Designing for Appropriation
Open accessAbstract
Ethnographies often show that users appropriate and adapt technology in ways never envisaged by the designers, or even deliberately subverting the designers’ intentions. As design can never be complete, such appropriation is regarded as an important and positive phenomenon. However designing for appropriation is often seen as an oxymoron; it appears impossible to design for the unexpected. In this paper we present some guidelines for appropriation based on our own experience and published literature and demonstrate their use in two case studies. You may not be able to design for the unexpected, but you can design to allow the unexpected.
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Technologies are not simply used as designed, but are actively shaped and reconfigured by users to fit their needs and contexts.
“HCI has long recognized that technologies are not simply used as designed, but are actively shaped and reconfigured by users to fit their needs and contexts [10, 18, 36, 46, 81, 105, 110].”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [36]
Gaver et al. calls making design a tool for raising topics or asking questions, while renouncing the possibility of dictating answers, i.e. design for ambiguity, for adoption, for appropriation, which can bring users like the artists into conversation with the technology.
“This is what Gaver et al. [46] calls making design a “tool for raising topics or asking questions, while renouncing the possibility of dictating answers” i.e. design for ambiguity[46], for adoption [69], for appropriation [36] which can bring users like our artists into conversation with the technology.”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [36]
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References 14 · Cited by 304
Research works printed but not linked: 13
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- Carroll, Jennie., Howard, S., Vetere, F., Peck, J. and Murphy, J. Identity, power and fragmentation in cyberspace: technology appropriation by young people. In Proc. of Australian Conf. on Information Systems, 2001.
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- Dix, A, Finlay, J., Abowd, G., and Beale, R.. Chapter 5. Interaction design basics. Human-Computer Interaction, 3 rd ed.. Prentice Hall, 2004.
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- Dourish, P. Implications for Design. In Proc. CHI 2006 (Montreal, Canada), ACM Press, 2006, 541-550.
- Ellis, G. and Dix, A. 2006. An explorative analysis of user evaluation studies in information visualisation. In Proc. of BELIV '06. ACM Press, New York, NY, 1-7.
- Galloway, A., Brucker-Cohen, J., Gaye, L., Goodman, E., and Hill, D. 2004. Design for hackability. In Proc. DIS'04. ACM Press, New York, NY, 2004, 363-366.
- MacLean, A., Carter, K., Lövstrand, L., and Moran, T.. User-tailorable systems: pressing the issues with buttons. In Proc. CHI '90. ACM Press, 1990, 175-182.
- March, W., Jacobs, M., and Salvador, T. Designing technology for community appropriation. In Proc. CHI '05 Extended Abstracts, ACM Press, 2005, 2126-2127
- Newman, M., Sedivy, J., Neuwirth, C., Edwards, W., Hong, J.., Izadi, S., Marcelo, K., and Smith, T. Designing for serendipity: supporting end-user configuration of ubiquitous computing environments. In Proc. DIS'02. ACM Press, 2002, 147-156.
- Authors
- Dix, A.
- Affiliations
- Lancaster University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Dix, Alan
- ORCID
- Dix, Alan
- Venue
- Electronic Workshops in Computing
- Publisher
- BCS Learning & Development
- Published
- 2007-09
- ISSN
- 1477-9358 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2110763597
- Cited by
- 304
- References
- 14
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 23 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 5.31
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Electronic workshops in computing (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Design Education and Practice
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Keywords
- technology appropriation, design guidelines, user-centered design
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