5.3. The dimensions of work practice sensitive participatory design

5.3.1.1. The prevalent scarcity of practitioner participation in analytic work

Ethnographic traditions, for example, have seldom sought to invite members of the community to participate in the analytic work of writing and (re)interpretation, and ethnographers have acted as mediators between the two worlds of the ‘natives’ and the academic audience (Hastrup 1995). This seems to have been passed on to the technology development settings (Bentley et al. 1992, Hughes et al. 1993, Blomberg & Trigg 2000, Crabtree 1998). Some openly reveal their prejudice against the practitioners’ analytic abilities: “users often find it difficult to articulate what it is they know since the knowledge that enters into the skilful execution of working practices is not easily summarised” (Hughes et al. 1993, p. 138) and “no set of practitioners, no matter how expert, can articulate analytic frameworks and categories. Not for that matter can they abstract out of context, and HCI researchers and developers cannot immediately use their experience information.” (Graves & Nyce 1992, referenced in Nyce & Löwgren 1995, p. 40.)

Participatory Design approaches, on the other hand, have always incorporated users into the collaborative design processes (Ehn 1988, Floyd et al. 1989, Greenbaum & Kyng 1991, Muller & Kuhn 1993, Schuler & Namioka 1993). They have relied on users as ultimate experts of the work context who are able to bring in the relevant skills, experiences and interests. However, the possibilities of practitioners to actively engage in analysis have been questioned from within the lines of PD research: “Although analysis is usually seen as the activity in a development project involving the users the most, the role of the practitioners (users) is often rather passive. Most analysis involves the developer interviewing, describing, observing, surveying and the like, with the aim of transferring knowledge and understanding of the practice in question to the system developer. Often, these approaches to analysis have the system developers as active subjects setting the stage, and the practitioners and their practice as passive objects to be investigated.” (Mogensen & Trigg 1992, p. 56.)

Based on the above critique the CESD approach argues for the active involvement of users in the collaborative analysis of practice. Analysis is realised through cooperative, experimental and interventionist activities, such as sessions of cooperative prototyping (Bødker & Grønbaek 1991) and organisational games (Ehn et al. 1990, Ehn & Sjögren 1991) where cardboard mock-ups and computer-based prototypes are used (Mogensen & Trigg 1992). Though their aim is to understand both “the complexity of current systems” and “the details of current work practice”, the latter may be compromised as pointed out by a participating ethnomethodologist in scrutinising common techniques supporting user-involvement in PD: “what users find relevant in the course of accomplishing participatory design activities, experimental or not, is not necessarily what they find relevant in the course of work’s accomplishment. … The problem here is well known and consists in the difficulty of articulating or otherwise making visible enacted practice in actual details of its enactment. … enacted practice is highly localised, contingent, and (above all) subject to continuous enquiry and discovery for practitioners themselves in the course of work’s accomplishment. … Despite significant methodological develop­ments in experimentation, the endemic problem emerging from the simulation of context and the intractable dialectics of tradition and transcendence maintains to some, not insig­nifi­cant, extent. It will continue to do so in so much as enacted practice is intransigent to adequate abstraction to – and thus visibility in – alternate contexts however artfully provided for.” (Crabtree 1998, p. 95.)

Though CESD recognises the need of practitioners for taking distance of being “entangled in everyday work” (Grønbæk et al. 1997, p. 214) and actively engaging in analysis, the tools used may undermine practitioners’ possibility to gain distance and at the same time to concentrate on the analysis of existing work practice as it unfolds. The basis for this is that the central object of the workshop, as it becomes the shared object of participants, mediates collaborative activities. It may direct participants’ collaboration through the agenda and process that it implicitly includes. In experimental artifacts, such as prototypes, mock-ups or other similar technological and/or conceptual constructions, the shared object is bound to comprise the ideas and assumptions of the designer who has created it. Whereas, as elaborated in section 5.2.2, the video collage of actual unfolding work practice as a common object and point of departure may be a richer and more allowing medium for a work practice centered focus and emphasis in analysis.

Recently researchers attempting to integrate ethnographical techniques into participa­tory design have searched for alternative, non-experimental ways to incorporate analyses of everyday work practice into design projects. Some have been involved in “teaching practitioners how to include ethnographic techniques into their repertoire for actions” (Simonsen & Kensing 1998, p. 27). Unfortunately experiences of these experiments have not been reported, so we are not able to assess the possible achievements of such practitioner participation in co-analysis which in traditional ethnographic terms would be classified as ‘insider’ or ‘native’ ethnography and as such something precarious (Forsythe 1999, Kindermann 1996).

