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This paper understands the design of bus information panels as rooted in a landscape of human experience. It turns the mundane activity of waiting at a bus stop into a deeply problematic space of emotion and volition by understanding the dialogic relationship between human and technology. It does this by developing a novel approach to interaction design, which combines a theoretical framework that reveals the rich experience and 'felt life' of technology with an empirical analysis of bus information. By imagining a series of conversation-like dialogues, based in a Conversation Analytic (CA) sensitivity to the achievement of meaning in sequence, it generates a series of experience narratives that provide for a critical analysis of the information presentation. The exercise stands as an example of a form of imagined experiential narrative that might be developed into a method of experience scenarios in future work. We reflect on moves toward what might be called experiential scenarios in the conclusion.

This paper considers multiple meanings of dependability as part of a project investigating home based assistive and smart home technology for older people. It argues that because the term dependability is broad, clear levels of analysis must be articulated. It further situates engineering based definitions of dependability in wider critical perspectives. Five levels of analysis are proposed which expand from a single device to a set of devices in a particular building with primary and secondary users. These levels of analysis are then considered in relation to five contextual perspectives: the technological, the personal, the social, the cultural and the environmental. The approach is applied to a case study of an older person's experience of the installation of an automated front door.