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The managed prosumer: evolving knowledge strategies in the design of information infrastructures

2013; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1369118x.2013.830635

1468-4462

Mikael Johnson, Hajar Mozaffar, Gian Marco Campagnolo, Sampsa Hyysalo, Neil Pollock, Robin Williams,

Knowledge Management and Sharing

AbstractThis paper contributes to the reworking of the traditional concepts and methods of Science and Technology Studies that is necessary in order to analyse the development and use of social media and other emerging information infrastructures (IIs). Through long-term studies of the development of two contrasting IIs, the paper examines the prosumer-management strategies by which vendors manage their relationships with their diverse users. Despite the sharp differences between our cases – an online-game with social network features and traditional enterprise systems – we find striking homologies in the ways vendors manage the tensions underpinning the design and development of mass-market products. Thus their knowledge infrastructures – the set of tools and instruments through which vendors maintain an adequate understanding of their multiple users – change in the face of competing exigencies. Market expansion may favour ‘efficient’ quantitative user assessment methods and the construction of abstract user categories for designing new generic solutions and services around market segments. However where a product extends into new and unfamiliar user markets the growing social distance between developer and user may call for ‘richer’ direct ways of knowing the user. We note the emergence of collective fora, which can provide a space for independent action and innovation by users. However, these were managed communities. Certain user relations functions were pushed out to the community or third-party organizations and at other times pulled back in-house – for example, to increase vendor direct control. This picture is far removed from the visions of seamless integration of producers and users encouraged by notions such as prosumer.Keywords: generificationknowledge infrastructurescommunity management strategiesdeveloper−user relationssocial distanceuser categorizationsuser innovationscience and technology studies Notes on contributorsMikael Johnson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, a joint research institution of Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, Finland. Mikael's research concerns strategic user involvement, social media and changing patterns of energy use. His doctoral thesis focused on how social media changes user-centred design. Mikael received his Doctor of Science in Technology degree from Aalto University, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He has also worked as a software engineer and interaction designer in various research projects. [email: mikael.johnson@aalto.fi]Hajar Mozaffar is a Research Fellow in The University of Edinburgh Centre for Population Health Sciences. Hajar's doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh Business School focuses on user involvement and user communities in innovation in information systems, especially enterprise systems. After training as a Software Engineer, she has previously worked as an analyst and consultant in implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning systems in various organizations and as a lecturer for over five years with a focus on social aspects of software design and technology management. [email: hajar.mozaffar@ed.ac.uk]Gian Marco Campagnolo is Lecturer in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the The University of Edinburgh, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI). He has a background in workplace studies, and he worked with ethnomethodologists such as Giolo Fele and Kenneth Liberman on topics related to information systems. More recently, his research has been influenced by the Edinburgh perspective on the sociology of ICT. He recently edited the book Phenomenology, organizational politics, and IT design: The social study of information systems (IGI Global, 2012). [email: g.campagnolo@ed.ac.uk]Sampsa Hyysalo is Associate professor in co-design at the Aalto School of Art, Design and Architecture and Senior Researcher at the Aalto University School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. Sampsa's research and teaching focus on user involvement in innovation and the co-evolution of technologies, practices and organizations. He received his PhD in Behavioural Sciences in the University of Helsinki and holds a Docentship in information systems, specializing in user-centred design. Sampsa's two most recent books are Health technology development and use: From practice-bound imagination to evolving impacts (Routledge, New York, 2010) and Käyttäjä tuotekehityksessä – Tieto, tutkimus, menetelmät (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, Helsinki, 2009). (User in product development – Knowledge, research, methods.) [email: sampsa.hyysalo@aalto.fi]Neil Pollock is Professor in Innovation and Social Informatics at the University of Edinburgh where he is also Head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group in the Business School. He has published widely on the sociology of information systems and has co-authored two books: Putting the university online (with James Cornford) and Software and organizations (with Robin Williams). He is currently working on a third, provisionally entitled The sociology of business knowledge. His research has appeared in leading journals such as Information Systems Research, Social Studies of Science, Information and Organization, Science, Technology and Human Values, MIS Quarterly and Accounting, Organizations and Society. [email: neil.pollock@ed.ac.uk]Robin Williams is Professor of Social Research on Technology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) at The University of Edinburgh. Building on research into the ‘social shaping’ of enterprise systems and various other Information Technology applications, he is developing with co-authors, the Biography of Artefacts perspective to address the design and implementation of information infrastructures. Recent books include Social learning in technological innovation: Experimenting with information and communication technologies (Edward Elgar, 2005) with James Stewart and Roger Slack and Software and organisations: The biography of the enterprise-wide system – or how SAP conquered the world (Routledge, 2009) with Neil Pollock. [email: r.williams@ed.ac.uk]Notes1. A corollary of this is that developing an adequate understanding of information infrastructure evolution is of necessity a team task (Williams & Pollock Citation2012). Unusually for this paper we are able to bring together two extended biographies of IIs.2. Recent events concerning lapses in online moderation reported in UK media in June 2012 again changed the volunteer programme. New safety measures have been introduced, parents and users were invited to express their views on how to make the service safer for teenagers, and moderation was again opened up to user community volunteers.3. In contrast to the concerns previously expressed by Oudshoorn et al. (Citation2004) that attempts to ‘design for everybody’ would result in design for nobody, we found that the design of IIs involved purposefully creating social distance from particular users e.g. sifting out specific ES requirements that might limit wider system uptake. Similarly SM design around user abstractions based upon ‘average user’ was seen as offering a reflective counterbalance to particular vocal user groups in earlier releases (Johnson, Citation2007).