Review of Computers and Design in Context for User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction An International Journal

This is a review of an MIT Press book, Computers and Design in Context, edited by M. Kyng and L. Mathiassen (1997). The contributing authors shape an international research agenda based on conceptual tools forged through more than two decades of workplace computerization. The authors report attempts to extend old models such as end-user computing, end-user tailoring, participatory design, and speech act theory; to adopt new focuses such as on design rationale, the style of artifacts-in-use, control issues, aesthetic issues, ethical issues, self-representations of computational systems, and stakeholders’ different views and expectations; to borrow from other domains such as jazz and art/craft traditions; to invent new approaches such as participatory evolutionary development, cooperative experimental system development, information systems research guidelines, communication strategies, and alliances with workers and worker associations; and to adapt new conceptual approaches such as ethnocriticism.