovations allow companies to develop products for which there is no (or little) competition, and potentially even to transform entire value networks to their own advantage (Christensen, 1997; Tushman & Anderson, 1986). Disruptive innovations may be (a) new to the industry, (b) new to the firm, or (c) new to the customers (Garcia & Calantone, 2002). The last type of innovation, new to the customers, entails a specific type of problem. Its impact on users depends on the degree of learning and adoption efforts required of them, rather than on the newness of the technology itself. In spite of their lack of customer-orientation, many disruptive innovations created by innovation-oriented companies have in fact been extremely successful, and managed to transform markets to the advantage of the companies developing and promoting them. Digital photography has become dominant over chemical photography, as has electronic mail over telegraphy. Compact disks overtook audio cassettes and LP records, only to be seriously challenged by downloadable compressed audio files. The companies that recognized these changes early obtained strategic advantage. Christensen (1997) has argued that this is because firms with disruptive innovations find new customers, while those that fail to innovate continue ensuring the satisfaction of their existing customers. In the IT industry, at least, Christensen et al. (2003) claim that the markets for disruptive innovations are found among nonconsumers (people who lack access or resources to make use of existing products), or among “overshot customers,” those who are unwilling to pay for further performance improvements and who are targeted by new entrants with disruptive business models that offer cheaper and simpler solutions. “Undershot customers” (those frustrated with the current products’ limitation and are willing to pay for refinements) will typically be served by companies focusing on sustained innovation that is not disruptive. Furthermore, users are not always the primary customers of disruptive innovations. So, apart from the potential conflicts between innovation-orientation and customer-orientation, there can be a further and separate conflict with user or consumer orientation, depending on the industry. There are examples in which user benefits and enhanced product performance are not necessary prerequisites for competitive advantage (Ivory, 2004). Users have been highly resistant to disruptive innovations, such as automated banking and workplace computerization, yet these innovations have brought significant efficiency gains to the banks and workplaces adopting them. Users have gradually adapted to these technologies, even though they might have adapted more quickly and with better grace had the applications been designed with more attention to user needs (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000). Yet it is clear User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action 177 problems. However, the product development team immediately set to work to improve the identified problems, and some additional ones, and made extensive changes to the service during the 11 days between the two trials. All in all, technical problems and suggestions for improvement were received very well, and gave rise to extensive efforts to solve the problems. The users’ overall evaluations of the service were quite favorable: The idea was considered fun, interesting, and up-to-date. Most participants thought that there was potential in using a mobile phone as a tour guide. The service was considered an active way to experience sights and obtain information on them. Some of the test users also liked the interactive and group elements of the service: They thought it might be a pleasant way to get to know new people by collaborating on assignments while taking the tour. Although the originality of the service concept was welcomed, its implementation received criticism—even among those who liked the concept: • The basic usability required more development. In a business context, participants would have guides helping them use the service. Ordinary tourists would require a much simpler user interface, and better user instructions. • The participants in our trials emphasized that there are many other ways to spend leisure time, and that they could do something more interesting with the time and money than use it for this service. From this point of view, the transfer of the service to a leisure context clearly called for more development of the basic business model. Suggestions included involving other tourist companies in the business network— that is, site operators, shops, and restaurants—and perhaps even having them subsidize the service in order to attract new visitors. • Many of the assignments met with criticism. They were designed to create a playful atmosphere, and involved doing silly things in public, such as photographing a group member riding an imaginary horse beside the statue of a war hero riding his horse. Here, the transfer from the business leisure service did not appear to be successful: In the original service it was acceptable and even desirable to act foolishly in a “team spirit” exercise. However, the leisure service was used publicly in the city center and most of the participants were not happy with the performative tasks. Therefore, they suggested that the service should be redesigned with more intellectual tasks and theme tours. Thus, while there were some encouraging findings, some fundamental features of the business idea required reconsideration. Linking the mobile tourism service to the overall tourism network of the location seemed to be an important challenge, which would flesh out the technology-based idea into a full-scale tourism service. Company Responses to the Users’ Contributions The companies gained obvious benefits from the user involvement exercises that we organized for them. In the case of the mobile tourism service, product developers could enhance their product already during the study. Developers of the speech recognition technology obtained voice samples and recognized issues related to technological scalability. In other words, technical improvements were eagerly sought for and easily accepted by the firms. Both companies also gained encouragement for further development of their services. Especially in the speech recognition technology case, company representatives were happily Heiskanen & Repo 178 surprised with the positive response their service prototype received, and with the wealth of ideas for new applications that the users suggested. Engaging in the user tests energized the companies to devote additional efforts to developing and improving the service prototypes, and to finding ways in which they might evoke positive responses among the test users. Face-to-face interaction between users and developers was highly appreciated by the service developers. It has been previously noted (Kujala, 2003) that externally produced studies may be difficult to integrate into the service development process. It seems that direct interaction provides information that is more actionable. Tacit knowledge is transferred, and face-to-face interaction produces memorable and meaningful experiences. Yet the limits of user involvement also became clear in the actual testing situations and in our follow-up sessions. Users’ critical comments often met with defensive explanations of why a solution was the only feasible one, or how the technology was unaffected by the types of problems feared by the users. The technology developers were certainly not prone to problematization or self-criticism: Users’ comments evoked gut reactions, and our later discussions with the companies centered on those reactions, rather than a comprehensive analysis of all the information obtained. The technology developers were most impervious to fundamental criticisms of the service idea. This is understandable: The idea is what their company is about, and it is very difficult to accept that some people find it questionable or simply silly. In many instances, fundamental criticism was thus met with a deaf ear; it was simply disregarded. We see here entrepreneurial action rationality at work: These kinds of companies are extremely good at collectively fending off criticism toward the company’s business idea, and thus combating the inherent uncertainties of entrepreneurship. Yet this strength can also be a weakness, if limited user acceptance turns out to be an important market factor and the company is unable to embrace the new, independent knowledge. CONTRAST: USER INVOLVEMENT WITH LARGER COMPANIES It is interesting to note some differences between our recent experiences with SMEs, and our earlier experiences with larger companies. We have previously been involved in testing and evaluating user involvement exercises with larger companies in the field of eBusiness (retail chains; Heiskanen, 2005) and mobile video streaming (a telecom company; Repo, Hyvönen, Pantzar, & Timonen, 2006). In many ways, we found very different benefits and problems in those cases. Our experiences are in line with previous research suggesting that larger companies can accommodate uncertainty and ambiguity in R&D, but are slow in implementing disruptive innovations at the operational level (Damanpour, 1991; McDermott & O’Connor, 2002). In the following sections, we provide two brief examples of our experiences with larger companies in the fields of electronic grocery shopping and mobile video streaming. They serve to illustrate some contrasts to the previous cases dealing with small entrepreneurial companies. Case 3: Electronic Grocery Shopping Our previous user involvement intervention in electronic grocery shopping provides experiences of the ways in which large companies—in this case, retailer chains—deal with User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action 179 users’ suggestions for improved service design. The intervention was designed to promote user involvement in the development of environmentally and socially sustainable electronic grocery shopping services. User involvement was organized as an interactive, multistakeholder process involving representatives of two large retail chains (as well as a third retail chain not participating directly, but maintaining contact via e-mail). The intervention consisted of a 2-day workshop in spring 2002 attended by 31 consumers, eBusiness developers, and other stakeholders (NGOs and experts). Before the workshop, participants were sent an information package on the existing alternative operating models and studies on societal effects. At the workshop, participants worked in small groups with representatives from different interests, using group-work techniques, such as a modified SWOT analysis and brainstorming, to identify key problems on the first day, and then develop ideas for better designs on the second day. On both days, the groups’ conclusions were shared at plenary sessions, and the entire process and its outcomes were transcribed in a memo distributed to all participants. Some of the ideas developed at the workshop were actually not totally original, such as the various user interfaces (e.g., mobile phones and kiosks), new delivery solutions (combined deliveries of goods from different suppliers), and new solutions for supporting local food production. Other ideas were more novel, such as the “Internet-Supported Local Grocery Shop” and the “Suburban Delicatessen.” These ideas centered on using eBusiness technologies to promote the competitiveness of local corner shops by reducing inventories (and hence costs) and increasing the range of products offered. The eBusiness developers of the participating retail chains were interviewed about 6 months after the workshop. These companies had experimental eRetailing services running, and were wondering how to proceed from this experimental stage. For them, the best thing about the workshop had been how it had challenged their customary way of thinking. Their view was that electronic grocery shopping had been discussed in a much broader context than they were accustomed to within their own organization. One eBusiness manager contrasted the workshop with a large consumer survey they had conducted earlier. The workshop had supported some of their earlier findings, but had also alerted them to new issues, such as the ability of eCommerce to provide more product information, the problems of trust, and the impact of eCommerce on urban structure and corner shops. In his words, it helped combat the tunnel vision that organizations develop as they mature. Another noted that the workshop had raised some social impacts he had not been aware of, and concluded that, “It was actually quite good that there were some people there from the extreme end of the spectrum.” Although the knowledge sharing that occurred at the workshop was appreciated by the eBusiness developers, its long-term impact on actual service development was negligible. It was obvious that the two larger retail chains were not very serious about electronic grocery shopping. They were involved in eBusiness merely for the sake of experimentation, and to make sure they can keep up with the future competition if necessary. Yet they had spent quite a lot on R&D in the different distribution models, portals, and surveys. In the same vein, the results of the workshop were stored as a complementary learning experience. The third, slightly smaller company was more serious, due to a large captive investment in small retail outlets. As a result of the workshop, it refined and published a preliminary plan for an “Internet-supported local grocery shop,” but the plan never materialized due to financial and competitive constraints. The market strategy of investing in large hypermarkets thus kept its Heiskanen & Repo 180 dominance, as the more alternative approach of combining eBusiness with local shops did not fit into the strategy of the incumbent firms. Case 4: Mobile Video Streaming This case of user involvement stemmed from a need to explore meaningful uses for the novelty service of video streaming on a mobile phone. Streaming is a way of providing multimedia, such as radio shows, television shows, and home videos over information networks. In 2002, we carried out a trial, in conjunction with a mobile operator, regarding individuals watching streaming video on their mobile units. Thirteen users of various ages, gender, and backgrounds from the Helsinki metropolitan area were provided appropriately configured mobile phones, with the request that they watch a set of preselected, streamed video clips on the phone over a 1-week period. They were encouraged to watch videos in various situations and instructed to report on their experiences, routines, and activities in a diary. Two distinctly different contexts in which users considered it natural to view mobile video emerged. First, users were able to avoid boring situations by entertaining themselves. Second, mobile video made it possible to share experiences with other people by watching cartoons with children and by singing karaoke together. This second context of communal watching was something that product developers valued because it had not emerged in smallscale trials among industry professionals, nor did it comply with the stereotypical, solitary use of mobile phones. It is important to note that a trial such as this was a rare experience. The ICT industry has a long tradition of involving in-company users or users from important customer bases—socalled friendly users—in their user studies. However, these user groups are typically professionally knowledgeable about the services they test. This might be the reason why the social context of use had not previously emerged as clearly. Professionals knew better what was expected of them, and had not been particularly encouraged to experiment. The results from such typical trials relate more to technical functionality