5.3.1.2. Exploring the potential of practitioner participation in the analysis of work

The analytic distance together with practitioner participation offers enhanced possibilities for multidimensional analysis and exploration of work practice[1]. The practitioners can bring in some of the richness of everyday work in the vocabulary of radiology work, the ordinary methods and common practices, and the categories within the work practice. The practitioners, whose work has been recorded and is co-viewed in the workshop, are able to immerse back in the videotaped work activities (see e.g. Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 19-20). They can recall contextual information not available on the tape and elaborate on the observable activities. They can share their local knowledge of the particular instance. The other practitioners can join in by offering their interpretations of the videotaped instances of work based on their professional expertise and by recounting their evoked lived experience. (see e.g. Karasti 2000, publication IV, pp. 9-13.)

Video-based analysis of work where practitioners participate in analysing their own work is by nature different from Interaction Analysis (Jordan & Henderson 1994) which is carried out by researchers having only the possibility to go back to the field to ask more focussed questions. The practitioners are able to bring in their lived experience, historical comprehension, professional expertise, and understandings from within work practice, and to give meanings to the observable activities in the video collage (in addition to the above pointers, see also Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 32-33).

The analysis of work as unfolding practice, i.e. including both the routinised ways of working and the problematic instances encountered and handled as part and parcel of everyday work, differs from the typical analyses of work in system design that focus on the problems and disturbances of current practice. To an outside analyst the problems encountered in work may seem more easily detectable, but through practitioner participation in analysis also the routine ways can be identified which contributes to broadening the narrow problem-solution oriented interest of system design (see e.g. the reformulation of an essential design concept in Karasti 2001, pp. 26-28).

The practitioners do not only participate in sharing their experience and expertise with the other participants. They also learn more about their work themselves, as they are capable of taking an analytic perspective on their everyday work and they come to appreciate their new awareness (see e.g. Karasti 2001, pp. 19-20 and 40). The analytic distance allows the practitioners to explore such aspects of everyday work that have previously remained invisible due to their familiarity and taken-for-grantedness, for instance, the not-easily-articulable tacit knowledge becomes visible and approachable through the detailed video-based analysis (e.g. body work as part of image interpretation in Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 19-20 and the simultaneous comparison of images in ibid., pp. 26-28). The practitioners can question their assumptions and discover aspects of work that have gone unnoticed. Thus the analysis turns into discovering and learning together about the actual work practice.

In this sense the intentional co-analysis of existing work practice differs from the notion of mutual learning that is widely practised in PD approaches. Mutual learning is based on the idea that design professionals learn about the actual context of use from the practitioners, and the workers in turn acquire knowledge of possible technological options from the designers (see. e.g. Bjerknes & Bratteteig 1987, Bødker et al. 1987). Thereby it does not support explicit analysis of work practice and learning more about it than what is already known. The same issues have been recognised also in the CESD approach which aims to supplement mutual learning by “focusing on learning processes with common agendas, that is analysts as well as practitioners from the user organisation investigate current practice and cooperate on the same issues – current organisational practice and technical conditions” (Grønbæk et al. 1997, pp. 213-214).

Analytic distance allows the practitioners to become informed critics and visionaries of technological possibilities and restrictions on their work. They have the lived experience and historical understanding of work that is needed in envisioning how the design suggestions would affect particular use situations in the emergent ways of working. The practitioners relate their new understandings to their experiential knowl­edge in projecting to the future (see e.g. Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 28-33). In envisioning a realistic future technology the outsiders’ views hardly match the practitio­ners’ unique understandings that combine long-time lived experience ‘from within’ and the new more analytic reflection.

In research we take it for granted that combining analysis of work practice and system design is a complicated matter due to the traditional and accepted segregation between academic disciplines. In the workshops it was evident, however, that the people from working life did not have difficulties in moving between analysis, evaluation and further envisioning and design - when supported in this and given the space and powers for it through appropriate planning and facilitation. Practitioner participation does not, of course, wipe away the differences between disciplines, but it provides opportunities to avoid the presumed discipline gap in actual design situations, as the practitioners easily move in and out of the disciplinary territories of ethnography and system design. Tensions already lessen in situations where the designers and ethnographers engage in a joint enterprise (Blomberg & Trigg 2000).

