“What else is there…?”: reporting meditations in experiential computing

Abstract

Compelled by Yoo’s (MIS Q, 34:213–231, 2010) call for research on experiential computing, the paper suggests meditations as a genre for both doing and reporting on fieldwork. Meditations are used to engender passionate renderings of research encounters that are part introspective and reflective and part causative and instructive. The meditations weave together everyday experiences with IT with theoretical reflections on embodiment and affect, and suggest the potential for a new scholarly sensuousness. The paper suggests that paying attention to feelings related to technology in everyday life and the use of alternative representational tactics and theoretical motifs can be generative of new matters for empirical research. Emphasizing the senses and the body and their importance in developing a sensory apprenticeship in IS, the paper suggests alternative routes to knowledge and representation.

Keywords:

• affect
• embodiment
• experience
• methods

Special Issue Guest Editors: Michel Avital, Lars Mathiassen and Ulrike Schultze

Special Issue Guest Editors: Michel Avital, Lars Mathiassen and Ulrike Schultze

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mads Bødker

About the Authors

Mads Bødker is Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Department of IT Management. Mads has an MA in film and media studies from the University of Copenhagen and holds a Ph.D. from the Innovative Communications group at the IT University of Copenhagen. His research within human–computer interaction and interaction design has centred around notions of sensory ethnographies and feelings. A recurrent question in his research is how qualitative research on information systems and mobile, pervasive technology can benefit from broader theoretical repertoires.