and usability. The results of the case study trial were discussed a number of times with product developers The knowledge sharing that took place was appreciated by product developers, but it did not lead to essential changes in the video service. It was rather obvious that streaming video was only one of several potential future multimedia services. Nor was streaming video expected to generate revenue in the near future. The mobile operator was involved in the video service for reasons related more to the scanning of future technologies and keeping up to date than with technological development. The case was the same for the mobile industry at large. Only recently has next-generation mobile multimedia, such as mobile television, video streaming, and mobile blogging, attracted any sizeable user base. Similarities and Differences All four cases provided here involved users who were not given strict instructions on how to behave during the trials. In other words, involvement was broader than in conventional usability testing or market research. The settings were explorative because the developers sought to learn something more than a technical understanding of users. The aim was to User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action 181 produce usable knowledge that could synthesize contexts, reasoning, experiences, and action in product development. The innovations were differently disruptive in the four cases (Table 1). Users were the target of disruption in all cases and the industries in two (Cases 1 and 4). The cases reflect well that the developers of disruptive innovations need not only to convince users. They themselves are drivers for disruption and have to convince their respective industrial partners, industrial customers, and even their own management. Disruptive innovations lead to a dynamic two-way sensemaking process. Developers need to understand the service and its new users. This is more challenging than conventional product development in which developers usually know more about existing products and existing users. Both the small and large companies considered the user involvement exercise a positive experience. The benefits they gained, even though they were used differently, revolved around the intensive interaction with a group of users. Thus, the outcomes of the exercises were not merely (or even mainly) the information imparted, but rather the kinds of encounters created. In the process, the companies learned as much about themselves as about their users. Additionally, both sets of cases also reveal that the need to respond to users depends on the competitive environment and the nature of the value chains. This aspect arose both in one of the small and one of the large company cases. Users may not be the principal customers of the service, and may be unable to obstruct its adoption (as in the case of automatic speech Table 1. Comparison of User Involvement Cases with Entrepreneurs (SMEs) and Large Companies. Case 1: Speech recognition Case 2: Mobile travel Case 3: eGrocery Case 4: Mobile video Setting of involvement Trial of a service provided by a SME Trial with two SMEs Workshops with large retailers and other stakeholders Trial with large mobile operator Description of involvement and innovation Scheduling a doctor’s appointment on a server using speech recognition Using the mobile phone as an interactive tourist guide on a walking tour in the city center Workshop focusing on alternative ways of developing electronic grocery shopping. Watching videos on mobile phone for one week and reporting experiences in diary Main target of disruptive nature of innovation Industry, users Users Users Industry, users Sensemaking Test of implementation Assessment of commercial interest Articulation of different needs & possibilities Exploration of new ideas Action Better grounds for marketing Further development of service concept Improvement of personal expertise Better understanding of service content Overall assessment Convincing business partners in value chain Direct improvement of service Understanding the possibilities and limitations of the service Getting to know a novelty better Heiskanen & Repo 182 recognition). Users’ desires and ideas can run counter to dominant producers’ strategies (as in the case of electronic grocery shopping). Hence, there are clearly instances in which users’ viewpoints have more significance and ones in which they are less influential, and companies may behave perfectly rationally in recognizing this situation. Yet the cases also illuminate some distinct differences between SMEs and large companies. The large companies appreciated the alternative interpretations and novel uses that users made of their technologies. In fact, the critical and unconventional perspectives that users brought to their products were in many cases viewed as the most valuable input of user interaction. For those large companies, user involvement provided an opportunity to learn about the possibilities and limitations of their technology, that is, to expand their horizons, to get to know new kinds of users (and nonusers), and to envision alternative scenarios for technology and service development (see also Magnusson, 2003). On the downside, the results of our user involvement interventions disappeared into these alternative, potential future worlds, never to be heard of again (see also Olson & Bakke, 2001; Vopel, 2003). It seems as if for the large companies, adept at dealing with equivocality and ambiguity, the new experiences and new knowledge have intrinsic value irrespective of whether they lead to concrete action. In contrast, the SMEs developing travel and speech recognition products shared a direct approach to user involvement. User involvement was expected to contribute something of direct commercial value. This focused the user involvement on practical issues, and also led to rapid implementation of a number of improvements. On the other hand, the SMEs were highly reluctant to question their points of departure, and they placed great value in their own experiences and personal convictions. User involvement was used to recognize potential issues, solve them (or forget them, if unsolvable), and promote products. Sensemaking and action were closely intertwined. Users were not valued so much for the full range of knowledge that they imparted, but rather for the possibility they provided the company for enacting new roles and relationships. Overall, the cases with firms primarily seeking implementation of information (Cases 1 and 2) certainly show that user involvement can be used for practical aims as part of a regular product development process. On the other hand, the other two cases (Cases 3 and 4) show that many strategic questions may remain unanswered when firms take such a pragmatic approach. DISCUSSION The idea that increased knowledge about users leads to better design is implicit in much of the writing on user involvement (Hanna et al., 1995; Leadbeater, 2006). While not everyone would subscribe to such a simple interpretation explicitly, it is often assumed that raising companies’ awareness of methods and approaches for user involvement will help them to get closer to users, to learn more about them, and hence to produce more successful innovations. If the exercises in user involvement do not appear to have been useful or to result in any changes, then the problem is attributed to the methods, and a call is raised for more sophisticated methods for user involvement. Our experiences in promoting user involvement in SME innovation processes have highlighted some of the problems involved in such an objectivist perspective on user involvement. The interpretive and sensemaking processes that new knowledge and new User Involvement and Entrepreneurial Action 183 interactions give rise to in companies are too often considered unproblematic. From a sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1995), such processes involve reinterpreting what the company itself is, and enacting new user relationships. In our SME case studies, user testers helped to identify simple problems and hitches: things that anyone would have noticed—in many cases, even the product developers themselves. Yet it seems that having “real users” test the products made the feedback more urgent and provocative. This increased the company representatives’ commitment to and accountability for the service prototype, which in turn provoked two types of slightly contradictory responses. The designers felt the need to defend their solutions, but they also felt urged to make improvements quickly. Interaction with users served to energize the product development process, to push it forward to the next stage, and to stimulate thoughts about the market launch of the product. Thus it seems that user involvement can also be utilized in the context of action rationality, as defined by Brunsson (1985). When designing appropriate user involvement approaches for high-tech startup SMEs, it is important to understand that the companies are often highly committed to a narrow application of technology in which they have invested their work and their energies for years. At this stage, companies often are not interested in learning about the alternative visions of the user, and will often resist any fundamental critique of their chosen path. Larger companies can have more alternatives because they are not driven by such entrepreneurial action logic. They usually have multiple (even mutually competing) innovation projects, and are used to the idea that some projects are screened out and never materialize (Lichtenthaler et al., 2004; Product Development Institute, Inc., 2006). In terms of organizational sensemaking, however, there was one fundamental similarity between the SME cases and our experiences with larger companies. Interaction between product developers and users was the most beneficial and important experience gained from the user involvement exercise. Much knowledge was transferred that is tacit by nature, and impossible to transcribe or report (see “sticky information”; von Hippel, 1998). This type of knowledge relates to key features of sensemaking: identity-construction, enactment, and plausibility (Weick, 1995). Accordingly, if firms wish to involve users, they should be prepared to involve themselves. The cases also provide evidence on the more strategic-level limits to user involvement. The user involvement movement seems to assume a fundamental alignment between the users’ and producers’ interests. Our experiences (with both small and large companies) show that this is not always the case. Users can be more or less important for different kinds of companies and in different market situations. Companies, especially ones involved in disruptive innovations, can therefore disregard some user input for long-term strategic reasons (see Ivory, 2004). Practitioners and researchers who wish to promote user involvement might draw two implications from this analysis. Better utilization of user involvement can be achieved by a better understanding of company-internal and company-external barriers to user involvement. In terms of internal factors, more attention should be devoted to the role of action rationality and sensemaking processes in integrating user inputs into product development. We have shown here which types of user input were helpful for SMEs developing interactive digital products. Other kinds of companies will likely have different needs. In terms of external barriers, a close analysis of the nature of technological evolution and the competitive environment could help us identify situations in which user involvement is Heiskanen & Repo 184 more or less likely to be utilized. Our cases show that even though there may not be a fundamental gap between innovation-orientation and customer-orientation, there is no automatic alignment between these perspectives either. There may be genuine conflicts of interest between innovators and users, and user involvement will not make them go away. Thus, practitioners of user involvement may need to consider the broader circumstances in which they launch their interventions (see Kensing & Blomberg, 1998): Can they select contexts in which innovators’ and users’ interests are relatively easy to align, or can they change the innovators’ operating environment through their interventions? We thus conclude that the way the user involvement process is designed is important, and that different kinds of companies may benefit from different forms of user interaction. The SMEs in our study followed a distinct action rationality, leading to rapid implementation of some user inputs, and defensiveness toward others. By contrast, the larger companies in our prior studies were more open to user input yet less determined to implement it in product development. Yet good design of the user involvement exercise can promote, but not ensure, the implementation of users’ suggestions and requirements. Firms also need to have an interest in implementation, and this depends on the competitive position of the company. 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Grudin (1990) shows the evolution of the disciplines involved from electrical engineering, to computer science, to human factors, to cognitive and social sciences and anthropology. Research methods have evolved from laboratory experiments to ethnographic studies to contextual participatory methods (see also Bødker, Kensing, & Simonsen, 2004; Ehn, 1992; Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991; Kyng, 1998). The demand for multidisciplinary research has been recognized also in the studies on organizational development. According to Eason, Harker, & Olphert (1996), it is widely accepted that effectively implementing new technology in organizations requires the integration of both technical and social developments within the system, as well as the participation of key stakeholders in this change. The high failure rate of ICT applications in organizations is mostly due to a lack of attention to organizational issues. In their review of the available methods for studying sociotechnical system opportunities early in the design process, these authors concluded, “There is a paucity of methods to help in creation of integrated solutions… [and] “the examination of organizational and human issues must take place before technical investments are made, if they are to have real influence over the design of the technical system” (Eason et al., 1996, p. 402). In order to conceptualize the entity of the sociotechnical development in Case Study I, theoretical concepts were needed that have been used in studies of technology as well as social change. This search led to studies using cultural-historical activity theory (AT). Three AT-based concepts or models were used in this study as the main heuristic tools to structure and conceptualize the findings: a) network of activity systems, b) multivocality and contradiction, and c) cycle of expansive learning. AT has been used to explore networks of interacting activity systems (Engeström & Escalante, 1996). Social and health care services are typically produced in collaboration with the client and often several institutions’ professionals. This network is directly influenced by the financiers (e.g., the municipality), tools providers (research and technology organizations), and rules providers (e.g., legislators). In this study, the concept of a network of activity systems was used to conceptualize the activity and interrelation of actors participating in the production and development of the service to be developed within the eHealth project. Figure 2 shows the network of activity systems modified from Engeström (1987, p. 89; 1995, p. 54). An activity system has been used to conceptualize the activity of each of the (institutional) actors participating in the network. AT sees human activity as a practice mediated by culturally evolved tools and