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Chapters from Haddon, L, Mante, E., Sapio, B., Kommonen, K-H, Fortunati, L.
Kant, A (eds) (2005) Everyday
Innovators. Researching the Role of Users in
Shaping ICTs, Springer, Dordrect
Chapter 1: Introduction
The introduction
provides an overview of the literatures cited in the following chapters. It
then outlines how these chapters contribute to the themes of the book: imagining
users and uses, involving users, collective use and communities of users, and
interdisciplinary issues.
Frameworks: The Social, Unpredictable and Innovatory
use of ICTs
Introduction to section
This introduces the key themes noted in the section title, locating them in relation to other research and indicating why there are important issues with implications for researchers and designers. In particular, by contrasting themes from the three chapters the introduction explores the issues of dealing with individual vs. collective use, attempts to conceptualise and draw boundaries around use, and whether and when we should consider use to be innovatory.
Chapter2: Beyond User-Centric Models of Product
Creation
Iikka Tuomi focuses on a social understanding of ‘use’ in a less narrow and utilitarian manner than the way the concept is utilised within many ICT firms. He examines social practices, noting how artefacts are ‘used’ socially in managing relations between people. For example, he looks at what is involved in the practice of having a cup of coffee at work and shows that the potential ‘use’ of the coffee cup is not what it seems – in fact, there are multiple social roles for this ‘technology’. Tuomi takes the focus off individual users to stress relationships between people, in particular communities of users. He explores the questions of how and why communities of users change practices as well as their interrelationship with other such communities.
Chapter 3: Emergence of Unpredictable Uses? New Stakes
and Tasks for a Social Scientific Understanding of ICT Uses
Alexandre Mallard argues that the unpredictable ways in which ICTs come to be used represents a paradox and challenge for social scientists involved in innovation projects. The notion of the creative user is not sufficient to account for this unpredictability. Nobody has control over the way products will be used, and uses always ‘drift’. The envisaged uses of products drift in the production phase and this continues in consumption, given multiple possible uses for the same type of device. This drift in use is not a pathology - it is the normal pattern.
Chapter 4: The Innovatory Use of ICTs
Leslie Haddon deconstructs the concept of or ‘innovatory’ use by indicating the range of user interventions from hardware hacking, through creating applications and contents to developing new social practices using ICTs. He uses historical and contemporary examples to reflect upon the different types of innovative user, the manner in which they are innovative and the constraints they face. The chapter moves on to consider the creativity we routinely show in everyday, but which can lead to unexpected uses.
Empirical studies: Users as innovators and critics
Introduction to section
The Batterbee and Kurvinen chapter in particular enables us to explore some
of the themes of social use and creativity from the previous section. Both it and the
Chapter 5: Supporting Creativity – Co-experience in
Katja Batterbee and Esko Kurvinen outline a Finnish experimental project exploring the ways in which users are innovative specifically when trying to work out how to use camera phones and send picture messages. It focuses on how users ‘co-experience’ a product, in effect collaborating in the process, working out how, socially, to make use of images and decide what images to use as they communicate with each other about the technology.
Chapter 6: The Social Shaping of New
Fausto Colombo and Barbara Scifo examine the diverse reactions of Italian youth to camera phones. Adopters of this new technology see the camera phone as being an automatic successor to the mobile phone, part of the evolution towards video communication. That said, the act of sending pictures takes place within different paradigms, some adopters using the model of one-way electronic postcards, others using it interactively as text messages with pictures. In stark contrast to adopters, non-adopters see this new product as an innovation that has been thrust upon them by the industry. They do not feel involved in the development process. They have a more critical evaluation, seeing the camera phones as a retrograd step in terms of lightness, battery-duration and aesthetics. And they foresee the new technology as potentially introducing new digital divisions, threatening to make the mobiles to which they feel attached obsolete.
Chapter 7: Creative User-Centred Design Practices:
Lessons from Game Cultures
Olli Sotamaa explores the relationship between the games industry and games players. In fact, a dialogue already exists between the two and user modifications to games can increase their longevity in the market. The creative role of the user is assumed to some extent because games have to be played, not read as texts nor used as tools. Indeed, games culture is likened to an active fan culture, involving the personalising of games and creating new forms of social interaction around the games-playing activity.
