For the last two decades, issues like democracy at work, ‘user’ involvement, and quality in work and products have been part of the core of systems development in Scandinavia. A historical overview can be found in (Bansler, 1987). The issue of democracy at work was in focus in the seventies in projects like NJMF in Norway, DEMOS in Sweden, and DUE in Denmark.
The strategy to influence democracy (or lack of) at work was cooperation between researchers and (local) trade unions, and a negotiation model was developed (Ehn & Kyng, 1987). One of the problems encountered with this strategy was its rather ‘reactive’ character - it is a stronger argument to point at alternatives than to say no to existing proposals. This was one of the primary motivations behind the UTOPIA project (Denmark and Sweden) in the early eighties, in which alternatives to existing and proposed computer
systems for the graphic industry were investigated. The focus had shifted from negotiation about potential computer systems to development of alternative (and hopefully, from the given perspective, better) systems. One of the lessons learned from the UTOPIA project was the importance of close cooperation between people in the prospective use-practice and designers/researchers, and the importance of concrete experiences, hands-on, in this cooperation (Ehn, 1988; Kyng, 1988). Similar conclusions came out of the Norwegian Florence project (Bjerknes & Bratteteig, 1987; Bjerknes &
Bratteteig, 1988), although the focus here was more on communication, whereas the UTOPIA project focused more on the tool aspects of computer systems. In the last half of the eighties much interest and work concentrated on the issues of cooperation in systems design. Some of this work is reported on in the book Design at Work (Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991), in which the so-called cooperative design is elaborated and conceptualised.
This thesis takes its departure in this tradition and in the conceived problems.
Three central activities in Design at Work are analysis which is the subject matter of the first part of the book, design which is the subject matter of the second part, and use-practices which is of primary concern for both analysis and design.
The relationship between the given use-practice and the design process is conceived of as cooperative and mutually informing. It is design visions that inform metaphorical design, organizational games, cooperative prototyping, etc. These are in turn conducted in, or as close as possible to, the practice in question. This affects and informs the practice, in that the practitioners experience it in alternative ways, and it affects and informs the design, in that the experiences from these sessions guide and inspire the design work.
Furthermore, the process of design is carried out cooperatively by the practitioners (the ones engaged in the practice in question) and the designers.
The arguments for cooperation range from the ethical arguments about respect for mutual competencies, over more political ones about democracy, to pragmatic arguments concerning the practitioners as indispensable co-actors in design.
The first part of the book argues for the need for cooperative design processes to be founded in an understanding of the current practice, and it indicates the importance of an analysis that takes practice seriously. In contrast to the
‘design-part’ the primary concern of analysis is to understand the practice in question, and to understand it in its own terms and from the point of view of its members. The approach is usually conceived of as an analysis from within.
The basic argument is that in applying a predefined framework, a given theory, a specific design issue, etc., one will inevitably come to see practice in this light, which in turn easily leads to an analysis more influenced by the pre-understanding than the actual circumstances. Hence, the idea is to avoid a priori categories and frameworks, and instead to focus on the specifics.
The means brought to bear (observation, listening, watching, etc.) are, ideally, passive with respect to the practice investigated - the analysts are ‘flies on the wall’ they do not (directly) affect or inform this practice. The result of the analysis is conceived of as the analysts’ reflections on the gathered material (interviews, videotapes, audio tapes, notes, observations, etc.) not changes in, or informing of, the practice in question.
Throughout the book, many examples and arguments are given as to how analysis can and should found the basis for design. Design, however, does not explicitly play a role in informing analysis. One of the arguments is that coming to the field of analysis with a specific design in mind, will inevitably affect the analysis and probably result in a technology-driven analysis. (To a baby with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.)
The relationships between the three central activities or practices, with respect to which informs or affects which, is summarised in Figure 1.1.
Use
Analysis Design
Figure 1.1: The relationship between the three practices of use, analysis, and design in Design at Work
The unidirectional arrow from use to analysis is meant to highlight that the purpose of analysis is to ‘extract’ a reflective understanding from use-practice, not to affect it. The unidirectional arrow from analysis to design indicates that analysis informs and affects design, but not vice versa. Finally, the bi-directional arrow between design and practice shows that these processes are conceived of as mutually informing and affecting. The arrows do not represent causality or a time dependence, the processes are mostly seen as being undertaken in parallel.
What will be argued in this thesis is that analysis, design, as well as the practice in question in many situations can benefit from ‘reversing the arrows’: design can be used as an active informant of analysis and so can analysis of the analysed practice. The result is a close interaction between all three practices as depicted in Figure 1.2.
Use
Analysis Design
Figure 1.2: The relationship between the three practices of use, analysis, and design as investigated in this thesis
Furthermore, it will be argued that this mutual informing and affecting can be accomplished through a cooperative analysis.
In the words of the editors of Design at Work:
Reflections on work practice, we believe, are critically important for ongoing design, not as laboratory experiments that measure the statistical significance of a user’s interaction with a system (Chapter 2), but for daily or routine project work. However, a lot of work remains. The analytical approaches [in Design at Work], with their emphasis on observation, listening, and watching, have to be developed further to suit a cooperative design process where the
‘objects of analysis’ stop being objects and instead become active