artifacts. Human activity is also seen as a social, hierarchical practice, consisting of object-oriented activity of a community and goal-oriented actions and operations of individuals. Tasks (actions), divided among individuals, support the overall objectives of activity. Activity is influenced by different, culturally evolving rules and norms. When any of the elements changes (e.g., new tools are introduced into an activity system), this can impact other elements and processes of the activity (Engeström, 1987, 1995). The concepts of multivocality and contradiction were used to conceptualize the needs for development of the networked service depicted in Figure 2. According to AT, all stakeholders bring with them their voice, that is, their interests and conceptions of the object Hyppönen 194 Figure 2. A network of activity systems as a conceptualization of the service activity to be developed (based on Engeström 1987, p. 78, 88; Engeström 1995 p. 47, 54, 55; used with permission). The health care unit is the central activity system, the viewpoint of which is taken to study the development. The actors are the workers providing the service to be studied. The object activity consists of the activity systems of the clients needing the care and medical services. The object of the activity is the common target of the actors’ actions (e.g. a client’s health problem) and the motive is why the activity is performed (e.g. to cure or prevent citizen’s health problems). Different tools (concepts, artifacts, methods, and principles) are used by the actors to mediate interaction between themselves and their object, within the resources allocated for the service provision. The rules mediate the interaction between the community and the actors, and the division of work mediates the interaction between the community and the object. The other units (or, in fact, organizations) participating in the service are those with which the health care unit cooperates in order to work on the same object. These organizations can be depicted as similar activity systems with their own actors, tools, rules, communities and motives. and its development in the network. The concept of multivocality therefore helps in directing attention to the different actors’ varying interests, motives, and tools (including concrete technologies, knowledge, resources, and languages) for shaping the object (see also Miettinen 1999; Miettinen et al., 2003). According to AT, the transformation or change of an activity is triggered by contradictions. In activity-theoretical analyses, contradictions can refer to disruptions within or between the elements of an activity system, between whole activity Challenges for ICT-enhanced Service Change 195 systems, or between an old and new service activity. Mismatches between the different voices are examples of manifestations of contradictions between activity systems in the network (Engeström, 1987). A model depicting the gradual development of this network and its object/outcome through identifying and solving the contradictions through the cycle of expansive learning has been used within developmental work research to analyze and support the change (Engeström, 1987, p. 189; Engeström, 1995, p. 92). The model (see Figure 3) provided a conceptualization of the change process for this study. The development starts by an analysis of the existing model of (service) activity, which is conceptualized with help of the network of activity systems. The development is triggered by needs, the analysis of which is conceptualized by using the concepts of multivocality and contradiction. The cycle proceeds through the search for solutions to meet the needs and constructing a new model of (service) activity and tools for it. The new model of activity and its tools are conceptualized with help of the (changed) network of activity systems. These are implemented in practice. The final phase of the cycle is establishing and evaluation of the new model and its tools by comparing the old and new models of activity (see also Hyppönen, 2004). Figure 3. The model of expansive learning (based on Engeström 1987, 189; Engeström 1995, 92, 128). The line with arrows illustrates an open development and learning cycle of an activity (see Figure 2). The cycle leads to a qualitative change in the activity. The development is triggered by problems and challenges experienced by the actors in the current or existing service activity. (Box 1 illustrates this first phase of development.) Actors need to analyze the key conflicts in their activity in order to find solutions to them (Box 2). After this, a new model of activity and tools to support it can be constructed (Box 3). A new model is not just a set of corrections, but a qualitatively new way of defining the object and motive of work and related tools and division of work. The implementation and incorporation of the new practices into everyday use is depicted in Box 4. In this phase there can be contradictions between the old and new model of activity (change resistance), which is overcome by solving the contradictions. Box 5 illustrates transition into a phase, where the new practices are established into use and evaluated, leading gradually to the next cycle of development. Hyppönen 196 Activity theory has been used as a framework for enhancing design practices in computersupported collective work (CSCW; Kling 1991; Kuutti & Arvonen, 1992; Redmiles, 2002), as well as the related fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), and information systems (IS; Bertelsen & Bødker, 2000; Bødker, 1991; Kuutti, 1991; 1995; Nardi, 1996). Use in social studies of health care technologies include studies of, for example, electronic health records (Gregory, 2000), diabetes programs (Hyysalo & Lehenkari, 2003), a neuromagnetometer (Hasu, 2001), and an automatic health care alarm system (Hyysalo, 2004). Applications in developmental work research and expansive learning include studies of the development of primary care work (Launis, Simoila, Saarelma, Punamäki, & Engeström, 1991; Saarelma, Launis, & Simoila 1994), specialized care (Kajamaa, 2005), occupational health (Engeström, 2003), and the development of joint work practices between primary and specialized care (Engeström, Engeström, & Kerosuo, 2003; Vähäaho, 1999). Embedded in the model of expansive learning is an idea that the development is triggered by contradictions in the network and it proceeds by solving these problems. However, in both cases analyzed in this study, the actors who generated the ideas for (service) development and the new eService concepts as solutions to problems in the service activity were mainly different from those participating in provision of the service developed. Thus the (ICT) project networks were largely external to and independent of the service provider’s networks (the networks of the potential users of the technologies). In either case, further understanding the interrelations between these two networks was needed. It has been suggested that the network conceptualizations of actor network theory (ANT) could be used to expand the AT network conceptualizations (Miettinen, 1999; see also Lehenkari, 2006). Studies applying ANT and AT in the analysis of innovations (Hasu, 2001; Hyysalo, 2004; Miettinen, 1999) offered a basis for reflection and further elaboration of the conceptual framework. For this study, Callon’s ideas on the co-construction of the object and actor network with the concepts of innovator, enrollment, and translation of interests (Callon, 1986a, 1986b; Law & Callon, 1992) provided useful heuristic tools. These concepts helped to detect the shifts of control between the service provider’s network and the ICT project network in both of the cases in this study during the different phases of development. There are potential conceptual conflicts when combining AT and ANT, which Miettinen (1998) has analyzed. Both are interested in the simultaneous development process of an artifact and a network of actors connected to it: the shaping and being shaped of the social and material. However, ANT has adopted a principle of generalized symmetry in order to surpass the juxtaposition between the subject and object. The notion of the actor in ANT refers thus to both humans and artifacts (Callon 1986a). In this respect, the present study adopted an activity-theoretical approach. In AT, the subjects (humans) and the objects (technology, the law, etc.) do not possess a symmetrical position. This follows from a notion of object-oriented historically developing activity, which is mediated by cultural signs, tools and artifacts (Vygotsky, 1979, p. 54). The orientation of the activity of subjects (human actors) towards an object to be shaped is the key principle. The empirical findings of Case Study I and II are presented in the next sections. The different phases of the development are numbered in the text with the headings “Phase 1” to “Phase 4” to follow the phases of expansive learning depicted in Figure 3. Challenges for ICT-enhanced Service Change 197 CASE STUDY I: CONSTRUCTION OF A MODEL FOR STUDYING CODEVELOPMENT OF SERVICE AND TECHNOLOGY The objectives of Case Study 1 were a) to provide an in-depth study of a sociotechnical innovation process in health care from the idea generation phase through to established use, and b) to structure the findings with help of conceptual tools in order to generate a conceptualization of the process of codevelopment of the eHealth service and technology. An eHealth project was selected that had developed award-winning Internet-based service innovations (Internet shopping and Internet counseling) for home-care in one Social and Health Care Office in the Helsinki area. The project was part of a larger EU Telematics Applications Programme project (1994-1998). The aim of the Finnish subproject was to demonstrate the applicability of information and communication technologies in home-care and home nursing services. The project was completed 2 years before my study was initiated in 2000, which made the longer-term impacts visible for study and analysis. In the following, I analyze the development following the phases in the model of expansive learning (Figure 3). Findings Phase 1: The Needs State In 1994, two researchers in the social and health care research institute began to innovate an ICT project, which later became a subproject in an EU project. Both individuals had expertise in medical informatics and service accessibility, which they wanted to exploit. They shared an interest in seeing how modern information technologies could be used to develop homecare services, as well as an interest in participating in EU-supported activities. Early on, they viewed Internet shopping as one possible application. The researchers enrolled the city planning office to obtain the municipality’s support required for joining an EU proposal with a national substudy. The city planning office also was interested in the possibilities of the Internet and joined the researchers in drafting a project plan. The city’s participating officer saw the project as an opportunity to use modern technology to improve the image of a particular city suburb that was developing into a problematic neighborhood. The city planning office had good cooperation with a teleoperator, a software company, and a hardware supplier, for whom the city was a big client. These technical partners joined the network in order to serve an established client. They also had products that they wanted to sell with help of the project. The city planning office finally offered the project to the social services office at the finalizing stage of preparing the project proposal. The social services office manager agreed, becoming the representative of the service network in the ICT project group. The office manager saw the ICT project as an opportunity to reallocate part of the increasing workload of the home-care workers to private subcontractors. To care for an increasing number of clients, the office had received some extra funding (resources) from the municipality for buying services from subcontractors, but not for increasing their own service production. Altogether, the office listed seven services where ICTs could be implemented, of which all but two were abandoned prior to or soon after the clinical trials started. Of these, the eShopping application addressed a specific problem: that of caring for an increasing Hyppönen 198 number of clients without increasing the number of agency’s staff. The needs states for the other ICT applications were not so well defined, but rather were motivated by a general wish to see how ICTs could be applied in home care. Home-care shopping and home-care counseling were the only two services where the electronic applications remained in use after the project ended. The development of the eShopping service is addressed here in more detail. Phase 2: Analysis of the Needs, Search for Solutions The preimplementation network of the service activity systems (see Figure 2) consisted of three primary actors: the home-care workers employed by the social services office, their clients, and the local shops. The home-care worker made the grocery list together with the client, or picked it up from the client’s home, and purchased the groceries. Sometimes the worker went to the shop with the client as part of the rehabilitation. Prior to implementing the Internet shopping application, tools used in this activity were the shop advertisements, workers’ knowledge of shop products and clients’ preferences, and the handwritten grocery lists. According to a client survey, home-care clients were very satisfied with the assistance they received from the social services office in terms of grocery shopping. The home-care workers, clients, and local shopkeepers had not participated in planning of the project. The interests of some of the actors (the users) or inherent contradictions of the shopping assistance service were not analyzed to inform the decision-making about the solutions. No alternative solutions were sought for the problems experienced by the office manager. A year after the project had started, and when the Internet shop application was nearly ready to be implemented, it was calculated that each shop visit took an average of 1.5 hours of a worker’s time, which added up to two person-years at the office level. If two years of work time could be saved with help of ICT, the saved time could be allocated for the care of several new clients. There was still no knowledge at that time about the competence and motivation of the clients and shops to implement the solution. Phase 3: Creation of a New eService Model and Implementation Tools The software provider in the ICT project had an Internet shopping application that the project planners believed local shops would be eager to implement as part of improving their service. In the eService model envisioned by the ICT project group, home-care clients would order groceries directly from the shop via the Internet from their home computers, and the shop would deliver the order to the client. The model would eliminate up to two person-years’ time of the home-care workers currently used in manually providing such a service. The hardware provider would provide the equipment and the teleoperator the network connection. The project network operated for nearly a year to develop the technology for this envisioned service model. When implementing the model, it became evident in practice that the envisioned service model in fact could not be realized: The shops were not interested in selling their products over the Internet and the clients, and even some home-care workers, were unable to use the technology. After many difficulties, the social services office managed to negotiate a partial deal with one shopkeeper. The store was willing to give its product data to the Web service maintained by the software provider. However, the shop did not want to receive