Between Need and Desire

Abstract

Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is that it does not engage with the emergent effects of design. The authors explore this critique with the help of two vignettes taken from their design research. In this article they ask: How to design for gender if gender and design are emergent? The authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design and propose a new approach to doing justice to gender in design. This perspective foregrounds ethics in the design process, in particular the accountability of technology designers.

Making prevention public: The co-production of gender and technology in HIV prevention research

“…The concept of 'making things public' has recently been used to expand theoretical discussion of the politics of technology design (Winthereik et al, 2008) and the inscription of gender in technology (Van der Velden and Mörtberg, 2011). Winthereik, Johannsen and Strand deploy the notion of 'making things to public' to overcome the user-designer dichotomy that 'scripting' has long implied (Akrich, 1992;Van Oost, 2003;Woolgar, 1991).…”