Fun on the Phone: The Situated Experience of Recreational Telephone Conferences

Conclusion

Fun in telephone conferences in this analysis is defined in relation to what it is not: having fun is a matter of transforming the (necessarily) formal structured basis of activity into moments of triviality and playfulness. And as such it complements early sociological appreciation of play as not work. However by understanding fun as the consequence of particular interpretive transformations in ongoing interaction, our sociology of fun becomes a dynamic conceptualisation: fun is always interactionally achieved by active social actors.

Our investigation of telephone conferences through applied or directed CA allows an appreciation of the interactionally situated experience of fun. A question might be how these insights benefit the future design effort. One way is that they can be recruited to inform experimental interventions. For example we might ask how changes in the opening routines affect interaction patterns and see if fluidity can be reached more quickly.

On a more general note, we might ask how we can make telephone conferences more ‘fun’. Initial answers appear counter-intuitive: fun is tied to engendering structure, and allowing for its re-framing; to have fun, we have to have seriousness first.