shopping lists via the Internet nor to collect and deliver the groceries. The social services office Challenges for ICT-enhanced Service Change 199 enrolled a delivery company to collect and deliver groceries. Yet, this delivery company did not want to receive the lists directly from the clients by phone or the Internet. Many clients were not willing or able to use the computer or Internet for ordering groceries. The only option left for the social services office was to designate one of the home-care workers to receive clients’ shopping lists by phone, enter the data into the Web shopping application on behalf of the clients, and send the information over the Internet to the delivery company. Phase 4: Implementation and Diffusion of the New eService Model Receiving and mediating clients’ shopping lists became a major part of one home-care worker’s work. The Web shopping application was not designed to be used over the telephone in real time since it had thousands of products with poor search functions. The office worker ended up writing the clients’ lists by hand on paper. After the phone call, she entered the data into the Web application. The service providers tried to make the best of the technologies, but the real needs of the actors participating in the eService provision did not coincide with features of the technologies. Feedback from the service providers to develop the software came so late that new developments could not be started within the project time frame. At the end of the project, the software company did not continue the innovation process in cooperation with service providers, due to the poor outlook on getting a return on their investments. They had no interest in redesigning the application. The shop had no interest in updating the product list, and the social services office had no interest in the double work. In spite of much effort put in the development, the social services office had to give up on the Internet application about a year after the project ended. After this, clients’ telephone-generated shopping lists were written by hand directly onto fax sheets, and then faxed to the delivery company. The Internet technology was abandoned, but the service model that was created to use it remained. The new eService model did not spread in the organization. Phase 5: Establishing and Evaluating the New Model of Activity and Its Tools The fax-based shopping model ultimately established in the social services office did help to outsource part of the home care workers work to the delivery company, but other objectives and expectations set for the project were not met: to rationalize work, cut costs, and improve the quality of the service. From the social services office perspective, the idea of saving two person-years had turned into using one person-year on the phone and securing the other person-year from the private delivery company. By reducing the frequency of the service from 5 to 2 days per week, further resources could be saved and used for the care of new clients. The new IT-based service model revealed further needs to develop other aspects of the shopping service, such as tools and rules for assessing clients’ needs and calculating service costs. These impacts had not been anticipated. From the perspective of home-care clients, the service quality was reduced radically. Apart from the shopping frequency being reduced from daily to two times per week, the transferring of shopping lists via phone and hand-written faxes caused many misunderstandings. Clients’ knowledge about the shop products diminished when they or their caregivers no longer visited the shop. Many clients also had difficulties in using the phone to order the groceries. The service operated inflexibly, serving primarily the needs of the Hyppönen 200 delivery company (to do the round as quickly as possible to make the service economically feasible). Clients had difficulties in matching the arrival time of groceries, the arrival time of the home-care worker, the timetables of other services, and their own everyday schedules. Case I Conclusions: Codevelopment of Service and Technology Structured with the Conceptual Tools Case Study I illustrated the ill fate of a technology-led implementation project. The serviceproviding network and the technology-oriented ICT project network remained mainly as two separate networks, with distinct objects of development and little collaboration. One cycle of expansive learning (see Figure 3) did not seem sufficient to depict the totality of the development. As depicted in Figure 4, two cycles were required: one depicting the development cycle of the shopping service (the larger cycle) and another one depicting the development cycle of the electronic application planned to be implemented in the service (the smaller). How these two cycles and actors within them interacted—or, rather, did not interact—became the main focus of interest in Case Study I. The (ICT) project network that focused on developing the electronic applications was in control of the development until it was time to implement the eService application. The control is depicted by a solid line in the ICT applications development cycle. A broken line in the service development cycle in phases 1-3.1 illustrates the lack of participation of the actors in the service-providing network in shaping the ICTs and the eService concept to be implemented. When the implementation efforts failed, the control shifted towards the service network. The networks cooperated for a short time in order to create a solution that could be piloted. This is depicted by the solid lines of both cycles between phases 3.1-3.2. Once the solution had been created, the main control shifted to the service network (solid line). The project network trained the users, but the service network was left to incorporate the application into everyday use, develop alternative ways to make best of it, and give feedback to the project network. The project network did not update the technology to accommodate for the use realities (broken line), and the project cycle ended without the created technologies becoming established into use. The lack of adequate collaboration early in the project and again in the implementation phase made it difficult for the networks to learn from each other. The ICT project network acted as the innovator. In Phase 1, the project network’s view about the actual service activity and the needs within remained vague. Analysis of the old model of service provision was not done to provide the baseline information about the system and preconditions for its change. In Phase 2, an analysis of the actual contradictions in the service provision to find the development needs was not performed. The conflicting interests and needs were not found to inform solutions to be selected. The project network’s view of the problems, needs, and conceptions of the different users was dictated by the technology available through the technical partners rather than being user focused. The lack of information exchange between the networks and the partially contradicting views about the needs and solutions within the service network (of which the project network was not aware until late in the development) is illustrated with the lightning arrows in Phases 1 and 2. The construction of the new eService model and technical solutions to support it was done by the project network. It was not grounded Challenges for ICT-enhanced Service Change 201 Figure 4. Codevelopment of services and technology in Case I, structured with help of the model of expansive learning (cf. Figure 3). The larger cycle (red) depicts the phases of development and expansive learning within the shopping assistance service. The key actors were home care staff, clients, and local shops. The smaller cycle (blue) depicts the phases of development of the new tools for the shopping assistance and expansive learning within the tools developers (the ICT project group). This group consisted of technology providers, researchers, the city council, and the manager of the social services office. The project group acted as innovators and leaders of the development. In each of the phases, there were problems the collaboration between the two groups of actors due to inadequate information transfer between them, depicted by the lightning arrows. Weak influence of the service providers on the tools development in phases 1-3.1 is illustrated as a broken line of the service development cycle during these phases. Weak input of the tools developers in Phase 4 (lack of updating and further developing the tools) is illustrated as a broken line of the ICT development cycle during these phases. Abandoning the ICT-based tools in the service is depicted by ending of the ICT development cycle before Phase 5. in the needs, interests, and possibilities of the service network (the network of users). This became evident only when the project network model was to be implemented. The mismatch between the project network view and the view of the user network (of which the project was not aware at this phase) is illustrated by the lightning arrow in Phase 3.1. When the project network became aware of the mismatch, a new eService model was constructed with help of the service network. The eService model was redesigned, but the technology was not: It had been developed for the previous, unrealistic eService model. The mismatch between the piloted eService model and the technology implemented was realized during the piloting by the service providers. The mismatch is represented by a lightning arrow in Phase 4. The feedback was given to the technology providers, but they had no interest in updating the technology when the pilot ended, whereby it was abandoned. This is represented by the broken line at the end of the technology development cycle. An eService model was established, but the Internet technology designed to support it was not. Prior studies have shown the need for cooperation of all network actors at early stages: Technology providers or IT researchers are not experts on everyday service provisions, with Hyppönen 202 their problems and challenges, nor on the planning and development of social and health care services. These are not the technology providers’ core tasks. Service providers are not experts in the opportunities that technologies can offer (see also Eason et al., 1996; Schoech, 2002). Better cooperative planning between the project network and the service network from the start could have helped the project to ground the development of IT to the actual needs of the service network. Using effective methods for collaboration in analyzing user needs and selecting solutions could have helped the project to codesign the new eService model and IT to support it (Eason et al., 1996; Gregory, 2000; Hasu, 2001; Lyons & Kearns, 1997). Previous research also shows the lengthy and demanding process of technology implementation, during which the technology and its use are reformed (Hasu, 2001; McLaughlin et al., 1999). At best, the cooperation will provide a continuous forum for improvement of technology and its use (Victor & Boynton, 1998). The technological development in Case I did not reach this state. Improving the implementation results could have been attempted by allowing time for the collection of feedback from users and an iteration of the service model and technologies to fit the needs of different stakeholders. This would have required commitment of the key project network stakeholders after the EU project had ended. On the basis of Case I results, four questions about the co-construction of technology and eService could be formulated that proved important in determining the outcome of the development: • Phase 1: Which and whose problems and needs is the eService development based on? • Phase 2: How are the alternative solutions defined and by whom? • Phase 3: How are the service and technology defined as objects of development and thus co-constructed? • Phases 4-5: How does the co-construction continue after implementation? In the next section, the conceptualization created in Case I is implemented in another eHealth project (Case II) in order to study the practical value of the conceptualization in the context of formative evaluation. Case II was an ongoing case where the conceptualization was used to produce information and feed it back to the project managers for corrective action during the development project. CASE STUDY II: EVALUATION OF A NATIONAL ePRESCRIBING PILOT The Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (STM) initiated a national ePrescribing project in 2000. The project was one of four strategic projects of the STM in implementing the National eHealth Strategy (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland [STM], 1995, 2006). The project developed and piloted a national concept for ePrescribing in Finland from 2000 to 2006, which was implemented in four pilot organizations and surrounding pharmacies in Finland. The piloting was arranged to guide the decision-making about the national implementation of the service and related ePrescribing legislation. At the end of 2003, the STM called for an evaluation of the pilot project through its research and development organization, the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES). The aim of the evaluation was to help direct the project work Challenges for ICT-enhanced Service Change 209 implementation of the system. Even if the pilot system was not yet working well in the pilot areas, there was a strong political will to go ahead with the rules development and expand the system to national level. The evaluation provided some indication of the reasons for poor success in the pilot areas, and some of the issues were addressed in the bill and the new ePrescribing legislation. Case II indicated that ongoing (formative) evaluation can provide useful information to steer decision-making but, if the information does not support the political objectives, it may not be implemented. Further research is needed in the context of policy implementation projects to study the applicability of the conceptualization. Case II raised questions about transferring methods used in local ICT projects to national level projects. The study collected and analyzed data from Case II, and fed the results back to the project group to be used in the decisions about the development and to the national policy makers to inform the permanent legislation on electronic prescriptions. This approach can be likened to the approach of “constructive technology assessment,” which attempts to extend technology assessment to all phases of technology development, including its earliest stages (Rip, Misa, & Schot, 1995). The approach builds a bridge between formal and informal evaluation conducted by different social groups. It places emphasis not only on “what impacts,” but also on “whose impacts” gain attention (Freeman, 1995). The request from the STM to conduct a process and outcome evaluation on a national eHealth pilot can be interpreted as a wish to move towards a more dialogical approach in policy implementation practices, with a will to bring forward the voices of different stakeholders during the formulation of the permanent ePrescribing legislation. Collecting empirical data for decision-making during a national policy implementation project is not yet very common, which led to some mixed feelings in the highlevel steering and management groups. This is at least part of the reason for the poor immediate impacts of the feedback. Another reason may be the late start of the evaluation and that the piloting project was not designed to be adjusted with the feedback. Further research is required in which the conceptualization is applied from early on (from Phase 1) to draw further conclusions on the applicability of the conceptualization in providing support for projects. In spite of their differences, both cases shared the same challenge of balancing different objects of development. The project plans did not accommodate for the shaping of multiple objects or for changes in the direction or speed of the development. Both cases suffered from the lack of analysis of and learning from the practices in which the technologies were to be implemented. Both projects had inadequate forums, methods, and tools for a balanced coconstruction of multiple objects. Importantly, however, neither of these cases is atypical for contemporary practices. Therefore, as the results indicate, eHealth projects need a better understanding of multiple objects of development (e.g., the service, its tools, and its rules) and how to co-construct them in a balanced manner. The projects also need concrete and clear skills and methods to manage the totality of change, to collaborate and learn from others throughout the development. 