Matters of concerns and user stories: ontological and methodological considerations for collaborative design processes

ABSTRACT

In this article, we lever on matters of concern (MoC) as a way to reflect on the articulation of collaborative design processes. We do this by focusing on an international project for the development of an ICT platform for energy management at the household and housing cooperative levels. We analyse retrospectively how the project development process captured and accompanied several MoC in two piloting areas, where all authors were directly involved. Our work contributes to the body of knowledge that builds on Science and Technology Studies scholarship to enrich the understanding of complex design processes. In particular, the paper goes beyond a descriptive take on MoC and provides ontological and methodological considerations on the use of user stories. Ultimately, the paper argues that scaffolding tools, such as user stories, can capture and convey MoC, and they can facilitate a transparent process of actor-networks alignment and emergence.

KEYWORDS:

• Matters of concern
• STS
• ontology
• methodology
• drawing things together
• user stories

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See, for instance, CoDesign special issue: ‘Designing things together: intersections of co-design and actor-network theory’, vol.11, 2015.

2. https://eit.europa.eu/.

3. CIVIS Deliverables 1.1–1.3 include the most updated versions of the user stories at the end of each project year, and they can be found here: http://www.civisproject.eu/project.html.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 608774.