Presently, the ‘commons and borderlands’ between HCI and STS are firmly established and are being further explored by scholars in HCI (e.g. Danholt, 2005b; Sengers et al., 2008;
DiSalvo, 2009). This is borne out both in terms of existing links (e.g. Star and Suchman) as well as shared intellectual roots and resources, such as approaches to language and ordinary
action, drawing on Wittgenstein and Marxist accounts of technology (e.g. Noble). In what is to follow, I examine in detail STS scholars’ preoccupation with users. In doing so, I draw out further crossovers between HCI and STS that intersect on and at the figure of the user, as well as considering how STS variously appreciates design.
Users and the Social Construction of Technology
Perhaps the first approach within the sociology and history of technology to draw attention to the role of users in the development of technology was the social construction of technology (SCOT).16 This section on SCOT sets out many of the issues to be developed further by subsequent STS approaches to users.
SCOT is an approach to the dynamics of technological change that is most closely associated with the work of Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch. First defined in 1984 (Pinch &
Bijker), SCOT is, in the main, a historical approach in which the involvement of ‘relevant social groups’, including users, are seen to be actively involved in determining the success or failure of a new technology. Whereas determinist approaches to innovation implicitly conceive of users as passive consumers of technology, the SCOT approach views users as active ‘agents of technological change’ (Kline & Pinch, 1999: 113) involved in shaping the meaning and use of an artefact, thereby determining the success of a technology. As such, Pinch and Bijker take issue with the linear and stepped model of innovation (1984: 405) in which the success of a technological artefact fully explains its development and vice versa.17 In focussing on relevant social groups, SCOT demonstrates how the dynamics of technological change can be analysed by paying attention to the change in attribution of meaning provided by end-users, amongst other stakeholders (Bijker, 1999: 191).
Pinch and Bijker took their cue for SCOT from the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), American historical studies of technology including the systems approach (e.g. Hughes, 1983), and studies of labour relations (e.g. Noble, 1979c).18 From the sociology of scientific knowledge, Pinch and Bijker extended the methodological principles of impartiality and symmetry.19 Drawing on SSK wherein sociologists took a stance of impartiality towards the beliefs of scientists in accounting for the truth or falsity of scientific facts, the SCOT approach
16 SCOT emerged in reaction to deficiencies in the philosophy of technology (see: Johnston, 1972) and innovation studies (e.g.
Schumpeter, 1943; Freeman, 1974) and out of the history and sociology of technology (e.g. Noble, 1979a; Hughes, 1983). See (Pinch & Bijker, 1987) for account of the development of SCOT. I use SCOT as a starting point due to the emphasis it places on the agency of the user.
17 For a historical and constructivist account of the linear model of innovation see (Godin, 2006).
18 Which, notably, also influenced Scandinavian researchers.
19 In his book Knowledge and Social Imagery (1976, pp. 4-5) David Bloor sets out the four tenets of the strong programme for the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), including causality, impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. In SCOT, the principles of impartiality and symmetry are applied to technology. SCOT analysts are impartial to the success and failure of a technological artifact. That is to say, the uptake or diffusion of technology cannot be explained by its technical superiority or weaknesses.
SCOT analysts maintain that success is determined by social factors and not better technology. Accordingly, to understand technological development it is important to explain both successful and unsuccessful technologies. The principle of symmetry is employed to explain success and failure without assuming that success itself is an explanation. The notion of symmetry, and its critics, will be further explored in the following chapter where I present my methodological approach.
imputed impartiality in attributing the success of an artefact on its technological development.
In this way, the success of Bakelite in the field of synthetic plastics, for example, cannot be attributed to its technical superiority but rather to the abundance of the ingredient phenol after WW1 (Pinch & Bijker, 1984: 406; Bijker, 1999: 101), amongst other social factors.20 Thus, SCOT set out with the conviction that successful and unsuccessful technologies must be studied symmetrically.21 In other words, the fact that a technology works does not explain how it came to work (Bijker, 1999: 270). Instead, the SCOT approach insists that technology works by virtue of its construction and acceptance by society; thus, the social and the technological must be explained in the same terms, and not as separate and autonomous registers to which the capacity for change is solely attributed. Scholars working under the rubric of SCOT have studied the development of numerous technologies, including, but not limited to: refrigerators (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985), electrical power generation and distribution (Hughes, 1983), nuclear missile guidance systems (MacKenzie, 1990), light bulbs (Bijker, 1999), and early electronic synthesizers (Pinch & Trocco, 2002; Pinch, 2003). For the purposes of this study, however, I focus on those accounts that pay particular attention to the role of users in the development of technology.