5.3.2.1. Questioning the existing assumptions of work practice and change

In comparison to the horizon of work transformations both ethnographic studies of work and system design depict restricted yet differently limited interests and assumptions with regard to work and change. Ethnographic traditions have a strong orientation to the social organisation of current practice. The interest of ethnographers is in the diverse changes ongoing in the workplace: “if we set the context for the ethnography at the level at which many ethnographers feel most comfortable, we will find they are almost obsessed with change of one sort or another. In picking their way through the minutiae of routine action, prominence is (endlessly) given to the innovative, the ad hoc, and the unpredictable rife in the workplace. Change, here, is the very stuff of ethnography.” (Anderson 1997, p. 177.)

The notion of change can also be found in the description of ethnographic perception of actual organisational life by Randall, Hughes et al.: “understanding the rhythms of work, how it may vary from one time to another, and one period to another. Ethnography can, in principle, provide more than a ‘snapshot’ of the work and the organisation by uncovering some of the fluctuations in workload and intensity, and the differences between normal and some exceptional conditions. … [E];thnography deals with patterns of interaction as they are currently organised not with how they might be changed as a consequence of system intervention.” (1994, p. 257.)

Some, especially designers, have interpreted this as an inimicality to change (Grudin & Grinter 1995) or a failure to recognise the dynamics of design (Bardram 1996, Grønbæk et al. 1997, Kyng 1995, Mogensen 1994) where it has only made visible that the interest of ethnographers in change is different from that of system designers. In insisting that the inquiries of ethnography are “conducted in a non-disruptive and non-interventionist manner” (Hughes et al. 1994, p. 431) the most important principle of “maintaining faithfulness to the phenomenon” is sustained (Crabtree 1998). “To require that an approach to understanding and getting hands-on enacted practice be non-disruptive, is not to advocate that the understandings produced by that approach be non-interventionist: what one uses the understandings for, and how, is an entirely different matter” (ibid., p. 98).

Ethnographers recognise the endogenous change in current work practice but have been careful about using this intellect to advance the understanding of work transforma­tions and their interrelationships with technologies, especially in the name of technologi­cally driven change: “When called upon to draw out the implications of their analyses for explicitly engineered change, it is ethnographers not their ethnographies who are cautious” (Anderson 1997, p. 177).

In comparison, current practice as a relevant starting point for technology develop­ment has not achieved much attention in system design. Design more typically draws on and relies upon the imagined, ideal, or hypothetical contexts as it is regarded that creating change is an inevitable part of system development. PD approaches, on the other hand, have also tried to manage the gap between current and future practice by ‘dialectics between tradition and transcendence’ (Ehn 1988, pp. 128-131) and by developing complementary means to deal with them.

The CESD approach holds that “the primary purpose of a systems development process as a whole is change, organisational as well as technical” (Mogensen 1994, p. 142). Though it is recognised that “[e];very practice is constantly undergoing changes and some of these are rather profound” (ibid., 85), the endogenous change is left aside and the interest in current work practice is typically limited to identifying problems which can be solved with technological means: “analysis is directed towards investigating the use-practice in relation to possible changes. Analysis is seen as facilitating taking action in order to bring about change, rather than explaining how practice is. Thus, the concern is to investigate current practice in the user organisation in order to discover its constraints and potentials for considered changes.” (Grønbæk et al. 1997, p. 213.)

Participatory design has an inherent orientation to the future (Crabtree 1998) which in CESD is reflected in the notions of ‘provoking current practice’ and ‘challenging practice’ (Mogensen 1994) as well as ‘provotyping’ (Mogensen 1991). The emphasis is laid on future possibilities at the expense of paying appreciative attention to the fluency of current work practice, “building computer systems upon existing practices may be a construction on shaky ground” (Mogensen 1994, p. 85). This predisposes PD to the endemic problem of system design, i.e. the danger of ‘tunnel vision’ which means “designing the perfect solution to the wrong problem(s) of work” (Crabtree 1998, p. 94), and is described: “Once the process of development of successive prototypes has started, the danger arises that one is led to elaborate the details of the current prototype instead of questioning its underlying premises” (Mogensen 1994, p. 98).