Innovation and artistic users
Introduction to section
Artists provide a strategic case for thinking about the active role of users since their identity and daily artistic practices require them to explore what it means to be creative. They are a community that is more likely to look at the potentially novel uses of ICTs, which may be neither intended nor realised in a mass market. However, while their innovative horizons may be wider than many of the general public, these papers, especially Mahé’s, illustrate the ways in which that vision and the direction of any creative use is also shaped by the artistic conventions within which they work. Meanwhile, Rantavuo’s paper shows how artistic use and use in the rest of everyday life may remain separate. The introduction to this section explores how much the lessons learnt from the artistic community may be more broadly applied.
Chapter 8: Artistic
Deviance and Innovation in Use
Emmanuel Mahé examines the role of the artist as innovator, who acts as a deviant user of artefacts while at the same time operating with artistic norms. He examines the example of artists appropriating a technology, a particular type of camera, which had previously failed in the commercial market. This took place partly because the camera enabled certain forms of artistic expression.
Chapter 9:
Heli Rantavuo looks at the different ways in which, and the extent to which, artists were innovated in their use of camera phones when preparing for an exhibition. She explores the background factors that shaped that form and degree of innovation within this project. Their artistic use is contrasted with the artists’ personal use of the camera phones.
Problems of researching and involving users in design
Introduction to section
These three contributions raise a range of issues around identifying and incorporating knowledge about users and their inputs into the research and design process. Gilligan explores the classical social science problem of measurement when a social phenomenon turns out to be far from straightforward. This is important because she looks at the type of basic research on statistics that can inform product deployment and policy. The introduction to this section attempts to derive general guidelines on how to take a more critical approach based on this work. Both Limonard and Koning and Sarkinen show how actually involving users in design, and in the Dutch case making the innovation truly interdisciplinary, can be also be problematic. Both chapters make suggestions about lessons to be learned and this introduction would aim to broaden these.
Chapter 10: Rural
Rosemarie Gilligan argues that despite the availability of
international statistics contrasting urban and rural adoption of ICTs, the
issues involved in measuring what counts as rural are complex. She discusses the problems faced by social
scientists in researching ‘rural’ users of ICTs as a group – e.g. issues of
defining rural, different types of rurality,
different types of people inhabiting ‘rural’ areas etc. Drawing upon examples from
Chapter 11: ‘Dealing with Dilemmas in Pre-Competitive ICT
Development Projects: The Construction of ‘The Social’ in Designing New
Technologies
Sander Limonard and Nicole de Koning reflect critically upon three Dutch projects in which they participated. In each case, they discuss the manner and extent to which users were involved as well as the nature of the interdisciplinary process. Looking across the projects they identify some core dilemmas and possible strategies to address these issues.
Chapter 12: Scenarios and the Excluded User
Jarmo Sarkkinen provides an ethnographic analysis of a Finnish ICT project. He argues that even though users’ views appeared to be included, it is important to take into account the classification processes used by technical staff at the later scenario building stage. The resulting designs were still ultimately based on the designers’ assumptions and their classification schemes were given priority. Hence, he argues, there is a need for external observers to make this classification process more transparent in order to ensure that the artefact’s design ‘respects’ user inputs.
The politics of user involvement in programmes of
innovation
Introduction to section
The chapters by Vehviläinen and Joshi follow on from a key interest of the previous section - the problems of involving users in design - this time focusing on more public projects and policies. However, many such public projects take place against the backdrop of wider political discourses requiring democracy and social inclusion, referring to citizens and communities, not just the consumers considered by firms. Hence the emphasis is on ‘participation’ and ‘consultation’, rather than just the commercial interest in getting ‘user feedback for design’. These papers, through analyses of policies and a project, provide a critical assessment of how much these aspirations are addressed and realised in reality. The introduction to this section asks how this area of innovation adds to the notion of the active user and the limitations of that role.
Chapter 13: The Construction of ‘Equal Agency’ in the
Development of Technology
Marja Vehviläinen
uses her interview and documentary evidence to provide a retrospective analysis
of four main approaches to technological development that have evolved in
Chapter 14: Community-Technology Interfaces in
Participatory Planning: Tool or Tokenism?
Somya Joshi provides a case study of a British project involving the use of virtual reality technology as a modelling tool in the field of urban regeneration. In principle, the project aimed to involve and thus empower local communities. In practice, Joshi questions what type of participation was really taking place, suggesting this was really a case of technology transfer rather than involving effective input from local people. Hence, she asks whether participation was really token, questioning who the ‘users’ were and what power they had in practice. She makes a number of recommendations about the wider issue of how user involvement should be facilitated.
Chapter 15 Conclusion
The conclusion notes on how the contributors address both academics and practioners, many reflecting on their own experiences in ICT development and raising issues. Sometimes they offer practical advice and the lessons for future innovation or research in this field