The user – the great unknown of systems development: reasons, forms, challenges, experiences and intellectual contributions of user involvement

We are witnessing an interesting era in the history of computing and information technology (IT). Computing, telephone and television on the one hand and data, voice and video on the other hand are converging. Internet, the World Wide Web and mobile computing have made IT truly global. IT has become pervasive – it is increasingly difficult for human beings to live their lives without encountering IT. The applications of IT have expanded from traditional automating (e.g. process control and embedded applications), augmenting (e.g. word processing), informating (information systems proper) and communicating (e.g. email) applications to various accompanying (e.g. computer pets), entertaining (e.g. computer games) and fantasizing applications (e.g. virtual world applications such as Second Life) (Iivari, 2007). Modern IT has enabled us to organize our society, business, and lives in new ways. Both in the private and public sector, services or ‘meta-services’, i.e. services required for or supporting the acquisition of the primary service, are increasingly transferred to the internet, and people are being coerced more or less gently into using these electronic services (e.g. Internet banking). These electronic services frequently change the division of labour between people, e.g. between the customers and employees of the service providers. For instance, in internet banking, customers perform many operations previously performed by the bank clerks. Customers have become users of banking applications. IT has enabled organizations and individuals to become globally networked, as evidenced by network organizations and virtual communities. The IT field has not only been the supplier of the technology, but has also been profoundly influenced by these new ways of organizing. The digital nature of software has made it a natural application area for global e-commerce, outsourcing, offshoring, geographically distributed development and also virtual communitybased open-source development. The world of digital convergence and the new IT applications challenge many traditional boundaries. The border between IT and non-IT has become blurred, and as a consequence IT use may be implicit in the sense that people may not necessarily perceive themselves as IT users. For example, are people watching TV and interacting with the program using short doi:10.1111/j.1365-2575.2009.00336.x