Abstract
In this final chapter we offer a demonstration of the proposition that design can be systematically anchored in the social through the study of members’ methodologies. We start by reviewing Suchman’s foundational studies of human-machine communication before moving on to consider Dourish and Button’s reflections on accountability as a resource for design. To elaborate this more fully we look at Xerox’s Virtual Help Desk and how studies of the methodical ways in which action and interaction is account-ably conducted and ordered shaped the design of this award-winning piece of software. Finally we consider ethnomethodological studies undertaken outside of the workplace to inform other kinds of interactive and ubiquitous computing systems. The demonstration makes it plain to see that that the methodological apparatus of the social sciences is not required to understand the social and build it into systems design. There is a viable alternative. One which has already contributed enormously to the work of design over the last 30 years and produced a diverse body of work demonstrating that design efforts to change the world through the development of computational artefacts may be constructively informed and shaped around the social through the explication of the methods that members employ to order action and interaction.
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- 1.
Note that Suchman is invoking a ubiquitous idea of ‘situated action’ not a restricted idea that confines interest to the workplace or to jobs of work, although she was conducting her studies in a workplace and observing people doing office work.
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See www.youtube.com/watch?v=O09fY5ovjBg [Accessed 06-03-2015]
- 3.
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Button, G., Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M., Tolmie, P. (2015). Members’ Not Ethnographers’ Methods. In: Deconstructing Ethnography. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21954-7_8
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