Can Software Development be too Use Oriented? Going Native as an issue in Participatory Design.

• In participatory design there is a risk that the emphasis on the co-operation with future users let the developers forget to step back and reflect on what they learned. In this article we report about a case study of a software project and the resulting system. In spite of a user oriented way of developing the system, problems showed up both when using the software and when the developers later tried to modify it. Part of the reason for the problems was the (lack of) structure in the system. We use the 'going native' - a well discussed methodological issue in ethnography - as a metaphor. The ethnographer have to both 'go native' to be able to understand the culture studied but also step back and reflect. In the same way the software developer has to 'step back' and reflect and form their own conceptual model.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Mänsklig interaktion med IKT (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Human Aspects of ICT (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Software Engineering

Use Orientation

Participatory Design

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)