In what follows I outline the key concepts of SCOT and examine their significance in relation to sociological studies of users. In their account of the development of the bicycle, Pinch and Biker describe the role played by ‘relevant social groups’ (Pinch & Bijker, 1984:
414) in determining its form and use. The concept of relevant social groups refers to organized and unorganized groups of people who share a particular meaning associated with a technology. In the case of the bicycle, relevant social groups include producers, engineers, marketers, and various end-user groups, such as tourist, sports, and women cyclists. Different social groups often exhibited radically different interpretations of a given technology, such as the bicycle. In the late 1800’s there were various forms and functions of the bicycle including high-wheeled ordinaries (penny-farthings for example), Lawson’s ‘bicyclette’, boneshakers, safety bicycles, and so on. The formal configuration we now take for granted, namely the
‘low-wheeled bicycle with rear chain drive, diamond frame, and air tyres’ was originally regarded as a safety bicycle (ibid. : 416). The high-wheeled bicycle, favoured by male sporting cyclists, was viewed as unsafe by elderly and women cyclists who preferred the safety bicycle.
Moreover, relevant social groups who contributed to the interpretation of the bicycle also included non-users (Bijker, 1999: 41). This user-group included people who couldn’t afford to own a bicycle, and anti-cyclists, such as pedestrians, who actively resisted usage of the
20 For a social constructivist study of the development and success of the synthetic plastic Bakelite see (Bijker, 1999: 101). In his account, Bijker draws attention to the efforts of Bakelite’s inventor, Leo Hendrik Baekeland, in marshalling chemical experimentation and laboratory research, patenting, his efforts to enroll manufacturers as well as the public presentation of Bakelite to the American Chemical Society.
21 For studies of unsuccessful technologies from an ANT perspective see (Callon, 1986a; Latour, 1996).
technology. Thus, a technological artefact has what Pinch and Bijker refer to as ‘interpretive flexibility’ (1984: 421) in that it has different meanings for different social groups and can be interpreted differently by different user groups. The controversy surrounding the introduction of air filled tyres further demonstrates the flexibility and openness of a technology to different interpretations. At first pneumatic tyres were introduced to address the problem of vibration on low-wheeled bicycles. Air-filled tyres, however, were rejected by the general public for aesthetic reasons and were deemed irrelevant by sporting cyclists riding high-wheeled bicycles, which did not suffer from vibration. When pneumatic tyres were publically demonstrated on a racing cycle, however, they were re-interpreted by relevant social groups as performance enhancing, and the air-filled tire became a ‘high-speed tire’ [sic] (Bijker, 1999:
84).
How, then, does SCOT explain the emergence of the ‘safety’ as the predominant bicycle form? Put differently, how does a dominant form and usage of a technology emerge and how does it become widely accepted? Bijker (1999: 86) provides two interrelated analytic concepts, closure and stabilization, to explain the social process whereby a particular technology prevails. The first, closure, describes attempts to curtail interpretive flexibility and pluralism.
Pinch and Bijker note that there are numerous closure mechanisms; however, they emphasize two principle methods: semantic closure (Pinch & Bijker, 1987: 412; Bijker, 1999: 86) and redefinition, or translation (Pinch & Bijker, 1987: 427). Semantic closure refers to rhetorical arguments that are deployed in order to close down the meaning of a technology. Noteworthy here were advertisements that called attention to the safety aspects of the high wheeler bicycle. The second process of closure is referred to as the redefinition, or translation, of the problem. One example of this is the translation of the pneumatic tyre from an anti-vibration tyre to a performance tyre. If closure refers to the way in which the meaning of a technology is achieved across relevant social groups, then stabilization is the process by which a dominant meaning of a technology emerges within a group – that is to say, the process by which a technology becomes widely adopted amongst a group. According to Bijker, the stabilization of the safety bicycle was an eighteen-year process (1879-1897), involving, in the main, a group of cycle engineers. Thus, the SCOT approach to innovation and technological change views the emergence of a dominant artefact as the outcome of a gradual construction of meaning, achieved through social processes involving the interaction of social groups, including, but not limited to: producers, designers, engineers, scientists, end-users and non-users. This stands in stark contrast to heroic accounts of invention and design that centre on an individual’s
biography and their act of creative inspiration or the natural emergence of a superior technology, such as White’s account of the medieval stirrup.22
By placing relevant social groups at the centre of understanding the dynamics of technological change, SCOT emphasises the active role of users in the uptake of new technologies. In this way, SCOT views users as actively shaping the meaning and use of a technology and contributing to its adoption, rather than viewing users as passive consumers of technology. Here, end-users are held partially responsible for the success or failure of artefacts. In placing emphasis on the active role of users as ‘agents of technological change’, SCOT accounts also draw attention to the multidirectionality of technology (Pinch & Bijker, 1984: 411). The study of development of the bicycle, for example, shows how a range of possible variations, technological trajectories and social processes contribute to the development of the bicycle. Such a view of technological development stands in contrast to linear models of innovation whereby technologies emerge out of a rational path from basic research, through product development and finally arrive at usage. Indeed, the involvement of relevant social groups demonstrates how end-users are implicitly involved in technological development.
