Working paper - Do not quote
Homo Participatus
- or: another day at the office of engagement
The following text is a revisionist mixture. It consists of my power points from the DASTS conference (Århus University, 5-6 June, 2008) interspersed with what I said, what I tried to say, and what I would have wanted to say, had I known the responses from the audience in advance. I thank in particular Astrid Jespersen, Maja Horst, Anders Blok, and Klaus Høyer for their insightful comments.
Torben Elgaard Jensen
DTU Management
9.6.08
The context of this talk is this: I am an associate proffessor at the Technical University. I teach design engineers various topics from organization theory, innovation theory and STS. My research topic, broadly speaking is the question of how companies construct knowledge about their present and future users and how they relate these constructions to the design and development of new products. To be bit more specific, I am interested in the question of engagement – through what arrangements are people outside the companies actively related to the construction of technological futures. To be even more specific, I am interested in comparing different arrangements of engagement. My present reseach work consists of a series of interviews with designers and engineers who use engagement as a part of their toolbox.
However, the term engagement is tricky, and this is what I want to talk about. I we turn to the STS litterature one can distinguish at two different ways of talking about engagement.
Some would say that the question of engagement is the question of how the public or the citizens in a democratic nationstate relate to techno-science. The key question is about due political process. How should one arrange informed debates? How should one arrive at informed decisions? How should expert and lay be brought to together? These issues have been raised by the Public Understanding of Science tradition, and by its later development into Public Engagement of Sicence.
Others would say that engagement is about co-construction. It is about the mutual construction of artefact, users and practices at all stages of development from the early configuring of the user, where designers experiment with the distribution of activititives, roles and responsibilites between users and technologies – to the final situation where users domesticate technologies, reappropriate them for other purposes, and in various ways twist and bend the scripts that designers tried to build into the artifacts and instruction manuals a long time ago.
It fairly easy to make the case that these two forms of ‘engagement’ have very little to do with each other. State funded big science vs. privately owned technological enterprises. Collective public democratic deliberation (should we allow Genetically Modified Organisms in Denmark) vs private individualised use (should I buy a mac or a PC). Public vs. user. It is also noteworthy that the belief in engagement seems to be distinctly different. PES people are rather pessimistic, or at least ambivalent; they note a new mood for dialogue among public officials, but they still see a huge gap between scientic expertise and lay publics (Irwin 2006). Co-construction authors seem rather optimistic due to the increasing number of points of contact (Oudshorn & Pinch 2003).
So perhaps we should just leave it there. No need to mix up separate things…
There is however a number of indications that the boundary is less clear than the image, I have been drawing so far.
First of all, authors within the PUS tradition has noted that private enterprises often play crucial role in public debates and disputes about technoscience. For instance, the question allowing Genetically Modified Organisms is just as much a public debate between Monsanto and Greenpeace, as it is a debate between governments and citizens. In more general terms several authors have pointed out that question of public trust of technoscience is intertwined with the question of national competitiveness. The public should engagement positively with science, not only because it is their civic duty, but also because it is in their best economic interest. To put it bluntly, nationstates also act a bit like companies.
If we look on the side of business, there are many straws in the wind that indicate a trend toward a broader dialogue with the public. The buzzwords of Corporate Social responsibility and political consumer indicate that companies increasingly manage and worry about their public image and their brand. It we look more specifically at product development there is the proud Scandinavian tradtion of participatory design. This tradtion clearly links user involvement with a democratic agenda. The recent focus on the so-called user-driven innovation, with Eric von Hippel as the key figure, is another example of how companies increasingly think about and relate to their publics. The argument here is that companies must learn how to relate respectfully to local community knowledges. The title of von Hippel’s latest book is telling. It is: Democratizing Innovation. So to put it bluntly: Companies also act a bit like nationstates.
The point I want to make here is not, that nationstates are businesses and vice versa. I am simply arguing that the boundaries are fuzzy. And I want to make the additional point that if we want to study engagement it might be helpful to be able to think about both users and citizens. When a Government organizes public debate about GMO is is also concerned with national competitiveness and in a broad sense with the possible designs of GMO and GMO use. When a company develops a specific product it is also thinking about its ‘public relations’.
So how do we combine a perspective on users and publics? How do we move from what seems to be one sphere to the other. It is possible to develop a common vocabulary? Is it possible to perform some sort of symmetry trick?
I can’t say that I have the answer. But I have couple of cases to work with. The first is a small and amusing article written by the French economic sociologists Franck Cochoy and Catherine Grandclément-Chaffy (2005). Among other things, the two authors make a comparative analysis of two arrangements for the expression of choice: the vooting booth and the shopping cart.
The second case is about user-involvement in product design in a small design company in Copenhagen. It is based on an interview, I conducted a few weeks ago.
Let us turn first to Cochoy and Grandclément-Chaffy and notice how they drag their feet in order to explain their endeavour to the readers.
In the presence of two well-established ways of talking about people and techno-science it is risky mix up the repertoires. Their take on the issue, however, is elegant. They ask how a particular material arrangement supports and configures the expression of choice. And they analyse a series of pointed contrasts between the booth and the cart.