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I am grateful to the Academy of Finland, STAKES, and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, who have funded various sections of this study. I thank all the interviewees and colleagues who have dedicated their time and commented on the results of the two case studies. All correspondence should be addressed to: Hannele Hyppönen Stakes Unit of eHealth and eWelfare Stakes/National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health Lintulahdenkuja 4 FI-00531 Helsinki, Finland [email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 214–227 214 USING/DESIGNING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES OF REPRESENTATION IN ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN KNOWLEDGE PRACTICES Abstract: Indigenous Australians are often keen to use digital technologies in their struggle to develop sustainable livelihoods on their own lands. This paper tells of gradually coming to recognize how an Aboriginal Australian elder struggled against the grain of digital technologies designed to represent, in using them in Aboriginal Australian knowledge practices where knowledge is always actively performative rather than representional. The performance of Aboriginal knowledge must express the remaking of an ancestral reality. At the same time, this man exploited possibilities the technologies offered for representation in achieving political ends in dealing with representatives of mainstream Australia. Keywords: indigenous Australian knowledge; Yolngu Aboriginal concepts; use and design of digital technologies of representation. INTRODUCTION Many indigenous people in northern Australia are beginning to use digital technologies in promoting the interests of their traditional groupings, clan lands, histories, connections, and places. In some instances they see these interests as coinciding with the incorporation of modern infrastructure into their life-ways, mobilizing resources—both cultural and natural— in exchange for money and/or to achieve recognition of their rights to participate in ongoing negotiations over resources. In these situations, they might find themselves using digital technologies in dealing with mining companies, government departments and/or tourism operators. At other times, they see the interests of their lands and peoples as best served using digital technologies in extending the ways they practice their own indigenous knowledge. © 2007 Helen Verran, Michael Christie, and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007281 Helen Verran School of Philosophy University of Melbourne Australia Michael Christie Learning Research Group Charles Darwin University Australia Digital Technologies and Aboriginal Knowledge 215 Often strong emotional reasons are involved. Perhaps the most potent reason that some groups of Aboriginal Australians are beginning to engage in negotiations around use of digital technologies relates to the concern that Aboriginal parents and grandparents have for their youngsters. Some feel that many in the younger generation are growing up without a robust indigenous identity that is based in a strong grasp of their community’s knowledge traditions. These elders endorse the use of computer databases and other digital technologies to work with audio files, texts, photos, videos, maps, lists, and so forth, to help with their work of teaching. They see possibilities in digital technologies for continuing the work elders have always done in Aboriginal family groups—using whatever resources come to hand in the work of regenerating clan and place as one, so as to ensure the continued health and wellbeing of both the land and the people. Nevertheless a significant number of indigenous and nonindigenous people respond with horror to the idea of using digital technologies in indigenous knowledge practices. Many people feel that computers and other digital tools will do more harm than good. Are digital technologies compatible with Australian indigenous knowledge that maintains that all knowledge is performance by a particular person or group? Many people are concerned about disenfranchising Aboriginal knowledge authorities, further marginalizing legitimate Aboriginal interests, diverting energy and resources from Aboriginal priorities, backgrounding Aboriginal sensibilities and sensitivities about valid knowledge practices, and misappropriating intellectual property. In short, there is a widespread suspicion that digital technologies can only work by treating the knowledge of indigenous Australians as a commodity. The anxiety is well grounded, but so too are the worries of those who value the experience of being on their own lands and learning from today’s generation of elders. They want to keep that experience in a useable form for generations to come. This paper considers an approach to digital technology use and design grounded in this dilemma. We understand this process as work that involves the intersection of two quite different knowledge traditions, where little is held in common between the ways the traditions understand themselves. Our response is to problematize the process of use and design of digital technologies. We take each situation as and where it arises and adapt our ways of proceeding to attend as best we can to competing demands. The processes of the research are emergent and situated. This means that our research is and is not scientific, and likewise is and is not Aboriginal knowledge making. We feel the research project described in this paper is best understood as a form of philosophy. Our approach is inspired by Lucy Suchman’s writing. Informed as it is by the feminist studies of science and technology, she asks the seemingly odd question, “Where are designers?” (2002: 94). Suchman proposes that designers conventionally understand their work in one of three ways: as “design from nowhere”; as “detached intimacy”; or as “located accountability.” The last of these is the most responsible, according to Suchman, and allows us to recognize that users too are designers (2002: 95–96). In this paper we develop this idea with reference to a project undertaken with a Yolngu Aboriginal Australian elder, Mängay Guyula, turning technologies that Western users generally understand as producing faithful representations to serve quite different purposes in Yolngu Aboriginal knowledge practices. We see this work as a form of design in use. Verran & Christie 216 CONTRIVING WITNESS OF PLACE IN ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA Like most people in most places, Aboriginal inhabitants of northern Australia are concerned that development of their lands does not come to dominate the processes that renew the ongoing collective life within those places. Rather they are keen to deal with other places in ways that can be harnessed to enrich and strengthen their ongoing collective life. However, in Aboriginal places, ensuring that development remains contained within particular Aboriginal realities is often very actively pursued in Aboriginal ontologies: Place is pre-eminent. In those metaphysics, all meaning flows from place so that the knowledge practices involved in doing the collective knowing of place in Aboriginal life is of a different order than for other sorts of Australian places. After 200 years of colonization, most of the ancient Aboriginal languages of Australia have been lost, and it is only in very remote places that Aboriginal youngsters grow up speaking pre-European languages, albeit with borrowings from languages of the English, Macassan, Afgan, and other visitors and invaders. In the far northeast of Australia’s Northern Territory, organized into about 20 clans some 5,000 people, the Yolngu continue to speak traditional languages and practice traditional religion and culture, and generally run their collective life through Yolngu ontologies and epistemologies. Most Yolngu people live in small towns that have developed from Christian mission stations established in the 20th century. But many live in small settlements on their clan lands, which they own collectively through a form of freehold land title. In this paper we use an image of one of our coresearchers, Mängay Guyula, as emblematic (Figure 1). For us it is an emblem expressing the profound ongoing relations between Aboriginal Australians and their lands. It shows how the histories of particular families and particular places are indissolubly linked. Mängay is a Yolngu Aboriginal man of the Liya-Dhälinymirr clan that lives at a place called Mirrngatja, on the eastern margins of the Arafura swamp in central Arnhem Land in the north east of Australia’s Northern Territory. In 2003, accompanied by his friend John Greatorex, Mängay visited 19 places around the edge of the Arafura swamp, a significant site in Australia’s national heritage listings. In each place, while John filmed, Mängay spoke of its history, the ancestral journeys it features in, its location in the complex patterns of Yolngu land ownership, and the varied responsibilities for and interests in that place invested in different groups of Yolngu people. Mängay exhorted and instructed, demonstrated and explained. These short biographies of significant places were delivered in Mängay’s LiyaDhälinymirr language. Later, while working in the School of Australian Indigenous Knowledges at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, the Northern Territory’s largest city, Mängay’s younger brother Yingiya Guyula recorded an English language version of the talks or recitals that Mängay had recorded in each of those 19 places. Having persuaded his friend John to help him, Mängay undertook the arduous work of doing this filming. He felt there was an urgent need to speak about these places in two separate cultural arenas or polities. Given the profound meanings of place in Aboriginal metaphysics, however, this description of Mängay’s work does not really convey the work’s cultural significance for Yolngu. We can better understand the importance of Mängay’s project if we see his performances for the video camera while standing in various named places as acts of witness in the sense of giving testimony. Digital Technologies and Aboriginal Knowledge 217 Figure 1. This is an image taken from a video clip (Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia [IKRMNA], n.d.-a). It shows Mängay telling a story of a place named Djilpin while standing in that place and speaking to a video camera. He points to an image of his father’s father, Minyipirriwuy, who is wearing ancestral sacred objects that guarantee his grandfather’s authority to speak and, in turn, legitimates Mängay’s speaking. The photograph Mängay is holding was taken in the 1930s by anthropologist Donald Thompson. Mängay obtained the image from the Donald Thompson Collection at the Museum of Victoria (Guyula & Guyula, 2005). Image © Mängay Guyula. Used with permission. These are the two cultural arenas Mängay sought to address. First, the project aimed at familiarizing Mängay’s kin with their ancestral places. These mostly young Yolngu people have traditional claims to these various places but are not living on, and in some cases might never have visited, these clan lands. Mängay saw possibilities in using video footage for promoting familiarity between people and places, enriching the ways those links are celebrated both informally and formally. This work can be understood as contributing to processes that fold histories back on themselves, thus regenerating collective life, reconnecting families and places. Second, and of equal immediate concern, was making sure that non-Aboriginal people who were planning the installation of a pipeline (inside a two-meter-deep trench across thousands of kilometers) south of the Arafura swamp knew that the land has a story, and that the places have people keeping the story alive. It is the Aboriginal people who need to tell that story and have an active, authoritative role in negotiations over access to those lands and to resources. Mängay was concerned about other strangers intruding onto the land. Like many Yolngu, he has a keen ear for the sound of vehicles and survey planes in the far distance, and the sight of unrecognizable vehicle tracks. YOLNGU METAPHORS THAT HELP UNDERSTAND YOLNGU ONTOLOGY OF PLACE In this section we articulate some of the metaphors that Yolngu Aboriginal people use to theorize their work of regenerating clan and place as one, something they see as crucial in maintaining the health of both their communities and the ecosystems that sustain them. Why Verran & Christie 218 do we elaborate what seems like arcane anthropological detail in a paper about use and design of digital technologies? Of course it provides useful background to Mängay’s project, but we see these metaphors as doing more than that: We understand this Yolngu theorizing as articulating allegories useful for understanding innovation in a general sense, as providing a basis for imagining the processes of design in use—the focus of this paper. They are means of imagining relations between producers, users, and regulators. This is as salient to technological innovation as it is to the remaking of place and clan as one. Before we turned our attentions to digital technologies, our work with Yolngu had been in the context of schooling: elaborating processes known as “Aboriginalization” and “both ways learning.” These emerged from a long process whereby Aboriginal people and the knowledge traditions that belong to them were gradually incorporated into the curriculum of government schools on Aboriginal lands and in Aboriginal communities. Long and careful negotiations between teachers in the schools and community elders had given rise to articulations of traditional Yolngu epistemologies, metaphysics, and ontologies specifically useful in innovation in cross-cultural and intercultural education (Christie, 2000; MarikaMununggiritj, 1991a, 1991b; Ngurruwutthun, 1991; Watson, 1990a; Watson and White, 1993; Wunungmurra, 1989). Two constructs that Yolngu have contributed to the public arena of indigenous education in Australia are particularly cogent in understanding Yolngu imperatives for digital technologies and knowledge of place. The first, the concept of garma, drew our attention to a distinctive Aboriginal epistemology that has something in common with European constructivism, except that place is a crucial determinant of knowledge in the Yolngu epistemology. The Yolngu concept of garma denotes, in the first instance, an open ceremonial ground where different groups (always necessarily representing different places and correspondingly different languages) come together for negotiated performances. It is this open, public space (usually alongside a closed secret/sacred space) where ancestral histories are performed in the context of contemporary issues, and where current truth claims are presented and assessed. Key to understanding the garma philosophy is the principle that each individual participates in the negotiation and playing out of a collective history, while