The Wrong Trousers? Beyond the Design Fallacy: Social Learning and the User

Technology studies and the user-oriented ‘wing’ of computer science have largely shared a ‘heroic’, albeit critical, vision of computer system design: that designers inscribe particular views of the user, user activities and priorities into the artefact, but these are often ‘the wrong values’, based on an inadequate or misleading view of the user and their requirements. Ethnographic studies of users or user participation in design teams were proposed to overcome this. With its almost exclusive preoccupation with prior technological design, this model (which we refer to as the ‘design fallacy’) is simplistic and overlooks important opportunities for intervention. The shortcomings of this analytical tradition are examined. Drawing upon detailed studies of multimedia experiments, the chapter proposes an evolutionary understanding of ICT system design and development that pays attention to the processes of social learning over the lifecycle of technology design, implementation and use. Innovation is not restricted to the prior design of an artefact, but continues as artefacts are implemented and used (innofusion). Supplier offerings are inevitably incomplete in relation to the complex, heterogeneous and evolving requirements of users; work needs to be done by specific users to incorporate these generic solutions to their particular contexts and practices (domestication). These opportunities for users to reinvent systems may feed back into future design. A richer view of design processes is articulated. This inter-alia addresses both the inevitable difficulties in developing adequate prior representations of future technology ‘users’ and the configurational character of design as a combination of existing and novel elements.