The voting both supports a choice that is single and isolated, whereas the shopping cart arranges a series of choices as the family moves down the ailes of the supermarket. The booth supports a closed private choice behind a drawn curtain, whereas the openness of cart makes it readable from all sides. To enter the voting booth one has be 18 and registrered voter. Furthermore the limited access is indicated by the shelf positioned at adult elbow-height. By contrast the shopping cart offers children seat or a place to stand. Finally, the space set up by the voting booth is tight and uni-personal, where as the space arranged by the shopping cart is pluri-personal an open. Summing up, Cochoy and Grandclément-Chaffy remarks that the voting booth “performs a role for the social body similar to the one played by the synchrotrone in nuclear physics: It momentarily separates the ‘elementary particles’ of society from their relations to each other and loosens social ties, realizing for an instant a situation close to the utopia of an independent individual deciding alone, entirely free from pressure from public opinion, friends, family” (Cochoy & Grandclément-Chaffy, 2005:651). By contrast the shopping cart assembles; It subjects “individuals’ choices to examination and questioning by those close to them” (ibid, p.652).
In my reading, the point of this exercise is not to say that a particular material set-up determines or proves a particular kind of choice. These games are always open. A person may enter a voting booth and end up making the choice that befits his or her family. The whole family may go to the supermarket only to discover that mother decides. But I would nevertheless argue that material set-ups shift the balance of forces, so that separation becomes easier with the voting booth (other things being equal), and assembly becomes easier with the shooping cart (other things being equal).
With this in mind, let us turn to the case of user engagement in the Copenhagen design firm. Let us examine the specific material arrangement, and the kind of choice, i.e. design choice, that may be expressed and performed in them.
The key situation, I want to adress, is indicated by the drawing at the center. It shows two designers, who visit a surgeon in his office at a hospital. What the two designers bring to the table, so to speak, is indicated on the right. A medical device company has developed a kind of wire, which can be used to block blood vessels and hence bleeding during neck surgery. This first company has asked the designers’ company to develop a suitable packaging. Since the designers know nothing about the context of use, they decide to contact a hospital and find a surgeon who is experienced with neck operations. The surgeon invites them to his office. What the surgeon brings to the table is his personal experience with neck surgery, and he presumably also speaks on behalf of other surgeons who perform a similar job. At the meeting, the two designers ask a series of broad questions about what happens during a neck surgery. The surgeon explains how different materials are arranged and used in sequence. The one question that the designes carefully avoids to ask is how they should do design the packaging. Instead they carefully note and draw the different problems and challenges related to the use of the wire during surgery. One of them, which turns out to be important, is the fact that surgeons’ fingers are often slippery, which makes it diffifult to get a grib on a thin wire. After the meeting the designers return to their company with their notes, and they eventually design a box and special clip that is attached to the wire. With the clip is easy to grib the wire and take it out of the box. A prototype of this design is then made and one of the designers’ return to the surgeons to ask his opion. The surgeon agrees that this particular packaging will be functional. To sum up, this version of ‘engagement’ follows a four step procedure. (1) Define a limited design issue. In this case it is packaging and only packaging which is designed. (2) Gather possible problems. In this case, a particular surgeon in a particular hopital is chosed as a spokesman. (3). Translate problems to objectified solutions. In this case the designers’ note one problem in particular, which they translate into the idea of adding a clip, and which they materialise in the form of a prototype. (4). Ask the user to vote. In the case, the surgeon revisited and asked to give his opinion on the prototype.
What should one make of this case? It is small in the sense that is doesn’t require a lot of man-hours. It is uncontroversial in the sense that no one debated before or after whether this was a sensible way to proceed. It is unconspicious in the sense that it doesn’t attach a whole lot of attention from anyone. Nothing, for instance, is written about it on the company’s homepage, except that ‘we take a market oriented approach”. And yet, in the interview the designer indicated that this is how they normally do it. Not every day, not in every project, but quite often. This is how technoscience often meets the people.
But what kind of choice is supported here? Are the designers arranging and engaging a user or a public? Is it like voting or is it like shopping?
Let us try to relate our little case to the dimensions defined by Cochoy & Grandclément-Chaffy.
Single or several choices? First, it appears that the choice taken in the ‘packaging case’ is an isolated one; The design firm has been hired to design the package and only the package. It is as if all the relations that make up the product has been synchrotroned in order to separate out one small issue that the designers can bring along to the surgeon’s office. At this place however, the reverse process of gathering or assembling begins. The surgeon is asked to decribe his or his colleagues’ problems in broad terms. Anything that might relate to packaging is interesting. And in the weeks that following the first meeting, one must assume that the designers search or ‘shop’ through a number of possible package designs. So the design issue is isolated but the space of problems and solutions is made broad.
Private or open? Although the surgeon is asked to describe possible problems, he is not a part of the discussion, when the designers choose a design solution. This work is carried out in the privacy of the design company. However, after the choice of a solution, the curtains are drawn back. The designers ‘come out’ and ask the surgeon to evaluate the prototype. At this moment the previous process has been translated into a prototype which makes the design choice both open and reable.
Access? Who is allowed to participate in the process that leads to the choice of a packaging design? Clearly, the answer is neither a single individual nor a family group. The access in this case is limited to a three people. And they are all there because the design firm recognizes them as experts. The surgeon is approached because he performs neck operations on a daily basis. The two other participants are hired by the design firm as professional designers, and they are formally put in charge of the project. The meeting in the office, then, is like a meeting in an expert committee. The surgeon speaks on behalf of his field and his colleagues. The designers speak (or ask) on behalf of the design field and their company.