From the Analysis of Community Activity to the Appropriation of New Tools. A Methodological Approach for the Development of Information Technology Solutions

More and more CoPs have chosen virtual environments and services to support their activities. However, recent research has underlined several problems: the lack of adequate scaffolding in terms of technical support and appropriate use of technology for communication and collaboration, the lack of tools and virtual environments to support real-life problem-solving and the reification of knowledge, the inadequacy of tools used by the communities in supporting individual and organizational learning processes as well as knowledge and identity building of CoPs. CoPs need new tools and services that are acceptable to them and capable of adapting to their existing virtual environment and evolving needs. Acceptability and adaptability of tools and services could be achieved through an iterative and participative process involving developers and CoPs’ members in the codevelopment of scenarios of use. These scenarios can be considered as “boundary objects” facilitating the negotiation and collaboration between developers and CoPs’ members. This process is experimented in the PALETTE project. In this contribution, we describe the characteristics of such scenarios of use and suggest a methodological approach to progressively design and represent these scenarios. In conclusion, we discuss questions and issues raised by the implementation of such an approach.