Accommodating Practices During Episodes of Disillusionment with Mobile IT

Abstract

This study investigates how tablet users react when technology falls short of their expectations. We deploy a data/frame model to study this process and investigate resistance-related reactions and the deployment of accommodating practices at the individual level. Analyzing user blogs that provide narratives on user interaction with tablets, we identify triggers of episodes of disillusionment and illustrate five sensemaking paths that users follow, eventually leading to one of three practices: 1) users choose to defer tasks until the situation changes, or they abandon the platform altogether; 2) they develop workarounds at different levels of proficiency; or 3) they proceed by reframing their expectations of the platform. By revealing user decision-making process during episodes of disillusionment, the findings contribute to information systems post-adoption research. At a practical level, the findings inform IT artifact and application design by offering insights on how users process discrepancies between their expectations and actual use experience.

Appropriating Information Technology Artefacts through Trial and Error: The Case of the Tablet

“…We chose to focus specifically on the iPad. The iPad, as an exemplar case of a tablet is particularly popular among users, offers a fairly consistent user experience across its numerous generations (Zamani et al 2019), and thus allows for maximum similarly in the data, which in turns leads to generating and verifying basic properties and conditions for our core constructs (Urquhart 2012). For our GTM study, we followed the stages of analysis as proposed by Glaser (Glaser 1978) and Charmaz (Charmaz 2006) of coding and theorising around the open (or initial), selective (or focused) and theoretical codes, writing up memos and theorising around these, too, and finally, integrating and linking up our codes and core categories through a constant comparative method, finally developing our trial and error theory of appropriating.…”

“…Within them, the tablet users were offering narratives of their everyday life, sharing their goals and experiences with the tablet as well as detailed accounts of their interaction, the problems they were encountering and the employed strategies towards solving these. We therefore considered safe to assume that these bloggers were able to provide candid descriptions in their blog posts of their everyday interaction with the device, of the IT uses they were hoping or were successful in developing with the tablet, and of the actions that allowed them (or not) to appropriate it (Hookway 2008;Zamani et al 2013).…”

“…The aspect of how users make use of IT is typically examined by post-adoption user behaviour studies (Zamani et al 2019), and often through the lens of appropriation which explains how users adapt and modify the IT or even refine their IT use in order to achieve their goals (Clark 1987). Studies often focus on the fit among user, task and IT (e.g., Barki et al 2007) or the variations of appropriation acts and adaptations (e.g., Pallud and Elie-dit-Cosaque 2011).…”

“…We use the tablet as an exemplary case, and specifically the iPad. We chose to focus on the iPad because since its launch, it has been consistently popular among the mass consumer market, and because it has attracted the attention of both practitioners and end users (Zamani et al 2019). We use Grounded Theory Method (GTM) techniques specifically because our aim is to develop a theory grounded on the data, using systematic ways for data collection and analysis, while taking stock of prior research and with the objective to enrich the appropriation literature.…”

Generative mechanisms of workarounds, discontinuance and reframing: a study of negative disconfirmation with consumerised IT

“…Hence, the reasons for abandoning IT differ significantly. In such cases, users will discontinue use on the basis of poor system performance, low institutional support for continuing its use (Pollard, 2003; Recker, 2016), a general perceived poor task‐technology fit and/or reliability and breakdowns (Park, Im, & Storey, 2012; Pollard, 2003; Zamani, Pouloudi, Giaglis, & Wareham, 2019), all of which can disenchant users (de Graaf, Ben Allouch, & van Dijk, 2017; Parthasarathy & Bhattacherjee, 1998). They further lead to low satisfaction (Hand, Dall'Olmo Riley, Harris, Singh, & Rettie, 2009; Lehrer, 2015), especially during critical IT events that impact negatively on user perceptions (Salo & Frank, 2017).…”