carefully, publicly, producing a distinctive performance of his or her own unique provenance. Slight differences in the ways feet or hands dance, for example, can be read by the literate as an articulation (and a celebration) of something small but highly significant and distinctive in the particular history of a small group’s land and its connections. In this epistemology, the actual place of negotiation is always ontologically prior to the work of making truth. Someone always already owns the garma site, and gives it up for the work of a properly supervised, properly accredited process of knowledge work. The notion of garma has been used to describe the effective processes of intercultural schooling, where Western and Aboriginal knowledge traditions are choreographed to work together productively, with the integrity of each unimpaired, in education (Ngurruwutthun, 1991, pp. 107–122; Watson, 1990b), intercultural community building, and cross-cultural communication (Cass et al., 2002). The garma is interesting because it produces a unified truth from necessarily divergent perspectives, from different performers bringing their knowledge, experience, particular artifacts (ancestral designs, musical themes, shapes, colors, etc.), particular styles, and histories to the collaboration. Yolngu could use the metaphor of garma to describe what Mängay is doing holding the photograph, standing in front of sacred Digital Technologies and Aboriginal Knowledge 225 interpretations, and by others (White Australians) as definitive valid representations. Mängay and Yingiya were determined to use the capacities of the video footage and DVD technology to come up with a product that would speak strongly to an English-speaking audience. Here they were quite comfortable with utilizing the apparent definitive representation of the places seemingly naturally achieved through using technologies of representation. The seeming linear connection between place and owner captured in the video footage, and the capacity of the video images to convey a simplification of Yolngu place, was to be mobilized to allow the DVD product to make strong claims in the wider Australian political context, promoting the interests of both place and people. Increasing the efficacy of the DVD in achieving this end inspired the work John and Yingiya subsequently undertook in recording Yingiya translating Mängay’s commentary to provide an English language voice-over, and Trevor’s work in contriving a display that allows the two brothers to speak on screen almost simultaneously. The contrivance of two brothers sharing the one screen—the senior brother speaking Liya-Dhälinymirr while standing in place, the junior brother filmed in an evidently “other” context, speaking English—increased the capacity of the DVD to speak to the mainstream Australian polity promoting the interests of these Yolngu places and their peoples. It retained the powerful authenticity of Mängay speaking Liya-Dhälinymirr in giving Yolngu testimony of place while allowing English speakers to hear Mängay’s message. For Yolngu viewers, the contrivance of the two brothers speaking simultaneously disrupts the experience of viewing the footage—the already very difficult work of simultaneously seeing the landscape and seeing through the landscape to experience a transcendental reality embedded within it. The disruption worried us at first, but later we came to understand the disruption as useful. It speaks to the problem that the display inertia embedded in DVD authoring technology causes for Aboriginal knowledge practices, and it also adds force to Mängay’s instructions to his Yolngu kin on how to read this new genre of witnessing place through viewing a DVD. The sight of Yingiya speaking English against a background contrived from a creased yellow bed sheet, contrasts powerfully with his older brother’s witness while standing in place. It reinforces Mängay’s exhortations to care for and know the many places that Yolngu viewers and their families have interests in, some of which Mängay is seen performing. It supports the urgency conveyed in Mängay’s performance; implicitly it reminds Yolngu viewers of the dangers of neglecting to attend to, of becoming one with, their places. In the terms of the second Yolngu metaphor we found useful, the inset square reminds Yolngu viewers that the performance they are currently viewing on a TV screen is not a garma. It is merely a prologue or an epilogue to a garma, where multiple interests come together in a spirit of serious negotiation and world making. A Yolngu audience watching East of the Arafura Swamp is powerfully implicated in significant work. The interruption of the silent talking head mouthing English words reminds viewers that, while it is the testimony of Mängay on display, it is they, the audience, who now must do the work. For a Yolngu viewer, the silent talking head of Yingiya is an unspoken reminder of difference, and provides a commentary on the inadequacies of technologies designed for Western knowledge practices when used by Yolngu for Yolngu purposes. Verran & Christie 226 CONCLUSION The Yolngu philosophy of garma makes clear the possibility of Yolngu knowledge work being achieved as performance in place by any number of diverse groups (with their own places, languages, and speaking positions), provided that the acceptable practices for the envelopment of place are rigorously observed. These possibilities are maintained and expanded in several ways when digital technologies are included. Our problem in supporting Mängay’s use and redesign in use of digital technologies designed for representation was (and remains) that the digital technologies on hand could not—and can not—allow Mängay and others to fully negotiate their metaphysics in doing their knowledge work. Using the hardware and software currently available, he was and is limited to working against the use of technologies to make representations of place, a use that seems to fit “naturally” with the technology, a mode of doing a world that derives from and speaks to Western metaphysics. The technology cannot allow a fully achieved performativeness, one that embodies the uniqueness of each presentation so essential to the Yolngu metaphysics. Our work in supporting Mängay would conventionally be called a project, but our understanding of what a project is differs from the common positive modern usage of the term. We take the term project rather literally, using it to allude to the planning, contriving, or designing of a “throwing forth.” By using project more as a verb than a noun, we emphasize the uncertainty and vagueness pervasive in any throwing and lodging of a grappling hook on the future. This activates our configuration of the time and place of our research work: It helps it become a context where the future is brought into the present, and using technology becomes instead (re)designing technology. Characterizing this approach as located accountability, we have formulated our stories to reveal what (re)design implicit in use might be in a particular episode. In this instance, (re)design-in-use turned out to be assisting in working against the fully achieved capacities of the technologies to represent. We had to content ourselves with achieving just enough of an undoing to enable the technologies to be used in knowledge practices where each instance of performance is a unique bringing into being, choreographed for a particular momentary-situated purpose, while at the same time exploiting possibilities for producing definitive presentations of the Yolngu places for political ends when dealing with mainstream Australia. REFERENCES Cass, A., Lowell, A., Christie, M., Snelling, P., Flack, M., & Marrngany, B. (2002). Sharing the true stories: Improving communication between Aboriginal patients and healthcare workers. The Medical Journal of Australia, 176, 466–470. Christie, M. (2000). Galtha: The application of Aboriginal philosophy to school learning. New Horizons in Education, 103, 3–19. Guyula M., & Guyula Y. (Producers). (2005). East of the Arafura Swamp [DVD]. Darwin, Australia: Charles Darwin University. Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia [IKRMNA]. (n.d.-a). Mängay’s project. Retrieved November 28, 2006, from http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/db_mangay.html Digital Technologies and Aboriginal Knowledge 227 Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia [IKRMNA]. (n.d.-b). TAMI--a database and file management system for Indigenous use. Retrieved November 28, 2006 from http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/db_TAMI.html Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia [IKRMNA]. (2005). Workshops at Merri Creek Productions. Retrieved November 28, 2006, from http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/whatwedo5.html Marika-Mununggiritj, R. (1991a). How can Balanda (white Australians) learn about the Aboriginal world? Ngoonjook, 8, 17–25. Marika-Mununggiritj, R. (1991b). Some notes on principles for Aboriginal pedagogy. Ngoonjook, 8, 33–34. Marika-Mununggiritj, R., & Christie, M. J. (1995). Yolngu metaphors for learning. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 113, 59–62. Ngurruwutthun, D. (1991). The Garma project. In R. Bunbury, W. Hastings, J. Henry, & R. McTaggart (Eds), Aboriginal Pedagogy: Aboriginal Teachers Speak Out (pp. 107–122). Melbourne, Australia: Deakin University Press. Suchman, L. (2002). Located accountabilities in technology production. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14, 91–105. Watson, H. (1990a). The Ganma Project: Research in mathematics education by the Yolngu community in the schools of the Laynhapuy (N.E. Arnhemland). In G. Davis & R. Hunting (Eds.), Language issues in teaching and mathematics (pp. 33–50). Melbourne, Australia: LaTrobe University. Watson, H. (1990b). The politics of knowing and being known. Arena, 92, 125–134. Watson, H., & White, L. (1993). The policy of self-determination for Aboriginal communities. Knowledge and Policy, 6, 67–78. Wunungmurra, W. (1989). Dhawurrpunaramirri: Finding the common ground for a new Aboriginal curriculum. Ngoondjook, 6, 12–16. Authors’ Note We acknowledge the work of Trevor van Weeren of Merri Creek Productions, Bryce Anbins-King, Mängay Guyula, Yingiya Guyula, and John Greatorex, without whom there would be nothing to write about. This work was supported by Australian Research Council Grant LP0349200. All correspondence should be addressed to: Helen Verran School of Philosophy, University of Melbourne Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3010 [email protected] or Michael Christie Learning Research Group, Charles Darwin University Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, 0909 [email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN: 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Volume 3 (2), May 2007, 228–247 228 VERSIONS OF CARE TECHNOLOGY Abstract: The importance of users for innovation has been increasingly emphasized in the literatures on design and management of technology. Less attention has been given to how people shape technology-in-use. This paper first provides a review of literature on technology use in the social and cultural studies of technology. It then moves to examine empirically how a novel alarm and monitoring appliance was appropriated in the work of home-care nurses and in the everyday living of elderly people. Analysis shows that even these technically unsavvy users shaped the technology considerably by various, even if mundane, acts of adapting it materially, as well as by attributing different meanings to it. However, the paper goes on to argue that such commonplace phrasing of the findings obscures their significance and interrelations. Consequently, the final section of the paper reframes the key findings of this study using the concepts of practice, enactment, and versions of technology to reach a more adequate description. Keywords: design-use relation, technology use, version, elderly, information and communications technology (ICT). INTRODUCTION Uses of technology have traditionally been assumed to have a fairly clear and straightforward relation to the characteristics of a product. In an economic perspective, products have been seen as bundles of attributes that yield particular benefits. From a symbolic perspective, products have appeared as vessels of meaning that signify similarly across consumers (Holt, 1995). Both views assume that users do not significantly alter the material characteristics of technology, but rather employ it in the manner designers have intended, with greater or lesser success. These views about the use of technology have been gradually eroded during the last two decades. An important strand of studies has focused on postmarket launch improvements of technology. Results show that some users make and demand a significant number of modifications. Together these create a great proportion of the eventual economic and practical usefulness of the product, even when they often involve only routine engineering (Gardiner & Rothwell, 1985; Leonard, 1995; Rosenberg, 1982; von Hippel, 2005). Another © 2007 Sampsa Hyysalo and the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä URN:NBN:fi:jyu-2007282 Sampsa Hyysalo Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies University of Helsinki Finland Versions of Care Technology 229 key line of studies has been the ethnographies of work in the tradition of social shaping of technology. They have shown that technology-mediated action usually requires, by its very nature, work-arounds, artful integration of various technologies (Karasti, 2001; Suchman, 2002), articulation work to keep things on track (Bowker & Star, 1999; Clarke & Star, 2003), and sometimes also expansive reformulation of work practice, including reconfiguring the technology in question (Hasu, 2000; Hasu & Engeström, 2000; Karasti, 2001). At the same time, ethnographies of consumption have demonstrated that consuming is an effortful accomplishment, underdetermined by the properties of the product, that varies from person to person (Holt, 1995). As Alfred Gell (1986, p. 112) defines it, “consumption involves the incorporation of the consumed item into the personal and social identity of the consumer,” which makes technologies “domesticated in the social and cultural ends” (Strathern, 1992, p. viii). Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley (1992, pp. 15-32) elaborate on four processes that take place in the consumption of technology within a household. The “appropriation” of technology into one’s possession is followed by its “objectification,” adjusting it into the existing environment and imposing on the new technology the values one desires the artifact is to represent. In parallel, the technology is “incorporated” into the functional sequencing of life, and “converted” into a means of enhancing one’s status in the outside world. While these lines of findings are complementary, they tend to remain detached from each other, both in research and in the practice of technology design. Ethnographies of consumption build on social anthropology, where goods are seen primarily as carriers of meaning and mediators of social relations (McLaughlin, Rosen, Skinner, & Webster, 1999, p. 53). While these studies may include detailed descriptions of how people shape material qualities of consumed objects, these findings are by default suppressed in discussion in favor of explanations in terms of shared rituals, tradition, authentication, and symbols, which are perhaps seen as culturally deeper by this tradition (Belk & Costa, 1998; Sherry, 1990; Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991). In contrast, ethnographies of work tend to emphasize how both work and technology are shaped, and have often accounted well for the organizational context of technology use (Karasti, 2001; cf. McLaughlin et al., 1999; Suchman, Blomberg, Orr, & Trigg, 1999). This emphasis is accentuated in innovation studies, which tend to focus solely on the modifications and additional inventions users have made, while saying precious little about any social and cultural context within which these changes take place (Gardiner & Rothwell, 1985; von Hippel, 1988, 2005). Interestingly, there was a practical parallel to this theoretical disjunction in the high-tech company I examined in an ethnographic and historiographic study during the years 19992003. The engineers studied had developed for the elderly an alarm and monitoring device, called Wristcare. As is typical with innovative technologies, the early years of its use were marked by software bugs, hardware problems, redesigns, and new uses. Diagnoses of problems relied solely on examining the devices and the immediate situation where the problem had occurred. Other feedback from users was gathered, but mostly processed separately. Consequently, it took more than 3 years before the implications of users’ varying needs for the reliability, usability, and functions of the device were met by building far easier tailorability into the system. The split between material changes, various complaints, and what designers labeled as “misuses” and “creative uses” was one of the matters that prevented acting on this problem earlier (Hyysalo, 2004b, 2006b). Hyysalo 230 The angle on this larger body of ethnographic work taken in this article is to look at one of the specific questions, namely, how the managers of rest homes, the home-care workers, and the elderly residents utilized Wristcare in their lives and work in sheltered housing. Particular emphasis is on developing a conceptualization that better accounts for the interdependencies in what different people did with devices, what having and using these devices meant for them, and how they altered the material form of these artifacts. The key set of data analyzed here consists of interviews and observations in four separate rest homes during the years 2000-2001. Four managers, 14 nurses and home-care workers, and 17 residents were interviewed, and some observation of the use of the device was carried out. These events were audiotaped and detailed notes were made during and right after the observations and semistructured interviews. All interviews were conducted in Finnish with native-speaking Finns and translated into English by the researcher. Sorting this data in AtlasTi created 227 entries in 57 categories, which were further sorted in regard to different people and their personal and group projects. Data excerpts for the paper were chosen to represent the key features of the topics addressed. TECHNOLOGY IN PERSONAL AND GROUP PROJECTS Conceptual resources for exploring the above questions can most readily be found in approaches combining ethnographies in social shaping of technology with ethnographies of consumption (Lie & Sorensen, 1996; Williams, Slack, & Stewart, 2005). Some of the key insights can be summarized as follows. 1. While designers build their sets of meanings and values into a technology, it finds new purposes, sociotechnical configurations, and sets of meanings in the hands of its users. The relevant characteristics of the technology are then constructed within a different practice, although the material prefiguration in the technology is not entirely malleable (Akrich, 1992; Hasu, 2001; Hyysalo, 2006a). 2. Nothing happens after the introduction of technology unless it is somehow put to work and given meaning: appropriated by people and embedded and sustained in their social practices (Sorensen, 2002). This can happen in multiple ways and for multiple purposes, for users may not wish or may not be able to follow designers’ ideas about the proper use of technology. The success of technology is thus dependent on the motives people have for utilizing it, and on the social and organizational constraints within which the use takes place. For instance, highly cumbersome technologies are nurtured and attended to when they serve an important purpose in somebody’s life or work, or when an organization has effective regulation in place to enforce certain patterns of use, regardless of their inconvenience (McLaughlin et al., 1999). 3. Attention should be paid not only to the immediate human-technology interaction, but also to the socially, spatially, and temporally wider organization among people and technology that create its meaningfulness. Appropriation of technology typically includes shaping both the technology and existing practice (Berg, 1997; Hasu, 2001; Lehoux, 2006). Versions of Care Technology 231 The key analytical term for this study—personal and group project—is adopted from McLaughlin et al. (1999), who pursued this line of research. In their use, project is a relatively loosely defined term describing the fairly independent tasks and concerns that people strive for in their work. In this paper, the term is made more specific. Projects are seen as reasonably independent and pervasive concerns that manifest themselves as tasks and strings of action that persist for years (in a sense of occurring regularly or frequently). Moreover, they are seen to do so within an activity, a relatively durable unit of technically, culturally, and socially mediated collective practice (Cole, 1996; Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki, 1999). Projects often do not have a definite goal or end point that could be met, but are oriented to particular objects. The information below indicates that such objects vary significantly, from managing one’s life with a reduced mobility to projects related to work routines, such as the nurses’ socializing with residents of rest home. A further rationale for using the notion of project lies in the way McLaughlin et al. (1999, p. 56) connect it to the process of “valuing” technology in a local setting. By valuing they mean the gradual construction of the utility of the technology by the end users; thus they reject seeing usability or utility as inherent qualities of technology. Their study of management information systems demonstrates how achieving utility requires that people make an effort in “constructing the usability”: the sociotechnical shaping of both the technology and the work patterns of users to render the system practically operable (McLaughlin et al., 1999; McLaughlin & Skinner, 2000).1 In McLaughlin & Skinner’s words, “When we re-interviewed a sub set of users at each site three and six months later, it was notable that these concerns [of usability] had—to a greater or lesser extent—been superseded by others around the utility or usefulness of the system. This shift reflects…the incorporation of the systems into the working lives of endusers. Many of the users we studied came to find the systems useful through an engagement with the problem of making the system usable” (2000, p. 418). The notion of project thus has a history of being used for elaborating the most important ongoing personal and group projects that a technology enters, as well as the roles it comes to serve within projects. DESIGNERS AND THEIR ASSUMPTIONS CONSTRUCTED INTO WRISTCARE The designers of Wristcare often referred to their device as the next generation safety phone.2 Like previous models, it had a manual alarm button, but it also had sensors that gathered data about physiological indicators: various kinds of movement (body movement and smaller movements such as pulse and breathing), temperature and, from the second generation onwards, also skin conductivity. The algorithms in the wrist device and the receiver unit in the user’s apartment combined these measurements to keep track of changes in the user’s health. This data was then transferred via a telephone network to control software that provided messages for helpers. These messages included, on the one hand, alarm messages of differing gravity, such as an “acute disruption in condition,” a “disruption in condition,” or an “extraordinary passiveness.” On the other hand, there were messages that related information about the state of the system. For instance, a message ensued when the device detected a poor connection to the wrist, when it was taken off entirely, or when good wrist connection was re-established. The variety of alarms the Wristcare system could generate changed throughout the investigation Hyysalo 232 period; the maximum number of different sorts of messages was around 50, roughly half of which were about maintenance and the technical state of the system. Designers asserted that these messages would allow the caregiver to keep track of the gradually worsening health of an elderly user, and thus enable active measures to be taken (Company business plan 1997; 1998)3. To augment this, the control software provided the history of alarms of each user, and this was supposed to be checked with each alarm. In a more advanced version, the physiological activity of the user was also conveyed as a graphical illustration called an “activity curve” that could be of further use in diagnosing the state of the user. Designers considered it necessary for the user to wear the device all the time to ensure reliable coverage and to allow caregivers to see trends in how their charge’s condition developed (Wristcare functional description, 1993; interview with the company founder, October, 22, 1999). The control software was to help caregivers make a judgment about what to do in each case: whether they should telephone the user, or go in and check the user or the device, or eventually, whether to call an ambulance. An adequate response to each alarm was ensured by routing alarms via preprogrammed paths, for instance, first to the control room, then to the cell phone of the nurse on call, and finally to an alarm center located elsewhere if no one else had reacted (Wristcare functional description, 1993; Wristcare user manual, 2000). The device was thought of strictly as a safety instrument, and any other kind of use was strongly discouraged in manuals, marketing materials, and so on. In the future, the company planned to create customized solutions for special groups of users, such as epileptics, diabetics, and those suffering from dementia. During the 4 years following the initial market launch in late 1997, the company reported having captured the majority of new installations of safety phone systems in sheltered housing schemes in Finland. Wristcare also entered the markets in, for instance, the UK, Germany, and Japan (company business plan, 2001). However, the initial design of Wristcare had to be significantly altered because of various shortcomings and problems in the reliability of monitoring and with its ease of use. The improvements included changes in the core hardware, as well as a gradual development of control software, instructions, manuals, training, and so on, all prerequisites for making the technological system work reliably in the practices of users. Exploring how people used Wristcare in their work and in their everyday lives sheds light on some of the reasons behind these changes. WRISTCARE AND THE MANAGERS OF RESIDENTIAL HOMES At the time I conducted my research, the device was mostly used in institutions for assisted living, in which the elderly residents lived in their own separate apartments, but shared common areas such as a dining room and lounges, and received help from home-care workers and nurses when needed. All the data below is from this kind of housing arrangement. In such settings, the alarms generated by Wristcare were routed to a computer in a nurses’ office, and further directed to cell phones of the staff if not signed in at the office. The staff checked the alarms by calling or visiting the residents. The managers of residential homes were key figures in the purchasing and market success of Wristcare. Managers perceived the utility of the Wristcare system in the organizational development more broadly than did the designers. Wristcare provided a means Versions of Care Technology 233 to prepare for the technological transition in elderly care. This became a part of an ongoing project to develop the external relations of the organization. Internally, Wristcare was unanimously perceived as a means for the organization and its residents and staff to get connected with technological development. It also became part of the reorganization of work, particularly in breaking down the rigid procedures in care rounds and in minimizing staff on night shifts. The role of Wristcare as a part of a wider organizational frame governed how its problems and the needs for redesign were addressed. However, the technical details and the ways residents and staff perceived the devices were addressed only in rather general terms: as general doubts about whether the device really worked as claimed, and as concerns about how it affected social relations within the organization (see Table 1). WRISTCARE IN THE PROJECTS OF THE SENIOR RESIDENTS “Well, there would have been plenty of reclining to do [on the bathroom floor] before the morning meal would have arrived nine and half hours later” (Resident 1, Savitaipale). Similar grim humor about everyday life and concerns, and about the advantages of having Wristcare, were often voiced by those who had problems with movement and faced the fear of falling on a daily basis. These residents were by and large extremely satisfied with their devices. Wristcare had become their personal lifeline whenever they fell down or got stuck in Table 1. Wristcare in the Work of Rest Home Managers. People Projects Wristcare featured in Issue Wristcare was used for Exemplifying quote Rest home Managers Managing the external relations of rest home Building better appeal “This kind of high-tech can give the elderly as well as their care a status other than just being ‘out of time.’” (Manager, Espoo) “Wristcare consolidates our good reputation, which gives us number of direct and indirect benefits: better workforce, latest knowledge in the field, collaboration with schools and universities, partner organizations, visits by public sector movers….” (Manager, Turku) Developing organization Keeping up with technical development Work Reorganization “I see that this system raises the self-esteem of our staff, as they can use high-tech and show that they can do it.” (Manager, Turku) “Its implementation and use lowers the threshold to implement new technology in the future.” (Manager, Savitaipale) “This technology enables more natural communication between the nurses and residents than the scheduled rounds did.... And… maybe our residents have learned to want things a bit more than previously.” (Manager, Espoo) Hyysalo 234 some awkward position and could not get up. Some of them experienced these incidents several times a week. Even those who did not currently need the device were firmly convinced of its importance in the light of their previous accidents. This fundamental utility in one of their most important life projects—literally giving access to mobile living in the sense of getting out of the bed in the morning—made these residents appreciate the other aspects of the device as well. Even though all my interviewees had used only manually activated alarms, a feature found also in other safety phones, they regarded the automatic alarms as good and useful. Moreover, their appreciation made them overlook the inconveniences and discomfort felt in wearing the device: “I always try to rush from the shower within 15 minutes to get the bracelet back on so it won’t generate an unnecessary alarm” (Resident 2, Savitaipale), and “It’s good to wear even though it presses my swollen [and paralyzed] arm” (Resident 3, Savitaipale). Nor did these residents mind being woken up during the night or in the morning because of checking calls and visits for false alarms. The extra features of Wristcare were perceived as enhanced care and the inconveniences as indications that they were being looked after continuously. No one complained about the price of the