Understanding Practice: Video as a Medium for Reflection and Design

This chapter discusses how data, type, volatility, size/amount, persistence, accuracy and value of amounts of data affects the design of a product and how the product should be used.

Abstract

In exploring the design of new technologies at work, this chapter begins with the view that work is a form of situated activity. Those interested in supporting the design of modifiable artifacts do well to understand the everyday processes of modification exemplified in the complex sheet case described in this chapter. Design realism can be achieved through new methods for understanding the organization of work practice in detail. Such understandings provide a basis for involving practitioners directly in the process of reflection and design through, for example, collaborative production and review of videotapes and rapid prototyping. In every setting where the authors look at technologies in use, they start with the assumption that work practice is fundamentally social.