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Designing technologies is a process that relies on multiple interactions between design and use contexts. These interactions are essential to the development and establishment of technologies. This article seeks to understand the attempts of healthcare organisations to integrate use contexts into the design of healthcare technologies following insights of the theoretical approaches of social learning and user representations. We present a multiple case study of three healthcare technologies involved in improving elderly care practice. These cases were part of a Dutch quality improvement collaborative program, which urged that development of these technologies was not “just” development, but should occur in close collaboration with other parts of the collaborative program, which were more focused on implementation. These cases illustrate different ways to develop technologies in interaction with use contexts and users. Despite the infrastructure of the collaborative program, interactions were not without problems. We conclude by arguing that interactions between design and use are not naturally occurring phenomena, but must be actively organised in order to create effects.

In current healthcare discourses self-management has been articulated as one of the major aims of telecare technologies for chronic patients. This article investigates what forms of self-management are inscribed during the design of a telecare system for patients with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases) and enacted during its use. Based on an analysis of the design and use of this telecare system, the paper shows that there are important differences between self-management approaches incorporated in the telecare system and the self-management strategies adopted by patients. The telecare equipment was designed in such a way that it incorporated forms of self-management based on compliance. It disciplined patients to adhere to medical treatment and an activity regime rather than involving them in shared decision-making with healthcare professionals. However, the used practices reflected self-management approaches based on collaboration and concordance between healthcare professionals and patients, including integration of their experience based knowledge. Patients domesticated the devices in such a way that they became adjusted to their daily routines and embodied experience with managing their illness.

Behind the steady stream of new products, technologies, systems and services in our modern societies there is prolonged and complicated battle around the role of users. How should designers get to know the users’ interests and needs? Who should speak for the users? How may designers collaborate with users and in what ways may users take innovation into their own hands?The New Production of Users offers a rare overview of these issues. It traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation.In addition to a number of new case studies, the book provides a thorough account of theories of user involvement as well as and offers further developments to these theories. As a part of this, the book relates to the wide spectrum of fields currently associated with user involvement, such as user-centered design, participatory design, user innovation, open source software, cocreation and peer production.Exploring the nexus between users and designers, between efforts to democratize innovation and to mobilize users for commercial purposes, this multi-disciplinary book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners in fields such as Innovation Studies, Innovation Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Consumption studies, Marketing, e-commerce, Media Studies as well as Design research.

In Surveillance Studies the terms ‘sousveillance’ and ‘inverse surveillance’ describe forms of surveillance that have a bottom-up and democratic character. However, in this paper this democratic notion is questioned by looking into practices and experiences with both Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and mobile cameras by Dutch citizens. By intervening in the nightlife district of the Rotterdam1 city centre, data has been gathered on both mobile- and CCTV camera confrontations. From this, an exploration is made into how mobile cameras are experienced in the nightlife landscape. Comparing these experiences with CCTV provides insight into new surveillance issues that emerge due to the mobile camera. The perspective of analyzing surveillance technologies as hybrid collectives that may take different shapes in different places, allows for a contribution that attempts to improve our understanding of the current changes in the surveillance technology landscape

Met de Holterfoon kunnen patiënten vanuit huis hartritmestoornissen laten diagnosticeren. Deze telemedische service belooft patiënten een gevoel van veiligheid en toegankelijke medische hulp en kan een bezoek aan de medisch specialist voorkomen. Onderzoek wijst uit dat contact met een arts van het telemedisch centrum voor patiënten een noodzakelijke voorwaarde is om telemonitoring als waardevol en prettig te ervaren.

Dit tweede Jaarboek ICT en samenleving bundelt beschrijvingen van onderzoek naar de effecten van (overheids)interventies in het sociale domein. Meer dan in het vorige jaarboek ligt het accent nu op de benutting van ICT voor lokale praktijken. Het richt zich daarbij voornamelijk op de mogelijkheden van ICT voor de verbetering van de sociale kwaliteit. Daarbij komen vragen aan bod als: wat is de rol van het digitale debat bij de gemeenteraadsverkiezing? Wat is de status van buurtwebsites in de Nederlandse steden? Welke rol speelt het internet bij de sociale cohesie in een wijk of bij de integratie van etnische minderheden? Onderzoek naar dit soort thema's is niet alleen interessant vanuit wetenschappelijk oogpunt, maar zal ook beleidsmakers, bestuurders en initiatiefnemers van ICT-projecten kunnen boeien. In dit jaarboek is er dan ook ruim aandacht voor (beleids)aanbevelingen.Het Jaarboek voor ICT en samenleving 2004 biedt onderzoekers een platform voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar technologie en het sociale domein. Het is het resultaat van de samenwerking tussen het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP), het kennisnetwerk Social Quality Matter (SQM) dat is ondergebracht bij het Kenniscentrum Grote Steden en de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).

Users have become an integral part of technology studies. The essays in this volume look at the creative capacity of users to shape technology in all phases, from design to implementation. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, including a feminist focus on users and use (in place of the traditional emphasis on men and machines), concepts from semiotics, and the cultural studies view of consumption as a cultural activity, these essays examine what users do with technology and, in turn, what technology does to users. The contributors consider how users consume, modify, domesticate, design, reconfigure, and resist technological development - and how users are defined and transformed by technology.

In this paper, we describe an exhibition on gendered artifacts we have organized in the Netherlands and Norway. The major aim of the exhibition was to show the public the ways in which technical objects are inscribed with gender; this in order to make people aware that we live in a technological and gendered culture. Reflecting on our experiences with the exhibition, we discuss the two different approaches to theorizing the gendering of artifacts underlying the Dutch and the Norwegian version of the exhibition: the genderscript approach and the domestication approach. We conclude that the gendering of artifacts can be understood only by representing designers as well as users as active participants in the social construction of artifacts. Designers are important by shaping the initial forms, functions, and meanings of objects. Users, by their different ways of interpreting, using and talking about technologies, further contribute to their social shaping. They define whether they experience things as gendered and whether they find them useful in articulating and performing their (gender) identities. By interpreting and using technologies, users are thus active participants in shaping the gendering of artifacts.

ICT is een belangrijk instrument voor de realisering van maatschappelijke doelstellingen. Ze maakt het mogelijk kleinschalige dienstverlening te organiseren binnen een grootschalige ondersteuningsstructuur. Zelfsturing van die kleinschalige dienstverleningsorganisatie is mogelijk binnen strakke kaders die centraal geformuleerd worden. Daarnaast is ICT van belang voor de verdere ontwikkeling van de netwerksamenleving. Netwerken ontwikkelen zich rond gemeenschappelijke belangen of interesses. Die gezamenlijke netwerken vormen een lappendeken van relaties, zijn verbindende schakels tussen mensen en bepalen zodoende de samenhang in de samenleving.