Various critics, however, have pointed to the shortcomings and weaknesses of the SCOT approach. An example of this is how, in seeking to provide a social explanation for technological change, SCOT has been accused of neglecting the capacity of technology and people to mutually shape one another. Bijker later addresses the problem of mutual shaping, drawing on Callon’s (1986b: 196) general symmetry, using the notion of sociotechnical ensembles where ‘the technical is socially constructed, and the social is technically constructed’ (Bijker, 1999: 273).23 In this updated version of SCOT, technology and social groups are understood to be co-constructed, as an attempt to avoid social and technological reductionism.
Bijker makes a further attempt to nuance the SCOT approach to the agency of technology and social groups by introducing the notion of technological frame (1999: 123), in order to better account for changes in meaning within relevant social groups. Drawing on Gidden’s structuration concept (1984), in order to account for both change and constancy in technological development, the notion of technological frame includes all the elements and interactions that lead to the attribution of meaning of a technological artefact. As Michael notes (2000b: 6), likening the notion to Kuhn’s concept of paradigm (1962), elements and interactions include: ‘goals, key problems, problem solving strategies (heuristics), requirements to be met by the problem solutions, current theories, tacit knowledge, testing procedures and design methods and criteria, users’ practices, perceived substitution function (what might a
22 See (Forty, 1986) for a historical reading of industrial design that also seeks to downplay the ‘careers, ideas and theories’ of individual designers as a way of accounting for design.
23 The term ‘sociotechnical’ should be differentiated from ‘socio-technical’ employed by Tavistock researchers discussed previously.
new artefact replace?), exemplary artefacts’. As such, the notion is employed to account for how artefacts are the outcome of heterogeneous production processes. Bijker describes the technological frame as a ‘hinge’ (1999: 196) between the social interactionist perspective and the semiotic perspective as a means to overcome the criticism of structure vs. agency by arguing that it is a process by which both the technological developer and end-user share meaning.
The notion of technological frame also makes the link between users and designers explicit. On this score, Bijker (1999: 179) describes the involvement of industrial designers in stabilizing Bakelite as a synthetic plastic of choice for moulded consumer product enclosures.
During the development of Bakelite, on the one hand, industrial designers were mobilized to demonstrate to manufacturers how consumer products could be made from Bakelite. On the other hand, however, industrial designers also shared a technological frame with consumers by way of product enclosures that were designed to meet the needs of end-users.
The concept of closure has also been criticised for its rigidity in relation to the agency of users. SCOT accounts of technological development restricted the agency of users to technologies in development that were yet to be stabilized and closed down (Kline & Pinch, 1996: 767; Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003: 3). Here, early work within SCOT was criticised for its emphasis on the design and development stage of technology (e.g. Cowan, 1987). As such, the agency of users in determining the meaning of a technology ceases once a technology achieves stabilisation and closure. Consequently, Bijker argues that closure is ‘almost’ irreversible;
however, various studies have demonstrated the agency of users in modifying stable technologies (e.g. Akrich, 1992b; Mackay & Gillespie, 1992; De Laet & Mol, 2000).
