When designing interactive web applications and services, understanding the situated nature of interaction and investigating technology appropriation experiences in the context of real-world use deserve special attention. In this paper, we report on experiences with technology appropriation of an e-Deliberation platform that we designed to support collaborative interpretation in an art gallery. Our qualitative study is based on interviews with 23 participants to explore a) visitors' practices when commenting on and interpreting art and b) how these practices are shaped by interaction with an e-Deliberation platform for collaborative writing that imposes strict regulations. An analysis of 12 hours of interview data yielded two particular appropriation practices related to the demand to satisfy additional visitors' communication needs, such as exchanging their ideas and thoughts face-to-face before writing an interpretation. Although the designers anticipated these specific needs, users also appropriated the e-Deliberation platform in unanticipated ways. These practices lead to a better understanding of the situated nature of ex-situ interaction when using interactive web applications to support remote collaboration in the art gallery context.

Previous workshops and papers have examined how individual users adopt and adapt technologies to meet their own local needs, by "completing design through use." However, there has been little systematic study of how groups of people engage collaboratively in these activities. This workshop opens a discussion for these under-studied forms of collaborative appropriation, using a broad range of perspectives including empirical data, design explorations, research, and critique.

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Purpose Public participation is an important – if not the most important – pillar of democracy. When designing new e-participation environments, it is advisable to consider previous appropriation practices of deliberative community networks to encourage broad participation. This can be achieved by sharing appropriation practices and by supporting the situated development of use, which may not only increase user participation but also decrease user frustration. Design/methodology/approach This paper addresses previously analyzed e-participation appropriation practices and technological limitations that participants faced when using the e-participation environment from the Aarhus’s Artwork design experiment. The lessons learned from these limitations and the appropriation practices identified help us in designing the next generation of e-participation environments and in counteracting their unsuccessful appropriation. Findings Potential design improvements for future collaborative writing e-environments that facilitate location-agnostic participation, and improvements that enable successful technology appropriation are presented. Originality/value These improvements are important to future research to inform a hybrid of in situ and ex situ technologies that enable collaborative writing to increase public participation in leisure spaces, engage a broader range of citizens and thus also encourage less motivated people.

This paper reports on two design experiments aiming to support participation in the semi-public space of an art gallery. Through 36 interviews, we analysed the collaborative production of texts about artworks both in the physical space of the art gallery and in the digital realm. In the first experiment, the prototype explicitly enabled in-situ collaborative writing, while in the second experiment the prototype enabled both in-situ and ex-situ collaborative writing. Our findings help us to better understand and further enhance the notion of participatory IT based on actual use. We analysed in-situ and ex-situ collaborative writing activities using the two prototypes, which led us to propose four new strong concepts for supporting the understanding and design of participatory IT that fosters local and remote participation linked to a semi-public space.