5.3.2.2. Attempting a more balanced view of work practice and change

In comparison to the CESD approach above attempting to challenge current practice, the MUST approach is more oriented towards finding a rationale behind current work practice though it also recognizes that “[t];he job of the designer is to intervene and initiate and conduct changes in the work practice and organisation – in participation with the people involved” (Simonsen 1994, p. 74). They regard it as “crucial for IT profession­als to develop a thorough understanding of users’ present work in order for the design to reflect – in a realistic way – the norms and traditions of the organisation” (Kensing et al. 1996, p. 132). In a balancing act between the present and future contexts they “try to ‘measure’ the organisation’s needs and readiness for change” as they are “trying to avoid an extreme futuristic design”. They have experienced that “at a practical level combining the two approaches [ethnographic techniques and intervention]; and iterating between them has been an effective way to learn about the organization and also an important resource in generating realistic visions of future use of technology” (ibid., p. 133).

One of the ‘indispensable’ principles of MUST relies on the distinction of three domains of discourse, i.e. users’ present work, new system and technological options, of which the users and IT professionals should collaboratively create both abstract knowledge and concrete experience through design communication (Kensing & Munk-Madsen 1993). “The three domains reflect both the users’ and designers’ typical prerequisities in terms of knowledge and understanding prior to entering a design process. At the outset the users have knowledge and understanding of their present work and of organisational options. The designers have knowledge of the technological option with regard to hardware and software and maybe organisation. At the outset these are the ‘minimal’ knowledge-prerequisities as a starting point for design process. During the design process designers and users have to engage in a mutual learning process addressing these two domains and in an iterative way approach the third domain of discourse: a new (or changed) computer system and changes in the content and the organisation of the organisation of the users’ work.” (Bødker & Kensing 1994, p. 54.) Though Kensing, Simonsen and Bødker have argued that “[k];nowledge within all domains must be developed and related in order for the design process to be a success” (1996, p. 132), they have, unfortunately, provided little empirical evidence for the model in their numerous case studies, such as explaining how knowledge of different domains has been created in the actual design practice.

5.3.2.3. Intertwining actual work practice and endogenous change

The horizon of work transformations, in turn, explicitly intertwines both current work practice and change thinking. The existing ways of working become concrete and tangible, as if present in the workshop, through the viewing and detailed analyses of actual work activities and the practitioners’ elaborations on them. The change becomes visible as the participants stay close to and explore the same work in both existing contexts with different types of technological mediation, and learn to discern a variety of ways in which the transition takes place in work and technology use.

Hence, the horizon of work transformations explicitly recognises change, though it is firmly based on current work practices. Change is not seen as something taking place in the future disconnected from the present actuality, but rather as something that entwines with presence in the existing ways of working (cf. Anderson’s description of the ethnographers’ interest in change (1997), quoted above in section 5.3.2.1). By layering the contexts into a continuum the horizon attempts to relate the intertwined presence and change in one context to the previous and subsequent phases of transition. However, the interventionist impulse is more visible in the focus on the technological mediation of work and related changes than, for instance, in the interest in change “of one sort or another” (ibid.).

Through creating and working on the horizon of work practice transformations the practitioners are able to explore the relations between yesterday, today and tomorrow in thinking about change. They are able to start to extend their lived experiences of work in the familiar context to the new and foreign context, though the two may be drastically different from one another. For instance, as the teleradiology experiment was the first time of carrying out clinical work without films, the practitioners had had little in terms of making informed estimations about work based on digital imaging. In the workshops they could start relating the history and the future development of their work by juxtaposing the different technologically mediated ways of working and associating their lived experiences with film-based practice to the actual instances of teleradiology work practice (Karasti 2000, publication IV, pp. 11-12, 19-21 and 26-28). This gave room for reconsidering the ideal traditional practice and the initial teleradiology assumptions in a different light (ibid., pp. 17-18 and 21-24). It also offered a chance for speculation about and envisionment of work in digital imaging based environment informed by their professional expertise and practical experience (ibid., pp. 19-21 and 27-28).

Furthermore, “[t];he horizon is as far as we can see from where we are. It is not fixed; if we move in space the horizon shifts. What is within one’s horizon is subject to revision and expansion” (Hastrup 1995, p. 11). The notion of horizon of work transformations is dynamic; it allows for learning from situated points of view and it invites for expansion.

