Special Issue: The Role of End-users in
Technological Innovations
Guest Editors: Jaap Jelsma and Harald
Rohracher
Jaap Jelsma
Innovating for Sustainability: Involving Users, Politics
and Technology
Abstract
Morality is as much
in the things we use as in the minds of people. Therefore,
this paper argues that we can only establish a sustainable
society if we redesign the material landscape we live in. Our
daily practices, and the technology on which they rest, should
be revised such that environmentally friendly behaviour
becomes the rule instead of the exception that costs extra
effort. For such redesign to be achieved we need alternative
design approaches that are able to accommodate the needs of
consumers, producers and the environment as represented by
politics. This implies that we have to rethink the role of
users in relation to the current debate on user involvement in
design. This rethinking is carried out within the framework of
developing an experimental approach for design of 'moralizing'
technology that stimulates users towards eco-friendly
behaviour.
Sampsa Hyysalo
Some Problems in the Traditional Approaches to Predicting
the Use of a Technology-driven Invention
Abstract
While direct user
involvement has started to find its way into commercial
product development, most companies still rely on more
traditional ways to investigate and represent users. This
paper is a case study of the methods and means employed by
small high-tech companies in their effort to learn about the
users of their emerging new technology through the use of
market surveys, user interviews, design studies and pilot use.
Theoretically, the discussion focuses on how users'
anticipation of their future needs co-evolves in relation to
the changing social and technical environment. The gradual
emergence of user needs sheds light on some of the
shortcomings of the methods representing the users employed in
the case studied. It may also help us to explain some of the
success of participatory design methods and adjust the
existing methodologies for studying user requirements.
Bernhard Truffer
User-led Innovation Processess: the Development of
Professional Car Sharing by Environmentally Concerned Citizens
Abstract
Users play an
essential role in the early development and diffusion phases
of an innovation. Citizen groups may directly influence
user-relevant characteristics of a new technology. They may
actively engage in the social construction of quality
characteristics, the perception of costs and the development
of specific use forms and product images. By this they create
'technological niches' where essential learning processes for
the further development of the technology may take place. This
contribution may not be copied by more professional actors or,
if so, only with considerable difficulty. This article
illustrates these claims by referring to the development of a
user-led innovation and diffusion process in the domain of
individual transport: the emergence of organized car sharing
in Switzerland. This innovation started in two
neighbourhood-based experiments in the late 1980s. Today, it
is run by a professional service enterprise, serves some
50,000 customers around the country and continues to expand at
a considerable pace. The article highlights the specific
contribution of users in the starting phase of organized car
sharing and asks how the role of the users changed in the
course of the market expansion process. It concludes by
discussing the contributions of these experiences to the
promotion of sustainable transport.
K. Matthias Weber
Transforming Large Socio-technical Systems towards
Sustainability: On the Role of Users and Future Visions for
the Uptake of City Logistics and Combined Heat and Power
Generation
Abstract
While the radical
transformation of the large socio-technical systems (LSTS) of
energy supply and transport is widely regarded as a necessity
to cope with their unsustainable side-effects, this
transformation is confronted with a large number of structural
and behavioural barriers. The top-down liberalization policies
of recent years have induced a transformation but they have
not necessarily contributed to a more sustainable provision of
energy and transport services. Bottom-up processes of
strategic niche management with new emerging technologies have
the potential to trigger regime shift towards a more
sustainable supply of energy and transport services. In order
to guide such regime shifts, shared future visions can play an
important facilitating and aligning role. Their relevance for
the uptake of new technologies depends critically on the
active involvement of users in the process of vision building.
Harald Rohracher
The Role of Users in the Social Shaping of Environmental
Technologies
Abstract
A better
understanding of the role of end-users in processes of
technology innovation and diffusion could help to develop a
broader range of policy instruments fostering the development
of environmentally friendly and politically desirable
technologies and products. Such insights could help to improve
conditions for a more conscious, reflexive and inclusive
learning process between designers, intermediaries and users
in product-creation processes. This article builds on an
empirical investigation of two technologies that may enhance
the environmental performance of buildings: balanced
ventilation systems with heat recovery and 'smart home'
technologies. Both technologies are in an early phase of
diffusion, but are still in a process of change and adaptation.
The interaction of users, producers and intermediary actors is
of crucial importance for the learning processes taking place
at this stage. The paper will focus on three levels of product
development where the actions and expectations of diverse
actors meet: extending actor networks, appropriating
technologies by users and translating discourses and visions
into technical practice. An improvement of these interactions
and learning processes could have a high potential to better
adapt technologies to the needs and practices of diverse
groups of users.
Elizabeth Shove
Users, Technologies and Expectations of Comfort,
Cleanliness and Convenience
Abstract
It is often supposed
that greater user involvement will result in more sustainable,
more socially inclusive designs and technologies. I take issue
with this proposition on the grounds that it fails to
acknowledge the prior structuring of users' expectations or
the socio-technical regimes and landscapes in which specific
innovations take root. In developing this position I suggest
that the re-specification of normal practice is of greater
environmental significance than the ecological design of
appliances and products with which taken-for-granted needs are
met. It is useful to show how users configure and appropriate
specific technologies but it is more important to follow the
construction and reproduction of middle-range 'services' such
as those of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. This begs
the question as to how users are configured and technological
systems are appropriated at macro and meso as well as micro
levels of innovation. In exploring these issues with reference
to air-conditioning, showering, and frozen food, I reframe the
notion of user involvement such that the relation between
technology, convention and practice takes centre stage.
