1. Rob Gleasure R.Gleasure@ucc.ie www.robgleasure.com
IS4446 Advanced Interaction Design Lecture 11: Designing the practices 3 (socio-materiality)
Rob Gleasure

2. Today’s session Semester 2 Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Designing the interface 1 (perception)
Week 3: Designing the interface 2 (affordances)
Week 4: Designing the interface 3 (aesthetics and colour)
Week 5: Designing the interface 4 (aesthetics and form)
Week 6: Designing the community 1 (trusting a platform)
Week 7: Designing the community 2 (trusting a group)
Week 8: Designing the community 3 (boundaries)
Week 9: Designing the practices 1 (tools as mediators)
Week 10: Designing the practices 2 (social mediators)
Week 11: Designing the practices 3 (socio-materiality)
Week 12: Revision

3. Design as socio-material assemblage
“Keeping an open mind is a virtue
… not so open that your brains fall out.”
- Carl Sagan (paraphrasing space engineer James Osberg) in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

4. The futility of predicting the weather
There is a branch of mathematics called chaos theory
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5. The futility of predicting the weather
Systems are thought to be ‘chaotic’ when they are incredibly sensitive to present conditions, yet not all present conditions can be known
Common traits of a chaotic systems include
Continuous feedback loops
Multi-dimensional causality
Irregular spatial or temporal patterns
Patterns repeating at different sizes
Other stuff
Leads to effective non-determinism
Traffic, the weather, people (?)
Image from Wikipedia

6. Technology as non-deterministic?
Technology possesses many of the same qualities once it is integrated into working complex systems
Integration with other technologies can only be partially predicted
Integration with people can only be partially predicted
Integration with practices can only be partially predicted
Technology is shaped by the people using it. However, the people using some technology are also shaped by that technology.
In practice, people and the tools using them are inseparable
The question then becomes: how do we deal with non-deterministic technology when attempting to design towards some specific goal?

7. Technology as non-deterministic (continued)?
The most extreme answer: treat the technology like a living thing with free will, whose goals and values need to be considered in a mutually respectful manner
What does the social environment want?
What does the material environment want?
How do these manifest into individual practices?
Useful as a thinking exercise to encourage a different way of thinking, not always super prescriptive though.

8. Relaxing your preconceptions
The more conservative (but actionable) answer:
Relax your preconceptions
Where you draw the boundaries of a system
Where you draw the boundaries between people
Where you draw the boundaries between technologies
Reconstruct the system on a practice-by-practice level
Completely removes ideas that people or things have interactional qualities
No such thing as usable, beautiful, or simple tools
No such thing as intelligent, hard-working, or kind people
Instead, everything is dependent on the practice bringing together elements of the social and material

9. Analysing and designing material features
The technologies should be considered as static piles of material features
Basic material objects
e.g. phones, tables, buildings
Basic material connections
e.g. latent or active connections between things
Basic material functions
e.g. save information, select item on interface
Considered as a holistic assemblage of ‘stuff’ involved

10. Analysing and designing social drivers
The social side should be considered as every static quality that is not material
Basic social units
e.g. people, institutions, groups
Basic social connections
e.g. relationships between groups
Basic social drivers
e.g. prestige, reliability
Considered as a holistic assemblage of human needs and relationships

11. Analysing and designing practices
What are the practices that happen in the environment?
For each practice, we then ask:
How does this practice reflect the social agency in the environment?
The social units
The social connections
The social drivers
What material features are enacted into this practice?
The material objects
The material connections
The material functions

12. Analysing and designing practices (continued)
We can then identify the problem practices according to their inability to meet holistic social needs
For each problem practice, we consider:
Which existing material features should be enacted but are not?
Which existing material features should not be enacted but are?
What does a better practice look like?
Which material features should be added or removed to enable this better practice?

13. Example 1: mHealth in Enugu State
Images from work under review with Emmanuel Eze and Ciara Heavin

14. Example 2: An MRI for Children
Images from and

15. Summary Designing for/around social drivers
Designing effective material features
Effectiveness of socio-material assemblage
Designing effective practices

16. ATMs: what do you think?
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17. Business cards: what do you think?
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18. Bookshelves: what do you think?
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19. For forum discussion: UCC Smart Card
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20. Readings
Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work. Organization studies, 28(9),
Leonardi, P. M. (2013). Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality. Information and organization, 23(2),