Summary
Objectives: The paper explores possibilities for situating IT design and development work within
the context of use so as to support the co-realisation of technology and ‘design in
use’. The aim is to build a new understanding between IT professionals and users which
is grounded upon what happens as the latter grapple with the problems of applying
IT, appropriating its functionalities and affordances into their work practices and
relations.
Methods: Following a discussion of participatory design and ethnomethodology, a novel method
called co-realisation, which aims to provide a synthesis of the preceding methods,
is suggested as an alternative. Through a discussion of findings from a case study
of IT systems design and development in healthcare we show how the co-realisation
approach might provide work-affording systems and how user-designer relations might
be reformulated. We suggest that work-affording systems can be developed through the
deployment of an engaged facilitator who works with the users to unpack the work site-specific
potentialities of technology.
Results: The case study shows how risk of non-adoption might be minimised through the development
of partnerships, and how the presence of the facilitator in the workplace capitalises
on the mundane work undertaken therein and how the facilitator might work with the
users to develop artefacts that support this work as opposed to reconfiguring it.
Conclusions: The case study illustrates co-realisation in action and how it might be seen to reconfigure
relations between users and designers in a way that appears productive. Co-realisation
can help address the widely observed problem of IT systems failures in healthcare.
Keywords
Ethnomethodology - IT systems design and development - participatory design - design
in use
