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Representations of Use and Practice-Bound Imaginaries in Automating the Safety of the Elderly

University of Helsinki, Finland, sampsa.hyysalo{at}helsinki.fi

The present paper examines how representations of prospective use became designed in a novel healthcare technology for elderly people. The case lends support to studies arguing that explicit investigations provide only a part of the representations of prospective use for technology design. It draws attention to a source of representations of use that is at once obvious and under-explored: the professional traditions of developers of technology. To examine this, the concept of practice-bound imaginary is introduced as an alternative to existing terms, such as technological frame. The concept enables better understanding of the interplay of multiple professional practices, the orientation of technology projects and the dynamics of how traditions affect the ideas about prospective use. These analytical possibilities were needed in the case-analysis, as the project was informed by several professional practices, each with their own sets of representations of use. Moreover, in many cases the representations of use were at once representations of viability, medical validity or manufacturability. They were often also inter-animated by adjoining representations from the same practice and compatible assumptions from other practices. Use was not only planned, configured or implicitly assumed, but also was inscribed by the models for conducting design, routine procedures and the messy interactions between people and materials. Designers themselves became aware of the implications of their solutions only after the artefact was reshaped by the resistance of the eventual users and refusers of the device.

Key Words: elderly care • invention • practice-bound imaginary • technological frame • user-representation

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 36, No. 4, 599-626 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706058426


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