Appropriation Infrastructure: Supporting the Design of Usages

End User Development offers technical flexibility to encourage the appropriation of software applications within specific contexts of use. Appropriation needs to be understood as a phenomenon of many collaborative and creative activities. To support appropriation, we propose integrating communication channels into software applications. Such an appropriation infrastructure provides communication and collaboration support to stimulate knowledge sharing among users and between users and developers. It exploits the technological flexibility of software applications to enable these actors to change usages and configurations. Taking the case of the BSCWeasel groupware, we demonstrate how an appropriation infrastructure can be realized. Empirical results from the BSCWeasel project demonstrate the impact of such an infrastructure on the appropriation and design process. Based on these results, we argue that appropriation infrastructures should be tightly integrated in the application using the IT artifact itself as a boundary object as well as a bridge between design and use.

[1]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Evolving Cooperation when Introducing Groupware: A Self-Organization Perspective , 1999, Cybern. Hum. Knowing.

[2]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Exploration environments: concept and empirical evaluation , 2001, GROUP.

[3]  Niki Lambropoulos,et al.  "The Model as an Equilibristic Grid of Interrelations" (A critical view upon "The improvisational model of change management: the case of groupware technologies" by Wanda Orlikowski and J. Debra Hofman) , 2001 .

[4]  Volkmar Pipek,et al.  From tailoring to appropriation support: Negotiating groupware usage , 2005 .

[5]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Developing a reflective model of collaborative systems , 1995, TCHI.

[6]  Lars Mathiassen,et al.  Computers and Design in Context , 2003 .

[7]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Component-based tailorability: Enabling highly flexible software applications , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[8]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Towards an integrated organization and technology development , 1995, Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems.

[9]  Thomas P. Moran,et al.  User-tailorable systems: pressing the issues with buttons , 1990, CHI '90.

[10]  Bernd Pape,et al.  Using Groupware for Mediated Feedback , 2004 .

[11]  Anders I. Mørch,et al.  Three levels of end-user tailoring: customization, integration, and extension , 1997 .

[12]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  End-user modifiability in design environments , 1990, CHI '90.

[13]  Matthew R. Jones,et al.  The long and winding road: collaborative IT and organisational change , 1998, CSCW '98.

[14]  Ojelanki K. Ngwenyama,et al.  Groupware, social action and organizational emergence: On the process dynamics of computer mediated distributed work , 1998 .

[15]  Simone Diniz Junqueira Barbosa,et al.  Semiotic engineering principles for evaluating end-user programming environments , 2001, Interact. Comput..

[16]  PipekVolkmar,et al.  Component-based tailorability , 2008 .

[17]  Volker Wulf,et al.  A groupware's life , 1999, ECSCW.

[18]  Richard Bentley,et al.  Medium versus mechanism: Supporting collaboration through customisation , 1995, ECSCW.

[19]  Christopher Fry,et al.  Experiments with Oval: a radically tailorable tool for cooperative work , 1992, CSCW '92.

[20]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  Meta-design: A Framework for the Future of End-User Development , 2006, End User Development.

[21]  Peter Naur,et al.  Programming as theory building , 1985 .

[22]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Direct activation: A concept to encourage tailoring activities , 2001, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[23]  Volkmar Pipek,et al.  Supporting Collaborative Tailoring , 2006, End User Development.

[24]  S. Livingstone,et al.  Handbook of new media : social shaping and consequences of ICTs , 2002 .

[25]  Austin Henderson,et al.  There's No Place Like Home: Continuing Design in Use , 1992, Design at Work.

[26]  Kent L. Beck,et al.  Extreme programming explained - embrace change , 1990 .

[27]  Ralph Katz,et al.  Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits , 2002, Manag. Sci..

[28]  Lucy A. Suchman,et al.  Located Accountabilities in Technology Production , 2002, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[29]  Volkmar Pipek,et al.  Creating Heterogeneity – Evolving Use of Groupware in a Network of Freelancers , 2003, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[30]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  An Improvisational Model of Change Management: The Case of Groupware Technologies , 1996 .

[31]  Lucy A. Suchman,et al.  Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Learning in Doing: Social, , 1987 .

[32]  Carlo Ghezzi,et al.  Proceedings of the 2nd European Software Engineering Conference , 1989 .

[33]  Gerhard Schmidt,et al.  STEPS to Software Development with Users , 1989, ESEC.

[34]  Lucy Suchman.  Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication , 1987 .

[35]  Als-Nscort.  Eclipse Platform Technical Overview , 2003 .

[36]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding: Enriching Participatory Design with Informed Participation , 2002 .

[37]  Daniela Fogli,et al.  Visual Interactive Systems for End-User Development: A Model-Based Design Methodology , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[38]  S. L. Star,et al.  How to Infrastructure , 2002 .

[39]  Michael Twidale,et al.  Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning , 2005, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[40]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Evolving the notes: organizational change around groupware technology , 1997 .

[41]  Steffen Budweg,et al.  The "BSCWeasel" and Eclipse-powered Cooperative End User Development. , 2004 .

[42]  Gunnar Stevens,et al.  CHIC - a pluggable solution for community help in context , 2006, NordiCHI '06.