Technology designers as technology users: the intertwining of infrastructure and product

Authors:
Julia Prior;Toni Robertson;John Leaney
Affiliations:
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia;University of Technology, Sydney, Australia;University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Venue:
OZCHI '06 Proceedings of the 18th Australia conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Design: Activities, Artefacts and Environments
Year:
2006

Citing 4
Cited 0

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Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: working on the fringes

Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems - Special issue on Ethnography and intervention

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Abstract

This paper is about the developer as technical user interacting with computer technology as part of the infrastructure that makes possible their 'real work' of developing a large and complex software product. A longitudinal ethnographic study of work practice in a software development company that uses an Agile development approach found that the developers spend a large part of their working time designing, creating, modifying and interacting with infrastructure to enable and support their software development work. This empirical work-in-progress shows that an understanding of situated technology design may have implications for the future development of HCI methods, tools and approaches.