Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials:

TL;DR: The metaphor of machine as text is explored, set within the context of longstanding problems in social theory about agency and object, where 'configuring' includes defining the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions.

Abstract: The paper explores the metaphor of machine as text, set within the context of longstanding problems in social theory about agency and object. These problems concern both the conventional basis of attribution of intentionality and presumptions about the boundedness of entities. In particular, our preconceptions about the nature and capacity of different entities shape what counts as legitimate accounts of action and behaviour. Materials from an ethnography of computers are used to show how the design and production of a new entity (a new range of microcomputers) amounts to a process of configuring its user, where 'configuring' includes defining the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions. Configuring occurs in a context where knowledge and expertise about users is socially distributed. As a result of this process, the new machine becomes its relationship with its configured users. In participants' determinations of the character of users, the new machine's case provides a powerful symbol of the boundary between insiders and outsiders to the company. An analysis of audio and video records of usability trials suggests the importance of boundary work in deciding the adequacy of the relationship between machine and user.