The idea of intertwining work and change in a continuum of transformations is not common, not even in the integration of work practice and system design. A notable exception is the Work Practice and Technology group as Xerox PARC that has explored the ‘cultural production of new forms of practice’ involved in integrating ethnography, case-based prototyping and product development. In line with the recognition that “workplaces are always in ‘transition’ from some past to a projected future” (Blomberg 1998) together with the notions of ‘indigenous change’ and ‘continuing design in use’ (Blomberg 1995), the researchers in Work-Oriented Design projects have brought “developing artifacts out into the environments of their intended use” where workers can integrate new technologies into ‘artful integrations’ (Suchman 1994b) with existing technologies. Case-based prototypes are used “as a way to support the imagination of future work practices, augmented with new technologies” in a way that is accessible to the workers and suggestive of future technology-augmented practices (Blomberg et al. 1996, p. 258).

At least on one occasion the use of case-based prototypes in the field was followed by design intervention where the findings of ethnographic studies were brought to bear on technology development. In ‘a co-viewing session’ (Brun-Cottan & Wall 1995) field­work­ers showed video segments to product designers. The video consisted of a practitioner’s use of a paper-based form file and of a case-based prototype (Blomberg et al. 1996). In the session the participants formed an aggregate image of envisioned practice by assembling artifacts and discourses from the three ‘worlds’ of user’s practice, the prototype and the product (Blomberg & Trigg 2000). Through examination of the discursive practices of ethnographers and product designers Blomberg and Trigg put forward mediation and translation between the ‘worlds’ as “general characteristics of interactions across ethnography and system design” in co-constructing the relevance of work practice for design (2000, p. 18).

I have also considered mediation and translation between the different work contexts relevant to the co-construction of the horizon of work practice transformations. However, I have found that juxtaposing the contexts may contribute to design even more directly, as the participants seem to naturally use juxtaposition in generative thinking about the similarities, differences, analogies and alternatives between different ways of working.

5.3.2.4. Providing for the horizon of work transformations

The idea of the horizon of work practice transformations may not be generalizable to all technology development settings, such as technology-driven innovation, and it may not be a profitable aid for system design in all work settings, for instance, in cases where the expected changes are not that extensive or exacting. However, I do see the potential of its applicability also in other practical settings where the actual existing work practice should be made the appreciated and legitimate starting point for technology design. The idea of the horizon of work practice transformations seems particularly suitable for spheres of work with long histories, for work where the everyday practice is based on commonly shared routines and procedures involving knowledges that are not easily made visible, and for areas of work where extensive experience has been accumulated about working with a certain technological mediation which is about the be changed.

It may seem difficult at first to provide for the horizon of work transformations in and for system design when, in fact, current workplaces accommodate lots of different possibilities for exploring and juxtaposing the diverse ways of using technologies. It may be possible to find historical forms of work that intertwine in the existing practices (Engeström 1995) or to distinguish technologies acquired in different periods, or to examine technologies in different phases of their development (Suchman et al. 1999, Goodwin & Goodwin 1997, Barley 1990b). For instance: “[I];n periods of technological change, workplaces often become mixtures of old and new technologies operated concurrently. Associated with each technology is the social order that grew up around its use. Because the mixture occurs in the same setting, one can essentially hold constant variations brought about by the organisation’s cultural, historical, environmental, and social idiosyncrasies in order to see more clearly the ramifications of the technologies themselves.” (Barley 1990b, p. 223.) From an anthropological point of view to studying technologies-in-use, workplaces can be seen to encompass “archaeological layering of artifacts acquired, in bits and pieces, over time. Rather than being homogeneously and seamlessly integrated, these artifacts comprise a heterogeneous collection of information and communication technologies.” (Suchman et al. 1999, p. 397.)

Furthermore, it might also be worth exploring how the horizon of work practice transformations works when a part of the contexts was created by, for instance, conducting experimental hands-on workshops (e.g. prototyping, mock-ups). In such explorations one should, however, bear in mind that the essence of the horizon of work practice transformations in on creating the continuum by starting with actual everyday practice. Therefore, making available the recordings of these experimental sessions for juxtaposition with the representations of existing work practice would be highly important.

5.3.3.1. Questioning the disciplinary dichotomies

The dimension of situated generalisation relates to a set of concerns that have often been put forward as most incommensurate in the debates over the disciplinary discrepancies between ethnographic studies of work and system design. These discrepancies are typically depicted as dichotomies, such as descriptive vs. prescriptive, detailed/particular vs. general, and concrete vs. abstract. For instance, these disciplinary discrepancies are manifest in: “One of the basic objectives of the ethnographer is to elucidate the details of settings and their activities rather than to rely on abstracted and general characterisations of them. By contrast, the software engineer is continually seeking out abstractions which can be modelled in the software.” (Hughes et al. 1993, p. 249.) In an attempt to overcome the discrepancy between details and abstractions, and to find ways to “correlate observa­tions and system requirements” in design practice, “more effective tools to support the ethnographer which help organise, structure and browse the ethnographic record” have been developed (ibid., p. 251).