device, or expressed doubts about whether the device actually worked the way it was said to. As the device was designed to be what its developers called “foolproof,” the opportunities for shaping it were thought of as being very restricted (interview with company electronics designer, November 25, 1999). Nonetheless, residents often opted for procedures that redefined the functionality of the device, such as wearing it on a paralyzed arm, or attaching it to bed post or a wheelchair to make the alarm button easier to press, even though this meant giving up all the monitoring functionalities. Another extreme of the relationship to Wristcare was found among residents with a heightened risk of cardiac arrests and strokes. One resident had worn the device for over a year; there had not been any automatic alarms on occasions he had felt heart symptoms, and he had been able to activate a manual alarm. “I don’t know what generates these alarms in the first place, and the whole thing feels like humbug” (Resident 1, Espoo). He was also annoyed by nurses making between 5 and 10 calls to him to check if everything was all right when there were no symptoms at all. Similar doubts and concerns were voiced by other residents with cardiac risk. Uncertainty as to whether the device would be able to detect the emergency was accentuated by doubts about whether the help would arrive in time. The time required for the check-up call, confirmation of need, and the ambulance to arrive added up to between 20 and 30 minutes, which was felt to be too long (see data excerpt in Table 2). The inconveniences of wearing the device irritated the cardiac patients more than, for example, people with reduced mobility. For instance, after being frustrated by having been woken up a couple of times in vain, one of the residents demanded that staff not be allowed to react to any alarms from her during the nighttime. Cardiac patients also made more critical comments about the look and feel of the device: It had to be worn too tight, it looked clumsy and repulsive, like an aid or prosthesis, or that they wore it underneath their sleeve. Part of this difference came from the fact that cardiac patients generally had more active and mobile social lives and often did not have many other aids. While Wristcare helped the people with reduced mobility to prevent major inconveniences as often as on a daily basis, the cardiac patients were protecting themselves against rare but potentially fatal incidents. The latter Versions of Care Technology 241 Table 4. What is a False Alarm? The Project, Criteria, Significance and Access Involved with False Alarms. Constituency Group Key project in which a false alarm gets its meaning Criteria for what constitutes a false alarm Options for handling a false alarm (access) On what the importance of false alarm depends Designers Creating a technically valid and working configuration The device performed differently than specified, or a false alarm ensued even if the device was handled exactly as instructed. Examine the situation, diagnose the particular device, tinker with it to improve functioning, or, if the problem remains persistent, change the device and/or make a redesign to future models. Urgency of customers’ complaints and the amount of redesign needed Managers To run and develop the organization The device causes extra work, loss of money, or dissatisfaction because people deem it is not functioning the way it “should.” Training, reorganization of daily work, complaining to designers, appealing to the contract Its impact on the organization Nurses and home-care workers Carrying through daily tasks and maintaining social interaction with the residents The alarm is deemed irrelevant or irrational, or was sent without a valid need, as deemed by themselves or by the residents Matching the situation to heuristic guidelines, instructing the user, working around the problem to prevent it in the future, complaining to managers or to designers The amount of extra work or distress in social relations that is caused Residents with reduced mobility Managing their lives with accessories and getting help when accidents happen If one could have managed by oneself and occasions when the check-in visit is disturbing Changing the way they wear the device, complaining to the nurses The amount of inconvenience involved Residents with a cardiac risk Preventing or diminishing the damage of the life-threatening arrests Alarms that are obviously not related to any rupture in condition Pleasure that the device is sensitive and reactive enough, accepting it, complaining to the nurses, or withdrawing from use The reliability of the device in emergencies Residents wishing to please nurses or relatives Maintaining and enforcing social relations Any alarm that disrupts or weakens the relationships between staff and resident? Insulating the device, leaving it on a table, wearing it as suggested, or other such work-around The amount of damage to social relations Residents who refuse the device Maintaining independence and management of own affairs Any alarm (for other residents) that suggests that the refuser should also start carrying the device Refusing the device Threat to independence Hyysalo 242 VERSIONS OF TECHNOLOGY-IN-PRACTICE The literature review suggested that during the process of appropriating technology people are likely to alter its meaning as well as its constitution to suit the organization of their everyday lives. Indeed, the elderly and their care-givers reconfigured Wristcare in both material and nonmaterial ways. At the technical end, there were demands for changes from the designers and working around the system by using other technologies, using only some features of the device, or expanding the uses for Wristcare. Less material mechanisms included replacing the use of technical features by social knowledge and procedures, reducing the technology largely to its symbolic value (such as a sign of modernization of care), reducing it to its significance in social relations (such as in managing relations with relatives and personnel), or refusing the device because of the associations the device had with dependency. However, framing the findings in this way runs a risk of downplaying the effects of these actions in appropriating the technology. The study could be read (and is in fact likely to be read by many, as pointed out in the literature review) as saying that the technology was interpreted differently, that different meanings were ascribed to it, and that there were also minor modifications and alternative uses of the technology. But both social constructionist and materially essentialist readings would miss the point. One is warranted to ask “So what?” that there are minor modifications of the technology. Minor modifications can quite sensibly be regarded as a matter of better instructing the users to comply with design or maybe a matter of fixing some of the worst bugs as well. It is equally inadequate to note that people interpret the same technology in different ways, as the technology does remain the same regardless of the ephemeral interpretations given to it. Indeed, in both types of reading, the findings would be interpreted as merely being about the social and cultural context of technology, context here understood as something that surrounds the technology. These likely readings by both researchers and some practitioners remind us that social science concepts orient actors toward enacting certain realities (Law & Urry, 2004). A more full-bodied way to account for the findings of this paper is to conceptualize that there emerged multiple versions of the technology-in-practice (Mol, 2002; Sjögren & Helgesson, in press; Star, 1989, 1991). When we examined the projects in which users engaged with the technology, it became clear that Wristcare was never alone, but always enmeshed with other artifacts (cell phones, notebooks, sanitary gloves, beds, wheelchairs, etc.), procedures (care rounds, daily rhythms, etc.), conventions (in conversations, in conduct, in giving treatment, etc.) and pre-existing sets of people participating in events (nurses, residents, neighbors, relatives, etc.), as well as frames of reference and participation (consumption rituals, prevailing narratives about new technology, etc), to name a few. Wristcare-in-practice was in effect an intertwinement, an “artful integration” (Suchman, 2002), of these elements that varied significantly from project to project. Users ignored and went as far as actively removing characteristics of Wristcare that conflicted with the version they preferred to enact into presence and which they preferred to allow to have effects on their action and interaction. When practice (or activity or conduct of work) is taken as the starting point, context becomes that which weaves together, and is woven together by, the elements that compose the actions performed (Cole, 1996). In this light, the various meanings ascribed to a technology or modifications to its material shape are only symptoms or re-presentations Versions of Care Technology 243 of the material-cultural-social hybrid (in other words, the version or sociotechnical configuration in action) that is enacted into being (Cole, 1996; Mol, 2002). But does not such practice-centered conceptualization run a risk of turning the examined phenomena into a “soup,” in which different layers of practice, technical matters and social phenomena become indistinguishable, and thus risk losing explanatory power? Furthermore, is it not implausible to do away with vast differences between, for instance, things technical, procedural and social? Such questions, often targeted to actor network theory, are indeed valid concerns. Where does the heterogeneous network comprising practice ever end, and how can it thus be analyzed (Miettinen, 1999)? Clearly, to gain insight into how Wristcare became enacted, we need not, and should not, aim to understand all that is involved in a given practice. Midrange sensitizing concepts, such as project, allow patterns to be revealed from the practices examined so that we can approximate the minimal meaningful context relevant for the technology in question: in this case, relatively durable concerns and “strings of actions” within which versions of technology were enacted. This also reveals that while practices may be soupy by their nature, they are far from run through a sieve. There are clearly bigger and smaller chunks of the technical, the social, and the organizational that do not dissolve into the texture or the “taste” of practice. However, these chunks do not exist in isolation and may not straightforwardly follow pre-existing intuitions and assumptions of what must be technical, what is social or, say, economic. These patterns must be revealed by inquiry. Using another domestic metaphor, practice is less a big lump of clay to be molded at will than variously shaped and sized bits and pieces of a child’s Lego construction kit. Nor does talk about versions lead to seeing technology as utterly malleable or a matter of only social construction (Grint & Woolgar, 1997). Accepting the notion of versions of technology means that there is no finite, predefinable list of functionalities to a given technology, while at the same time it points to the very concrete constraints to different versions of technology that can be enacted in any given concrete practice in a particular time. The 35 people involved in the Wristcare use who were studied for this paper enacted a much smaller number of significantly different versions of this technology. The stark differences in resources the various people had for dealing with false alarms underscores the encounters, interdependences, limits, and resources needed to meddle with “material,” “organizational,” “social,” or “cognitive” aspects of technology in concrete settings. Changing the algorithms inside the Wristcare technology to adjust its functioning remains impossible for its users without the expertise, resources, and finances found in a high-tech company. In fact, at the end of my study, the developers had spent more than 5 years making such adjustments to increase the reliability of the monitoring and alarms, and were still not certain they had sufficiently quieted customer discontent and regulatory suspicions (Hyysalo, 2004b). The insides of this technology appear recalcitrant to change. But the key message from this analysis in terms of versions is that the obduracy of a technology arises just as much from the interdependencies between the versions that nurses, different residents, and managers enact, versions that depend, in turn, on how individuals’ projects are interlaced within the working and living in their collective activity in a rest home. More extensive discussion of such systemic dependencies and encounters between versions of Wristcare go beyond the scope of this article: The configurations and networks of activities are explored in a related paper (Hyysalo, 2004a), and the process of change and learning resulting from encounters between the clashing versions of designers and users in another (Hyysalo, 2006b). Hyysalo 244 CONCLUSIONS People such as the elderly and their caregivers have received little attention in discourses related to the shaping of new technology. A closer look at their engagement with technology reveals that they can be active and inventive. At their simplest, such findings can be taken to debunk the view that only technically savvy lead-users are relevant to the development and improvement of technology. The extent and importance of the elderly users’ shaping, however, only become fully visible when findings from their work-arounds, minor improvements, complaints, redefinitions, symbolic uses, interpersonal arrangements, and so on are examined not in isolation but as parts of the work and life projects within which the technology-in-use gains its significance. Such an integrated examination can reveal—as was the case with Wristcare—that users had enacted significantly different versions of the technology. These findings highlight the importance of attending to the actual environments and practices of users when studying the uptake of new technology. This should be taken as a reservation towards the ecological validity of studies that resort to exploring and evaluating technology use in laboratory settings, for this detaches usage from the resources, constraints, and rationales that indeed seem to play a key role in how people actually employ technology. Usage is simply not reducible to how fluently a person can operate a device, nor is its usability or usefulness. In a similar vein, traditional ways of segmenting users, based on personal characteristics, dispositions, habits, and gross figures, appear vague and potentially misleading without a qualitative understanding of the personal and collective projects and the roles of the artifact in them. ENDNOTES 1. The shift in defining usability and utility as functions of end users’ work practice has also been made previously. One of the most eloquent approaches has been put forward in the evaluative studies of computer use in various organizations by the Laboris group in computer science (Eriksson & Nurminen, 1991; Mäkeläinen Nurminen, Reijonen, & Torvinen. 1996; Nurminen, Reijonen, & Tuomisto, 1994). 2. The design, product development and designers assumptions on the future use of the device have been described elsewhere (Hyysalo, 2003, 2006b). 3. 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Helgeson, and Stewart Russell for our discussions and comments that shaped the arguments in this paper. All correspondence should be addressed to: Sampsa Hyysalo Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies PO Box 4 00014 University of Helsinki [email protected] Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments ISSN 1795-6889 www.humantechnology.jyu.fi Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments www.humantechnology.jyu.fi