Beyond Use and Design

Through a technalysis of a group of designers constructing a three-dimensional virtual world we suggest new concepts for understanding our relationship to information technology. By conceptualizing information technology as the organizing structure for social interaction and regarding it as an influential mediator and moderator of human experiences, we arrive at a new perspective that reaches beyond the traditional dichotomy of use and design. In our analysis we attempt to show how being in virtual worlds is guided by the understanding of the system generating the virtual world the personal cosmology and desires inherent in the participant that the technology can release. We also demonstrate how being in virtual worlds substantially differs from the traditional view of functional and purposeful use of computers. A number of concepts regarding the habitation of virtual worlds are also discussed. For instance, we suggest that the design of a virtual environment can be conceptualized as a dialogue based on individual ideas that merge into a mutually constructed reality, an objectivation of a shared context. We also describe how inscriptions in the technology guide the behavior of the participants towards an endless development of the world, a re-conceptualization that is essential for the world to stay alive. It is also illustrated that virtual worlds lack the traditional structural properties of the physical world, but still reverberate with those structures as they are imported by the participants. Our main conclusions are that studies of the particular through technalysis reveal important understandings that can be applied more generally; that virtual worlds are not used or conceptualized as computer tools; that there are no clear borders between use and design; and that individual conceptions of a system as well as its inscriptions are important factors in understanding being in virtual world.