In general, the discussion of what is at stake in the integration of ethnography and system design has resulted in misdirected and inadequate characterisations which Anderson calls the ‘notational’ and ‘normative’ distractions. “The former refers to the presumption that to be of value to designers, any description must be couched in a formalised or semiformalised notation of some kind … The latter is the age-old (and tired) prescription versus description debate, with the ethnographers staunchly appearing to refuse to be prescriptive in the face of designers’ demands for requirement specifica­tion.” (Anderson 1994, pp. 152-153.)

In this particular case of teleradiology system redesign, the purported disciplinary dichotomies did not present themselves as insurmountable. They did not get in the way of co-constructing the relations between work practice and system design in the workshop setting. It seemed, on the contrary, that the possibility to collaboratively explore the dichotomies as dimensions, such as the dimension of particular work activities in an interplay with realistic design considerations, in fact, relieved some of the disciplinary disparities on a practical level.

5.3.3.2. Relating situated particularities of work and generalised design issues

The participation of practitioners was important in analysing the videotaped instances of actual work activities and distinguishing what was relevant and essential in them from the point of view of ordinary work performance. The situated positions of practitioners from within the everyday clinical work practice in combination with the newly gained analytic distance allowed them to iterate between the particular work activities and their lived experience of work practice. By relating the situated instances of work to their specific experiences of what is common in everyday practice the practitioners characterised issues and concerns germane to the actual work practice that they found relevant in analysing the unfolding course of accomplishing the work (Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 16-21 and 24-25).

Rather than producing mere descriptions of what takes place in the particular instances the practitioners gave meaning to the particularities by bringing the everyday intelligibility of work and their lived experience to bear on the activities. Meanings were formulated as the practitioners could understand and discern what was both significant and common in the instances from the point of view of competently carrying out the work (ibid.). In more ethnographic terms, the practitioners’ explications captured something of the underlying patterns and patterning of work being played out in and through the everyday detail of local scenes (cf. analytic images of work, Anderson 1994). The meanings as if characterised some sensibilities of the work in question as they captured the rationale and means of everyday practice by which the observable ways of working arise and are constituted (cf. sensibilities of work, Button & Dourish 1996).

The co-constructed shared understandings and meanings of work practice functioned like intermediaries in the interplay between work practice particularities and system design issues. Some of them became distinguished as something so common or general to radiology work practice that they would have to be taken into account in further development of the technology, as for example in cases where the practitioners conceived that certain aspects of work need to stay the same regardless of the technology used, e.g. the possibility to juxtapose images for simultaneous reading and comparison both in film-based and in digitally mediated environments (Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 26-28). The meanings were also used as emergent criteria in the assessment of design ideas for their relevance and implications for particular instances of work, e.g. as in considering the possibility to adjust image tone “on the fly” with unevenly exposed images (ibid., pp. 28-31).

In envisioning and generative thinking the participants explored the issues in and through the horizon of work transformations, i.e. as they found something important for the work practice in one context (such as identifying an essential work practice issue in a particular instance on the videotape), they could apply it to and compare it with other contexts of work (finding out if it can be applied to other ways of working), e.g. an analogy applied to three different contexts of work (ibid., pp. 31-32). The legitimacy of design ideas based on technological potentials was also weighted by considering their implications for everyday work practice, i.e. practitioners envisioned how the design suggestions would affect particular use situations by projecting their lived experience of the traditional, film-based practice into the future context, e.g. the radiologists’ need to “stay in control” of the initial exposures also in digital environments (ibid., pp. 32-33).

5.3.3.3. Finding the relations – an ongoing achievement of participants

Relating work practice particularities and system design issues was a continuous process in the workshop that varied in complexity. Finding the relevant relations could span the entire workshop, or something could be found worthy of design consideration through one time collaborative viewing of an instance of work followed by a focussed discussion (ibid., pp. 33-34).

