Unintended Use:
The “Public Sphere” Designed by the Public

Informatics

Umea University

Sweden

erik@informatik.umu.se

(published on this site March 28 2002)

Introduction

Shaping a networked society is a design adventure. A public sphere in cyberspace will not emerge from technology itself. Rather, a public sphere must be designed. But design, in this case, is not only about the intentional design performed by professional and designated designers. To a large extent, the total cyberspace network, and even more so the part of it that can be seen as a “public sphere”, is designed through use. This paper is about that form of design. One of the assumptions is that a public sphere has to be designed by the public, i.e., by the actual public that will inhabit the sphere. It cannot fully be defined by commercial or governmental actors trying to ‘help’ the public. In a democratic society, a public sphere in cyberspace must be defined and designed by the people who find such a sphere necessary for their own needs.

There are those who see the new information technology as a possibility to strengthen democracy by making more people included in the public discourse. This belief is based on the fact that the technology is spreading to almost all areas and levels of our society, even if the technology still only reaches a minority of the worlds population. This belief is based on several assumptions, for instance, that people actually want to take part in the democratic process and that they want to be an actor in that process. Further, it is assumed that our modern way of life poses obstacles to this kind of involvement and because of this, people chose not to participate. This kind of reasoning leads to the conclusion that if people only had access to a public sphere that were easy to use and that offered the right kind of functionality, they would join the process. So, the problem is to find out what is a good design of such a public sphere. In this paper I will argue, based on some empirical studies (Ciborra & Hanseth, 2001; Stolterman, 2001; Croon Fors & Jacobsson, 2000), that this way of framing both the problem and the solution as a question of design draws our attention away from one interesting and important aspect of what is already happening – the ongoing design of the technology through unintended use.

Context

Technology can be described and understood by thorough analysis of the functionality and the intention behind its design. But, technology can also be understood based on its actual use. One of the more apparent and important aspects of complex information systems in recent years is the discovery that most information systems are used in ways not always intended by any designer, and that this unintended use over time can be seen as a design process. The argument is that unintended use lead to new practices and new procedures. Often these new practices where already implemented in the technology (see Latour, 1999) but not intentionally designed. Users see opportunities in the technology’s functionality, and they invent new ways of using functions for other purposes than the ones intended. This can only happen if the technology has a certain character. Information technology, and especially internet and web technology, have that character.

Technologies can be described and categorized in many ways. One way is to talk about open and closed technologies. A closed technology is one that does not allow the user to change anything after it has been designed and manufactured. The structure, functionality and appearance of the artifact are permanent. When dealing with a closed technology, we might find general characteristics in the way the technology appears to influence the people around it. We might find that the technology seems to foster the emergence of certain situations and behaviors. A closed technology is a relatively stable variable in any social settings. And when the technology is moved to another setting, we know it will remain the same as far as matter, functionality and appearance are concerned. We might even define the technology in relation to its ability to resist cultural and situated influences. A closed technology is more immune to the situation and has a persistence that we sometimes see as a valuable character. For instance, when it comes to technology that is safety critical for people’s well being we want that technology to oppose any tinkering from the specific user.

On the other hand, with an open technology it is much more difficult to find such stable patterns. An open technology is always, and in a more radical sense, in a dialectical relation to the specific user and the specific situation. At the same time as someone is using the technology he or she can also change its basic design and manifestation. An open technology allows the user to continue changing the technology’s specific characteristics, and to adjust, add or change its functionality. When it comes to an open technology, changes in functionality pose a question not only of change in the way the existing functionality is used or understood, but also of a real change in the artifact’s internal manifestation.

Information technology artifacts are often examples of open technology. They can be changed, and if they cannot be changed it is usually possible to add, embed, contain, or surround the artifact with other technology in a way that radically changes it. When a technology is open in this way, we can recognize it as designable. A designable technology is by definition difficult to describe and define in a comprehensive way, since at any moment it might change. When it comes to specific technologies, it is not easy to make a distinct judgment on whether it is closed or open. For instance, it is not uncommon for even a highly designable artifact to contain some kind of "closed" aspects hidden deeply in its innermost core (Stolterman, 2000).

