Mads Bødker

Enabling user centered design processes in open source communities

Drawing on tenets from action research, this paper presents a yearlong intervention designed to facilitate knowledge of actual users and use in an Open Source Software (OSS) development community. Results from the interventions are presented and the influence of central characteristics of the OSS community and its communication is discussed. Initial findings show that the ideology and praxis based approach of the OSS community, as well as their primary media of communication, present a challenge to the introduction of end-user issues.

Time-out/time-in: the dynamics of everyday experiential computing devices

In everyday life, the role of computing devices alternates between the ordinary and mundane, the un‐reflected and the extraordinary. To better understand the process through which the relationship between computing devices, users and context changes in everyday life, we apply a distinction between time‐in and time‐out use. Time‐in technology use coincides and co‐exists within the flow of ordinary life, while time‐out use entails ‘taking time out’ of everyday life to accomplish a circumscribed task or engage reflectively in a particular experience. We apply a theoretically informed grounded approach to data collected through a longitudinal field study of smartphone users during a 6‐month period. We analysed the data based on the concept of time‐in/out and show the dynamics in the experience of a device that changes from the ‘extraordinary’ to the ‘ordinary’ over time. We also provide a vocabulary that describes this relationship as stages resembling the one between a couple, which evolves from an early love affair, to being married and to growing old together. By repurposing the time‐in/out distinction from its origin in media studies, this paper marks a move that allows the distinction to be applied to understanding the use and dynamic becoming of computing devices over time.

Beyond destinations: exploring tourist technology design spaces through local–tourist interactions

The design of digital tourist technologies is traditionally situated in an understanding of tourism as an information consumption practice. In contrast, this article takes a ‘performative’ view of tourism as its starting point. The research presented is part of a larger goal, which is to propose a shift in the socio-technical environment in which the design of engaging technologies for tourists takes place. By drawing on recent approaches for understanding the lived social and material conditions of tourist places, we first show how contemporary tourism can be usefully understood as a form of networking. The article then draws on early research about the roles of locals and tourists in the making of place during the course of their networking activities, and suggests how an understanding of the social environment of tourists might be used as a grounded resource for design. Our analysis of a staged encounter between a single tourist and four locals generates insights used to shape a design space, a first step in the development of appropriate, engaging design interventions in the domain of tourism.

Smart Phones and Their Substitutes: Task-Medium Fit and Business Models

Drawing on data from a longitudinal field study, this paper investigates the influence of existing, better and stand-alone technology substitutes on the use of smart phones. By applying prospect theory, media richness theory, and business model literature, the purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of substitutes, device content fit issues, and implications for business models by asking the question: What is an effective business model to address the relationship between user preference and the fit of the smart phone and everyday task? The field study data suggest the need for business models to recognize that adoption decisions are reference dependent and strongly influenced by the fit between task and smart phone.

Vision labs: seeing UCD as a relational practice

Relational aspects in user-centered design, UCD, are largely overlooked in the literature. We use criticism of UCD to facilitate a discussion of how discourse, activities, and materials give shape to user involvement in design activities. Drawing on experiments with the workshop format for devising innovations and creative solutions with users, we introduce some criteria and points of interest in the development of a workshop format we call Vision Labs.

Inspiring Design: Social Media from the Beach

Abstract This chapter outlines opportunities for designing place-based or localized social media services and technologies for tourist settings. Following an exploration of how ephemeral, collaborative social networks emerge, consideration is given to understanding tourist places in terms of networking and socialization. In the field of information technology design, there are many examples of experimental mobile, location-based services that provide informational overplays for tourism sites and generally seem to merely replicate the functions of guidebooks or online information services. However, viewing the performance of tourism through a lens that emphasizes place-making as a social practice could inspire the innovation and design of new mobile social technologies to enrich tourist places and interactions.

Collaborating with users: cultural and (I)literacy challenges

With the development of the global market, users become a competitive factor since successful diffusion of IT systems lie with them. However, users have different IT competences and they are embedded within cultures. These are two central challenges that must be addressed in the development of HCI techniques and tools suitable for handling the complexity of designing for users across cultures. User-Centered Design is a first step, and for this paper we frame it specifically within the Scandinavian IS tradition to ensure direct participation by - and cooperation with - users through all phases of the design process. This approach serves as the basis for conceptual and experimental work-in-progress in our VisionLab. We describe the different techniques we are exploring, the essentials of which are to work with users in open dialogue. We point out that when working across cultures, virtually mediated cooperation with users is the next challenge, and conclude by sketching two digital techniques for virtual cooperative design using digital media and how they could be useful.

Audio Technology and Mobile Human Computer Interaction: From Space and Place, to Social Media, Music, Composition and Creation

Audio-based mobile technology is opening up a range of new interactive possibilities. This paper brings some of those possibilities to light by offering a range of perspectives based in this area. It is not only the technical systems that are developing, but novel approaches to the design and understanding of audio-based mobile systems are evolving to offer new perspectives on interaction and design and support such systems to be applied in areas, such as the humanities.

How cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking—a situation specific analysis

Abstract The growing trend of co-creation and co-design in cross-cultural design teams presents challenges for the design thinking process. We integrate two frameworks, one on reasoning patterns in design thinking, the other on the dynamic constructivist theory of culture, to propose a situation specific framework for the empirical analysis of design thinking in cross-cultural teams. We illustrate the framework with a qualitative analysis of 16 episodes of design related conversations, which are part of a design case study. The results show that cultural knowledge, either as shared by the cross-cultural team or group specific knowledge of some team members, shape the reasoning patterns in the design thinking process across all the 16 episodes. Most of the design discussions were approached by the designers as problem situations that were formulated in a backward direction, where the value to create was known first. Then the designers were using available cultural knowledge to articulate the unknown what to design (products/services) and how the design would work (the working principles of product/services). In conclusion, we demonstrate a novel approach for understanding how cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking in specific situations.

“What else is there…?”: reporting meditations in experiential computing

Compelled by Yoo’s (MIS Q, 34:213–231, 2010) call for research on experiential computing, the paper suggests meditations as a genre for both doing and reporting on fieldwork. Meditations are used to engender passionate renderings of research encounters that are part introspective and reflective and part causative and instructive. The meditations weave together everyday experiences with IT with theoretical reflections on embodiment and affect, and suggest the potential for a new scholarly sensuousness. The paper suggests that paying attention to feelings related to technology in everyday life and the use of alternative representational tactics and theoretical motifs can be generative of new matters for empirical research. Emphasizing the senses and the body and their importance in developing a sensory apprenticeship in IS, the paper suggests alternative routes to knowledge and representation.