The role of users as members of relevant social groups has also been criticised in that it disregards those actors who are not directly connected to technologies in use, and therefore remain invisible (Winner, 1993: 369). For instance, SCOT regards anti-cyclists as a relevant social group of non-users, whereas non-relevant groups remain invisible within the SCOT approach. Bijker’s (1999) semantic notion of power is therefore insensitive to indirect users, and provides an instrumental view of non-users. In other words, it disregards lack of use, as well as users who do not alter a technology, but are, nevertheless, changed by it. Likewise, feminists scholars of technology have also criticised SCOT for its neglect of gender (Wajcman, 1991). Despite the role of women cyclists in the construction of the safety bicycle, feminist scholars have argued that women either had little influence or were virtually absent from constructivist accounts of technology. Thus feminists argued that SCOT constructed masculine accounts of technology and users, thus marginalizing or ignoring gender interests.
Kline and Pinch (1996: 768) sought to address the two weaknesses – the closure of user agency and gender negligence – in their study of the appropriation and re-design of Ford Model T automobiles by farmers in rural America. Here, Kline and Pinch address the making of user
constructed gender identities (ibid.: 795) that contributed to the interpretive flexibility and stabilization of the car in rural America.
According to Bijker (1999: 192), SCOT also includes an ontological dimension. The notion of relevant social groups asserts that users have agency as active individuals and as collectives. Moreover, social groups and artefacts connect to one another via the technological frame. Here, the technological frame acts as an ontological ‘hinge’ (Bijker, 1999: 195) between interacting relevant social groups and technological artefacts through semiotic interpretation.
Despite this, however, the notion of the ontological hinge further emphasizes the separation of technology and society as two separate ontological domains. Consequently, SCOT maintains the distinction between the technological and the social set in place by technological determinism. It simply relocates the source of agency from the impacts of technology on society to the social shaping of technology. Moreover, despite the belated addition of the notion of co-construction, SCOT views users as people with a relatively fixed identity shaping technology to meet their own ends.
Configuring Users in the Design Process
A semiotic approach to users has also been developed by Steve Woolgar in his seminal work
‘Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials’ (1991a). In his ethnographic study of the design and development of a personal computer he treats the ‘machine as text’ (1991a: 61) and in doing so seeks to interrogate the notion of interpretive flexibility developed in SCOT.
In his case study, Woolgar demonstrates how the interpretive flexibility of an artefact was delineated, and to a certain extent closed down, during usability tests conducted with employees of the company producing the computer. For Woolgar, the metaphor ‘machine as text’ guides a heuristic approach in which he views the personal computer as an artefact that has a meaning to be read by the end-user. Thus, the user is viewed as an interpretive actor, and expert technology designers and developers are viewed as actors who define the identity as well as the capacity of the user. Here, Woolgar moves away from SCOT in two important ways. First, his semiotic approach grants technology (the personal computer) agency, in that it has the capacity to shape the actions of the user. Second, the concept of ‘configuration’
expands the notion of ‘social construction’, by providing a way to understand the agency of both users and technology in the production and interpretation of meaning around a given technology. Thus “‘configuring’ includes defining the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions” (ibid.: 59). In contrast to historical accounts of user agency in SCOT, Woolgar shows how explicit user-involvement in the development stages of a new technology is an important site for the co-construction of technology and users. Moreover, Woolgar also attends to how users are represented in the design and testing process as a semiotic aspect of technological development.
For Woolgar, then, the agency of the user is distributed across both the machine and the user. The capacity and identity of the user is enabled by the machine, in the form of representation of what the machine can do. In this way Woolgar picks up on the ontological aspect of SCOT, arguing that users and technology acquire their capacities from one another and are elaborated mutually in ‘boundary work’ (ibid.: 89). In the case of the personal computer, the enclosure of the machine acts as the boundary between the company that produces the computer and the end-user. The process of design, according to Woolgar’s account, is the struggle to encode the would-be user (ibid.: 89) as an ontological actor. In the case of the personal computer, the efforts of the designers are oriented towards the
For Woolgar, then, the agency of the user is distributed across both the machine and the user. The capacity and identity of the user is enabled by the machine, in the form of representation of what the machine can do. In this way Woolgar picks up on the ontological aspect of SCOT, arguing that users and technology acquire their capacities from one another and are elaborated mutually in ‘boundary work’ (ibid.: 89). In the case of the personal computer, the enclosure of the machine acts as the boundary between the company that produces the computer and the end-user. The process of design, according to Woolgar’s account, is the struggle to encode the would-be user (ibid.: 89) as an ontological actor. In the case of the personal computer, the efforts of the designers are oriented towards the