Technology designers as technology users: the intertwining of infrastructure and product

Abstract

This paper is about the developer as technical user interacting with computer technology as part of the infrastructure that makes possible their 'real work' of developing a large and complex software product. A longitudinal ethnographic study of work practice in a software development company that uses an Agile development approach found that the developers spend a large part of their working time designing, creating, modifying and interacting with infrastructure to enable and support their software development work. This empirical work-in-progress shows that an understanding of situated technology design may have implications for the future development of HCI methods, tools and approaches.