Designing with the user

Abstract

Review of Computers and Democracy: A Scandinavian Challenge, G. Bjerknes, P. Ehn, and M. Kyng, Eds. Gower Press, Brookfield, Vt, 1987. Anyone who has taken on the task of critically questioning prevailing assumptions about some aspect of the social world knows how much easier it is to mount the critique than to formulate an alternative. The domain of computers in the workplace is no exception to this rule. Many of us have felt deeply dissatisfied with the assumptions that underlie standard representations of human work practices in relation to technology, for example, that such practices are organized normatively by the functional requirements of a given task or are usefully modeled as disembodied data flow. Critical analysts of new technology have pointed to the abuse of computerization by employers who believe that company profitability can be increased by decreasing employee autonomy (see, e.g., [l], [2], [5], and [6]). Expressing our dissatisfaction and articulating such dangers are prerequisite to developing alternative theories and agendas for the design of information technology. But although necessary, such critiques are not sufficient. We need to develop as well a vision of how things could be different-of how, given the necessary time, resources, participants, and perspectives, we might begin to shape a new approach to the design of workplace technology. In Computers and Democracy: A Scandinavian Challenge we begin to see the outlines of what an alternative, genuinely human-centered approach to the design of new technology could be. Notwithstanding the enormous complexity of social relations, professional identities, and conflicting values that characterize the settings described, the prospect of a new way of understanding and negotiating those complexities is, to me, profoundly exciting. The book is the product of a conference held in 1986 at the Computer Science Department of Aarhus University in Denmark on "Computers and the Democratization of Work." The papers comprise a festschrift or writing in celebration of Kristen Nygaard, professor of computer science at the Institute of Informatics in Oslo, Norway, and the moving force behind the Scandinavian perspective that the book represents. The 22 papers collected here report work carried out over the past 10 years by researchers in Scandinavia, other European countries, and the United States. They include programmatic and empirical discussions of system design; institutional and