Design in Practice: Bridging the Gap between Design and Use Dichotomies in Practice-Based Studies

Abstract

Various trends related to technology, organizations and environment have resulted in fuzzy differences between 'design' and 'use' or 'designers' and 'end-users'. But despite the growing intricacy between the ICT design and organizational practice, the bulk of the IS literature still enact classic dichotomies design-use. First, in order to synthesize the current IS literature aiming at overcoming design-use dichotomies, the authors suggest two notions: Design In Use (DIU) and Design In Making (DIM). Four DIU-DIM configurations are also put forward before introducing Jean-Daniel Reynaud's Regulation Theory as a relevant framework to put them in broader sociotechnical perspective. Then, in order to test and refine the resulting theoretical framework, two case studies are presented: case A on an elearning system in a French university, and case B on a loan management system in a Latvian bank. Lastly, the authors discuss the limitations, contributions and perspectives of this work.

Keywords: Practice-based view; design in practice; joint regulation theory; Jean- Daniel Reynaud; critical realism; meta-model.

JEL Classification: M10