The Lancaster CSCW research group also recognises that “[t];he process of directing sociological attention towards systems design issues, and, by contrast, of ensuring that the designers’ understanding of the work is adequate, is in principle difficult to formulate” (Randall et al. 1994, p. 252). They describe the ‘inchoate’ discussions of the debriefing meetings where the materials and the experiences of the fieldworker were sequentially analysed and directed towards the concerns of the designers: “It was very much a dialogic process in which, initially, the fieldworker was interrogated by the rest of the research team. As indicated, this took the form of questions such as ‘what happens if …?, ‘how is this done …?’, ‘what would be the consequences of doing X?’, and so on: dealing very much with the practicalities of the work rather than disciplinary issues about the work. Scenarios were evolved, such as following an aircraft and its strip through a route, noting how departures from the ‘routine’ were dealt with; trying to distinguish ‘normal’ and ‘exceptional’ circumstances; imaging what might be the result of changing the strips, the working practices in specific ways; estimating the wider constraints on the system, such as airspace configuration, and more.” (Hughes et al. 1993, p. 134.)

Taking into account what was described above about the importance of practitioner participation in discerning meanings of work and using them in the envisionment of design concerns (both previous section and section 5.3.1), it is easy to understand the perplexity of the ethnographers when acting as ‘users’ champion’ and ‘designer’s conscience’, to be insisted to “be willing to make judgements as to essential work characteristics which must be preserved in a computer system and those characteristics which may be changed” (Sommerville et al. 1992, p. 353).

Within the Work Practice & Technology research Blomberg and Trigg have explored the actual discursive practices of ethnographers and product designers in co-constructing the relevance of work practice for system design. In the meeting under scrutiny, video clips from the Work-Oriented Design project provided the starting point for discussion about the nature of a particular practitioner’s work (an attorney called M), the relation of M’s work to a document management system called Jalisco, M’s use of the case-based prototype, the relation of the prototype to Jalisco, and possible additions to the new product. “Throughout the meeting, the conversation moves freely between descriptions of M’s actual practice and an envisioned future in which his files are in electronic form accessible from the desktop of the firms’ attorneys. The talk variously orients participants to work at the firm and to system design considerations. The same speaker moves easily between these shifting orientations, recasting descriptions of practices at the law firm into terms that are relevant to design considerations. Similarly, speakers reframe development issues in work practice terms. In the ongoing discourse, these multiple perspectives were available for negotiation and revision by participants.” (Blomberg & Trigg 2000, p. 6.)

Several types of recastings between the different worlds and mappings between system design terms and M’s work practice were identified. It is argued that “[t];he aim should not be to avoid recastings and other ‘distortions’ altogether, but to offer materials in the form of work site artifacts and case-based prototypes that can motivate and enrich each recasting, enabling it to function as boundary-crossing discourse with design implications” (ibid., pp. 16-17) as was the case when the participants formed an aggregate image of envisioned practice (projected technology use) by assembling artifacts and discourses for the three ‘worlds’ of M’s practice, the prototype and the product. “Providing materials from the work site (e.g. videos, documents, etc.) allows designers to construct ‘scenarios’ in the moment specific to their design concerns” (ibid., p. 17). Blomberg and Trigg conclude by suggesting that “the translations evident in the talk of participants at this meeting are general characteristics of interactions across ethnography and system design. In particular, such border crossings are a critical aspect of larger efforts to affect the course of technology development” (ibid., p. 18).

The MUST program, in turn, promotes that “ideas and visions [of the overall change]; are developed throughout the project … They emerge in nearly all activities conducted in the project.” (Kensing et al. 1996, p. 136.) The MUST researchers have integrated ethnographic and interventionist approaches “as a practical guide to handle what Ehn [in Ehn 1988]; refers to as the dialectics between tradition and transcendence in design” (Simonsen & Kensing 1994, p. 48) and have experienced that “combining the two approaches and iterating between them has been an effective way to learn about the organisation and also an important resource in generating realistic visions of future use of technology” (Kensing et al. 1996, p. 133). However, they recognise that “[t];hough we learned that applying ethnographic techniques contributed to this result, it is impossible to specify more precisely which techniques gave which kind of insight” (Simonsen & Kensing 1994, p. 56).