One fundamental property of an open technology is that it is sensitive to how much it is used. With a closed technology, it does not matter if there is one or thousands of users. But the more people use a designable technology, the more it changes. Functions are added or taken away. The structure is redesigned and its appearance might be changed continuously. This property of designable technology radically influences the notion of what it means to be either a designer or a user of the technology. The user is at the same time a designer, and the designer can be understood as a user. This blend of the two roles probably reflects a core aspect of truly open and designable technology (Croon Fors & Jacobsson, 2000).

A designable and open technology like the Internet is never finished or finalized. Such an open technology invites ongoing creative use. Use that makes the technology evolve and develop. We will never be able to reach a full understanding of it. We can trace technology use back in time, but not, in any detailed way, foresee its future use. This leaves us with an open and designable technology and with users who act as designers. So where does this take us if we want to design new technology to support communities and a public sphere in cyberspace?

Discussion

Unintended use is present wherever open and designable technology is used. People have a tendency to use any system in a creative way if the technology allows it. Internet and related technology constitutes, so far, a system with a strong character supporting unintended use. We are every day surprised by new and inventive usage of the net.

To learn more about unintended use, we have to study how people (users) deal with and approach the technology at hand, rather than focusing on what they actually do when they use it. The specific “use” is and will always be context and situation specific, and it will probably not be possible to produce abstractions in a way that can subsequently be used to produce general knowledge.

Instead what can be generalized, is how people understand, imagine and approach the technology. Since this technology is designable, it can never be moved from one community to another without being changed. This means that a tool or a specific use that is copied will not work the same way in two different places. The tool can and will be redesigned. The most important question is, therefore, what kind of knowledge and understanding of the technology is needed to create a good foundation for that kind of context specific redesigns.

A community is always changing. People have all the time new needs and wants. The technology for supporting such a community must build on the idea of "unintended use". Unintended use is not a threat to the supporting system, instead unintended use has to be understood as the creative driving force. Creative unintended use is a way for users to "take control" of the technology, to make it relevant to them. Unintended use is necessary in a community support system - not a problem.

Conclusions

If we accept that unintended use is something that influences the design of large open systems, then there are first of all two options. One option is to design technology in such a way that technology hinders unintended use with the purpose to reach a known and planned usage. This approach leads to a search for the best possible (and universal) way of designing the technology to enable a public sphere. The other option is to intentionally design for creative unintended use.

This can be done in two ways. First, there is a possibility to formulate an approach based on how technology should be understood and what kind of knowledge that approach requires – an approach that can work as a foundation to support unintended use. The other way is to formulate design principles for creative unintended use. Such principles will not be prescriptive at the local and situated level, but they might give some overall guidance of what characterizes such a system (Stolterman, 2001). Some examples of design principles might be that the system has to be robust to withstand unintended use–“attacks” from users. The system should also be "forgiving", which means that it has some ability to accept changes without demanding complete safety. A system whose purpose is to evoke creative and radical use also must present a sufficiently rich and complex environment.

Unintended use as a design “approach”, can be seen as a way to open up for the public to take part in the shaping of a public sphere. The sphere cannot be designed once and for all. It is a design that is highly context dependant, and time dependant. This means that a democratic design of a public sphere can only be understood as an ongoing project, that always has to be re-designed by the present users – in the same way as democracy itself is not ever finally defined, but a result of an ongoing debate.

References

Ciborra U. C., Hanseth O., (2001). Introduction: From control to drift. In U.C. Ciborra (ed.) From control to drift – The dynamics of corporate information infrastructures, pp 1‑11.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Croon Fors, Anna & Jakobsson, Mikael (2000). "Beyond Use and Design. The Dialectics of Being in Virtual Worlds". Presented at First Annual Conference on Internet Research [A(o)IR 1.0]. September 14th-17th. University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope — Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass.

Stolterman, E. (2001). Creating Community in Conspiracy with the Enemy. in: "Community Informatics - Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations", Edited by Leigh Keeble & Brian Loader. Routledge, London.