Designing a Program. Programming the Design

Steinar Kristoffersen [email protected] University of Oslo Norway ABSTRACT For most rational systems development methods, distinct phases of construction work is envisaged: Analysis, design, programming, testing, etc. Different methods are often contrasted to each other with regards to the amount of design that is required before implementation, the importance for testing continually or the prominence of future users’ involvement. However, little evidence can be found that one method is actually better than the others. This paper is concerned with design activities within programming. It presents an ongoing study of programmers developing software for mobile telephones, and in particular it looks at the ways in which a design is “re-fabricated” as part of the common practices of programming. Such re-fabrication is social and underdetermined. Knowing more about how design and programming is inextricably linked with a set of rather vague instructions, practically explicates problems and possibilities of distributed programming projects, e.g., in an outsourced setting. In the theoretical domain, this paper shows how well ethnomethodologically-informed notions of “epistopics” (of design) and “tendentious instructions” apply to programming as a scientific as well as deeply social undertaking.