Resumo

The digital generativity of information infrastructures pushes technological design to the edge of networks and draws attention to the protagonism of local actors. In contrast, infrastructures design is usually approached from a top-down perspective. In this regard, we need to embrace more bottom-up inquiry of infrastructure design, acknowledging the people in the edge continually adapting and reconfiguring the infrastructures. From this perspective, this work intends to present a guide to researchers conducting a Design Ethnography methodology to inquiry the bottom-up design of infrastructure

We need to expand our research methodologies tooling to contemplate such ongoing and open-ended socio-technical as the design of information infrastructures. Therefore, this work proposed using Design Ethnography (DE) as a viable alternative for this type of study. DE is a recent approach in Information Systems, and to the best of my knowledge, it was not applied before to inquiry the design of infrastructures. In this regard, this work aims to introduce an indicative guide to researchers apply DE to study the design of infrastructures.

The study starts from the concept of generativity of digital technologies (Nambisan et al., 2017; Yoo, Lyytinen, et al., 2010) to argue that the design of information infrastructures also is carried out by the users themselves at the edge of the network, in an ongoing process of reconfiguration and adaptation. From this perspective, the bottom-up designers are the protagonists. From that point, grounded on Baskerville and Myers' (2015) and Karasti and Blomberg's (2018) work, I introduce the concept of DE to study the design of infrastructure.

The study introduced the main characteristics and challenges of conducting DE to inquiry infrastructures. It presented characteristics such as the need to form correspondence with the field, following the connections, discovering discontinuities, and the challenge of scale and the changing of the temporarily. Also, are presented seven research steps, grouped into three categories. The principal steps are initial research plan, immersing in and constructing the field, and describing and intervening. At last, are presented a provisional set of criteria to field selection and research quality.

DE mixes pragmatism and interpretive epistemologies and proposes a method in which the researcher describes and intervenes in the design process. However, such an approach requires establishing a genuine exchange relationship with the field in a correspondence strategy. This work sought to provide a guide regarding how we might conduct DE research to investigate the design of information infrastructures from a bottom-up perspective. Future research can contribute with empirical validation of the elements introduced in this study and expanding the understanding of the listed strategies.

Karasti, H., & Blomberg, J. (2018). Studying Infrastructuring Ethnographically. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 27(2), 233–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-017-9296-7 Baskerville, R. L., & Myers, M. D. (2015). Design ethnography in information systems. Information Systems Journal, 25(1), 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12055 Henfridsson, O., & Bygstad, B. (2013). The Generative Mechanisms of Digital Infrastructure Evolution. MIS Quarterly, 37(3), 907–931. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2013/37.3.11 Otto, T., & Gunn, W. (2013). Design Anthropology. Design Anthropology, 331.