In addition to iterating between ethnographic and interventionist approaches, the MUST researchers rely on another level of iterations, i.e. between observations and interviews, which they explicitly see as providing different kinds of knowledge that allow the IT professionals to “handle the say/do problem”. However, it is unclear how all this relates to the purported distinction between “abstract knowledge” and “concrete experience” (Kensing & Munk-Madsen 1993) as it is only suggested that abstract knowledge is needed to “get an overview of a domain of discourse” whereas concrete experience is needed “in order to understand the abstract knowledge and in order to evaluate its relevance” (Kensing et al. 1996, p. 132). Such statements as: “[ethnographic techniques]; do not address abstract descriptions and strategies that cannot be observed in current work practices, but which nevertheless may be a guiding factor for an overall design effort in an organisation” (Simonsen 1994, p. 78) are but to further bewilder an interested reader. They have also given rise to critique of equating ethnography with a field research method and of characterising the stance taken towards knowledge and informants as at best naive (Bader & Nyce 1998, pp. 6-8).

5.3.3.4. What kinds of explications of work practice?

All in all, the study of what actually takes place in the co-construction of work practice based design issues has just begun. Blomberg and Trigg have argued for recastings and translations between different worlds as general characteristics of interactions across ethnography and system design (2000). I have identified three dimensions along which the actual work of co-constructing work practice based design issues is explored, namely the analytic distance, horizon of work practice transformations, and situated generalisa­tions. Furthermore, in relation to the debate on what kind(s) of explications of work practice system design should be based on, I have suggested meanings of work that emerge in the interplay between situated work activities and the practitioners’ lived work practice experience as intermediaries for relating work practice particularities and design issues.

Several ethnographers have noted that it might not be the sociologically interesting explications (Hughes et al. 1993) or analytic ethnographies (Anderson 1994, Nyce and Löwgren 1995) that are needed or wanted in design. It has been suggested that the field experience “may provide them [designers]; with all the access and insight they feel they need” (Anderson 1994, p. 178). I agree that even getting out to the ‘real world’ and attempting to understand the context of use would increase sensitivity towards work practice in plenty of design projects, but maintain that an analytical mentality should also be aspired. Furthermore, it has been suggested that “ethnography may offer sensibilities that will cause designers to question the presuppositions of their conventional outlooks” (ibid., p. 179). I believe that we need these types of critical formulations and challenges, as we need every conceivable means to inflict self-reflection and change on system design towards more socially conscious and work practice sensitive practice. But I also see, following Simonsen and Kensing (1998), that it takes time, training and changes in educational systems before such challenges are to be met successfully on the level of practical system design.

Therefore, the question for me has remained: how the explications of work can be formulated and targeted so that they maintain faithfulness and analytic stance to the actual work practice and yet are also useful for system design. Let me illustrate this with an example from the teleradiology study.

During my fieldwork I had gotten deeply interested in juxtaposition. I was interested in juxtaposition both theoretically as a phenomenon itself and as a participant observer I explored its manifestation in the simultaneous comparison of images as part of the radiologists’ work of image interpretation. When taking on the more design-oriented role of participant interventionist I had also started to explore how the juxtaposition of images could work as an underlying concept for design and what kinds of changes it would bring about in the system. Several ideas of how the juxtaposing of images could be taken into account in and supported by the image display application had occurred to me when playing with the idea of image juxtaposition and the new possibilities digital imaging offered.

In the workshops image interpretation became analysed and explored as an unfolding activity where the comparison of images manifested itself as an important practicality of everyday practice. As the simultaneous comparison of side-by-side images became scrutinised, the initial assumptions of “solving individual problems by interpreting few images” were questioned and new meanings from within the actual work practice were contrived for the juxtaposition and simultaneous comparison of images on screen (Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 26-28). This new comprehension led to some suggestions on how to change the system, e.g. by providing simultaneous access to all images of one patient (Karasti 2000, publication IV, pp. 17-18) and having two monitors for image display (ibid., pp.13-14).

The improvements were adequate and suitable for addressing the practicalities of image interpretation in teleradiology setting and taking forward the redesign of the system. But as these formulations were not as comprehensive or radical as the ones I had formed as a participant interventionist, I kept wondering after the workshop what kind of understanding of the profound meaning of juxtaposition for the image comparison would have been needed, or whether the question was more about the time and support needed for being able to use the new understandings in exploring new and more original solutions.

On the other hand, gravitation towards actual work practice in the workshops was not only manifest in the specific issues raised and improvements suggested with regard to the teleradiology system redesign but also in the concerns that were brought to bear on the collaborative design process. With regard to this, the participant interventionist is likely to benefit from comprehensive analytic explorations of work practice, but it remains to be explored what kinds of formulations are likely to be most prolific also for design.