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Over the past 10 years, the use of sociological methods and sociological reasoning have become more prominent in the analysis and design of interactive systems. For a variety of reasons, one form of sociological inquiryethnomethodology-has become something of a favored approach. Our goal in this article is to investigate the consequences of approaching system design from the ethnomethodological perspective. In particular, we are concerned with how ethnomethodology can take a foundational place in the very notion of system design, rather than simply being employed as a resource in aspects of the process, such as requirements elicitation and specification.Paul Dourish is a computer scientist investigating the design of collaborative technologies on the basis of sociological investigations of work; he is a Member of Research Staff in the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC. Graham Button is a sociologist whose research interests are framed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis; he is a Principal Scientist and Area Manager for the Studies of Technolo , Organisations and Work group at 9. amR~cTIcm a m P~~C U L M CONCLUSIONSWe begin by outlining the basic elements of ethnomethodology and discussing the place that it has come to occupy in computer-supported cooperative work and, increasingly, in human-computer interaction. We discuss current approaches to the use of ethnomethodology in systems design, and we point to the contrast between the use of ethnomethodology for critique and for design. Currently, understandings of how to use ethnomethodology as a primary aspect of system design are lacking. We outline a new approach and present an extended 1. Readers who wish to pursue this in more detail are referred to Garfinkel (1967) or Heritage (1984).

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