Brainstorming Session: working-definition

• learning use of tech to achieve something –> contributing to …. preexisting goal
• Equipment driven technology: making equipment fit into everyday practice –> transforming mundane practice via. Equipment –> sustainable & meaningful to self
• Fitting – to context of use –> learning discovering, new way of doing something
• usage that goes beyond designers intent
• configuring use (& technology) – both ways
• role of intention?
• Tension between „half mine“ / „half yours“ –> highly depends on the context of use
• Testing the limits of an objects (intentional part of learning)
• Personal and group
• Transformation of goal or intention
• Sometimes without goals
• Intentional articulation work
• Many goals – uncertain priorities
• How does appropriation relate to design in use? –> feedback into design?
• Aspect of time –> maybe we are giving a time-span to technology?
• Design as fixed or dynamic/unfolding
• Inside and outside of technology –> what do we observe?
• Coupling: design for?
• How to study goals – of individuals or groups?
• Whose goals?
• Lack of shared meaning?
• We have goals on different levels? We may know about them? You may not be interested ofthem?
• Why are we actually appropriating technology? What are the drivers of appropriation?
• How much flexibility to design into technology –> Situated and reflected appropriation (on an organizational level: (1) reflection in terms of making technology as open as possible to allow for appropriation; (2) reflection in terms of making technology not allowing for appropriationàrestricting)
• Appropriation in the moment (intended & prevented)
• 2 Papers: Do have artefacts politics? Deliberate politics of artifacts? Discerning bias in design –> scope might include designers intentions
• Design culture –> users awareness of those culture

Drivers of appropriation:

• Drivers of appropriation –> what are triggering instances?
• We started with 4 ideas: further ideas areo Unanticipated…
  * Users (and their experiences)
  * Usage
  * Circumstances
  * Design
  * Incentives
  * Borrow resources (from users and from usage)
  * …
• Appropriation for me for us?
• pre-existing goals: maybe technology is really appropriated if the goal alters

Break out Session:

Group 1:

• Idea of adaptation is against the goal of the designer (making it mine as a starting definition)
• Different tensions:
  * Does appropriation occur in different situations at hand?
  * What amount of constraints is put into the design by designers?
  * E.g., social software
  * Study: existing appropriation – when you trigger change?
• Definition: process of making one’s mundane practices and tools fit together to produce sustainable and meaningful courses of action
  * Definition is related to equipment
  * How to solve breakdows that occur with tools?
  * We can’t do interpretations of ourselves for the users? o skillful coping, may lead to transferable skills
  * you know how to deal with breakdowns with this tool
• Design for appropriation was not discussed –> totally different topic?
• Knowing that something is appropriate is not necessarily something good
• {Observe, inquire}, intervene
  * Can’t do interpretation unless you can ask people
  * Did you think about it (apply a strategy)? Do you just do it
• Question: How to design for appropriation
• Knowing that something is appropriated may not be useful. What would be?
  * User experience –> market impact
  * Manager’s goals of efficiency and satisfaction
  * Manager’s goals of creating meaning and collaboration via technology

Group 2:

• Is appropriation something that is necessarily something good/bad
  – Good or bad: creative, self-serving, dangerous, empowering (for whom?)
• Lifespan of technology – how aware are users that some appropriation has taken place?
• Time and space as important influencing factors
• Limitations in the thinking of designers à not considered so formally
• Claiming for diversity seems to be something different than claiming for unanticipativeness
• Maybe diversity seems to be something different than unanticipation
• What is unanticipated (in unanticipated use, users, circumstances, design)?
• How much can we anticipate and put into a design? Can it be too much?

Plenum Session:

• How can observe appropriations?
  * do we need the perspective of the users ? how to ask users?
  * do we need the perspective of the designers? do we need to ask designers? o can we infer designers’ goals?
  * Context of use
  * Participatory design
  * interpretation needs to come from the person that has appropriated it
• Theories:
  * TAM as theory
  * adaption vs. breakdowns – having this continuum?
  * that people can sufficiently work with what they have at hand
  * coping
  * ready-to-hand
  * Installation theory (arenas where interactions occur, focus on how meanings of arenas evolve over time, how groups make meaning)
  * Designers’ control of users’ work practices vs. nudging? * Manipulation achieved via designing for appropriation?
• Is it a good idea to design for appropriation?
  * depending on the intention of the designers: controll vs. freedom
  * designer control the users work practices/ inform
  * Is design-for-appropriation dependent on the unanticipated aspects?
  * Is it good idea to design for appropriation? –> depending: it can either be for control or it can be for manipulation (this can both be good/bad)
  * Intended timespan of use
  * A defense against obsolescence
  * Do you know how users and usage would grow over time?
• Methodological:
  * Context matters –> group and collective experiences
  * There is no baseline of measurements you do?
  * More points of measurements?
  * How do we study appropriation as it happens? –> does it depend on luck?
  * Agile development
  * Participatory design
• What is worst for appropriation?
  * Acceptance testing
  * Showing that something is usable <–> does not mean that they’ve appropriated it
  * In-situ vs. lab studies
  * How could we make a mistake? What are the failure cases?
  * Show events make people use the technology?
• good/bad to design for appropriation:
  * Uanticipated circumstances –> one of the risks?
  * To what of circumstances are you contributing?
  * Disruptive and incremental discussions –> mundane practices
  * Design strategy –> temporal dimension –> for lifetime or not
  * Evolvement over time of design —> thinking of design as a period of time and how users in the same time evolve –> this is interesting o What are times when
• • What methods do exist what designers need to do/inform designers?
  * Intention and believe structures –> what to see in the artifact?
  * Unsustainable to assessing populations at the end
• Harvest Technologies and IP:
  * Competitive designers and competitive appropriations –> this could be competing o It depends where patents are actual deployed
  * From the users perspective: if they have to appropriate technology?
  * Even if people/designers have anticipated the design it can be appropriations?