634 ❘❙❚ BERKSHIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
lives. These three implications pave the way for ex-
amining the usefulness of SI for HCI.
The SI Approach to HCI
Social informatics is relevant for human-computer
interaction because of a theoretical and method-
ological trend that has been noticeable in HCI since
the late 1990s. This trend, spurred by (among
other factors) a technical development, the rise of
ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile computing, is lead-
ing many HCI researchers to take a social turn in
their thinking. ICTs will not fade into the sur-
roundings and become invisible without a clear the-
oretical and empirical understanding of the nature
of the social and organizational contexts in which
they are designed and used, and many researchers
are rising to the challenge. An early indication can
be seen in the definition of the discipline proposed
for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
by psychologist Thomas Hewett (1995, 5): “Human-
computer interaction is a discipline concerned with
the design, evaluation and implementation of in-
teractive computing systems for human use and with
the study of major phenomena surrounding them.”
The attention to the “major phenomena” sur-
rounding ICTs is also indicative of this social turn.
For example, cognitive scientists James Hollan, Ed-
win Hutchins, and David Kirsh argue for shifting the
theoretical base of HCI from individualistic to dis-
tributed cognition, because it focuses on “entire en-
vironments.”They describe a shift from a time when
people were, in effect, tethered to single machines that
contained the bulk of their digital work to the cur-
rent state of computing, where we use multiple de-
vices from multiple locations to access our digital
work on the network. This is happening in the work-
place and in our social lives and is changing the ways
in which we interact with our machines and with each
other. This approach can help us understand how we
interact and coordinate our actions in these envi-
ronments and can provide a clearer and more ap-
propriate way to support our interactions with ICTs.
Some researchers turn to activity theory to un-
derstand how people routinely use ICTs in daily life.
They argue that technology use must be studied lon-
gitudinally because it is embedded in people’s social
and organizational worlds and shaped by ongoing
interactions among their expectations of the tech-
nologies, the tasks at hand, and the changing con-
texts of use. Other researchers make a similar point,
arguing that a long-term research commitment is
needed to observe people using technologies in their
social domains in order to build a “shared prac-
tice” with them. This is a theoretical move from in-
dividualistic conceptions of interactions with ICTs
to concepts of social interaction.
As empirical attention turns to the importance
of the social and organizational contexts, physical
location and social space have sometimes been treated
as key concepts in understanding how people use
ICTs, particularly interactive mobile systems.
Some researchers argue that research into new
ICTs requires a deeper understanding of people’s
tasks and contexts. A recent paper pushes this far-
ther, claiming that the “everyday life” of the people
using ICTs is a “”stage” and “opportunity” for deeper
understanding of the contexts of use (Iacucci and
Kuutti 2002, 303). Other researchers are calling for
the integration of ethnographic techniques into the
methodology of HCI.
Researchers in HCI have been incorporating
more of the social and organizational context of ICT
design and use into their studies at theoretical and
empirical levels. Rather than having to rediscover the
complexities of the social and organizational con-
texts that make a difference in the design and use
of ICTs, researchers can turn to the theories, find-
ings, and insights of SI.
HCI Problems that SI Can Solve
The main problem that social informatics can
solve that will be important to human-computer in-
teraction has to do with understanding the social
and organizational contexts within which people de-
sign, implement, manage, and use ICTs. As HCI
researchers turn their attention to the social phe-
nomena that surround ICTs, the basic question they
ask is what elements of these contexts make a dif-
ference for ICT design and use. SI can answer this
question because it focuses on “the ‘social context’
of information technology development and use [as-
suming that it] plays a significant role in influenc-

ing the ways that people use information and tech-
nologies, and thus influences their consequences for
work, organizations, and other social relationships”
(Kling 1999, 1). HCI researchers can take advantage
of the detailed analysis and understanding of these
contexts that have been at the center of SI research
and theorizing for the past fifteen years. In that time
some interesting insights have emerged about the
complex relationships among ICTs, people, and con-
texts. Here are four of them: First, ICTs do not ex-
ist in social or technical isolation. The discussion
above of the embeddedness of ICTs in social and or-
ganizational contexts makes it clear that ICTs are so-
ciotechnical systems—that is, they have social as well
as technical components. This means that in addi-
tion to the hardware and software themselves, we
have to pay attention to those who design and main-
tain them, who manage and pay for them, and
who use them in their routine work and play.
Second, ICTs are not value-neutral. The values
and beliefs of the designers of ICTs are embedded in
the hardware and software. This can be seen in a side-
by-side comparison of Macintosh and Windows op-
erating systems. Also, when ICTs are integrated into
organizations, they can support or challenge the pre-
vailing organizational values, depending on who uses
them and how they are used.
Third, ITC use has moral and ethical outcomes
that have social consequences for the contexts in
which they are used. The decision to use peer-to-peer
software for trading copyrighted music in MP3 files
is a clear violation of the intellectual property rights
of copyright holders. The authors of the software
may not have intended for it to be used for illegal ac-
tivities, but those who downloaded the software
quickly put it to that use. The hundreds of thousands
of files exchanged using Napster had clear conse-
quences for the users, the company, the music in-
dustry, and the artists who created the music.
Fourth, ICTs co-evolve during design, develop-
ment, and use, which means that that they un-
dergo changes and modifications over their lifetimes.
This is because ICTs are configurable: Their com-
ponents can be modified and reorganized to meet
the needs of the local users. We do this in a small way
when we configure software to suit our prefer-
ences, and organizations do this in a larger and more
SOCIAL INFORMATICS ❚❙❘ 635
complex way when, for example, they reconfigure
their computing and communications infrastruc-
tures to include an intranet or a wireless network.
Also called “design in use,” this reminds us that
sociotechnical systems are always in a state of change.
Sometimes the change is very slow—we are still
using mice and keyboards as our main input devices.
Other times it is extremely rapid and disruptive—
for example, with Napster.
Currently occupying the attention of HCI re-
searchers are some problems that could benefit from
the SI approach, such as the design of interfaces
for people with special needs. More broadly charac-
terized as universal accessibility, this includes the in-
corporation of speech into the interface, the design
of effective groupware for meetings and decision
making, and the creation of digital environments to
support collaborative work among virtual groups.
While all of this can be studied in isolation, the les-
son of SI is that to design an interface to facilitate the
work of people with special needs, for example, it
is necessary to understand how they routinely in-
teract, communicate, and accomplish work tasks
in specific organizational settings.
Limitations of the SI Approach
The main limitation of social informatics is that it
adds a layer of complexity to our understanding of
human-computer interaction by insisting that the
relationships among ICTs, the people who design
and use them, and the contexts in which they are de-
signed and used are intricate, dynamic, and situated
in social and organizational space. This consequence
of the assumption of “mutual shaping” means that
it is difficult to predict the outcomes of ICT imple-
mentation and use. SI points out that the conse-
quences of the introduction and uses of ICTs vary
because their social and organizational contexts
are usually much more complex than researchers had
thought. In generic form, the question is “If this type
of technology is put into this organization, will A or
B happen?” To rephrase the question in a more prac-
tical way: “If we install a collaborative groupware sys-
tem in the organization, will it improve the virtual
group’s productivity?” For an SI researcher, the an-
swer is usually, “It depends on. . . .” The reason for