User/subjects and using to become: Toward a critical practice of interaction design for emergence

This dissertation explores the relationship between critical theories of subjectivity and the practical work of technical communications, especially in the design and development of computer systems for complex work. Technical communications is uniquely poised to contribute to a growing awareness among software developers that software needs to support work-in-context, a rhetorical understanding of computer-mediation. However, technical communicators need grounding in critical and cultural theory in addition to communication and design competencies to achieve a central place as project managers in cross-functional teams working on designing systems for complex work. Cultural studies provides technical communicators with new theoretical tools for use in system design and with strategies that highlight the contextual, situated, emergent, and political nature of computer mediation.; The design of computer systems is both an interpretative and inscriptive practice, particularly through the use of ethnographic research methods in usability studies. I examine how theories of subjectivity can enhance our ability to interpret the users of our computer artifacts through workplace analyses and then to inscribe users into requirements documents, design models, and interface prototypes. In doing so, I theorize a poststructuralist user/subject as the heart of user-centered design methodologies. The goal of introducing a new theory of the user/subject is to allow technical communications to expand the scope of 'use' in the development of useful computer products. To expand the scope, I examine 'using to become' as a form of complex problem-solving where the problem to solve is one of identity formation and maintenance. As computer artifacts are increasingly traveling from workplaces to social spaces, designers need the theoretical grounding to understand complex and overlapping socio-organizational contexts as well as to engage with the techno-political effects of designed products and environments. In designing for emergence, designers create experiential landscapes, prepopulated with tools and interaction possibilities, as a springboard for the identity work users wish to enact in the space.