research-article

Designing for repair?: infrastructures and materialities of breakdown

Authors:

Daniela K. Rosner,

Morgan AmesAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

Pages 319 - 331

https://doi.org/10.1145/2531602.2531692

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explores issues that come up in practices of breakage and repair through two projects: the 'XO' laptops of One Laptop Per Child in Paraguay and public sites of facilitated repair in California, USA. Collectively drawing on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 156 interviews, and archival research, we find that breakdown and repair are not processes that designers can effectively script ahead of time; instead, they emerge in everyday practice. These practices are shaped by material, infrastructural, gendered, political, and socioeconomic factors -- such as manufacturing limitations, access to repair parts and expertise, and environmental convictions -- which designers often did not, and may not have been able to, anticipate. We call the material realities and practices of repair negotiated endurance, which is illustrated by four themes from our findings: the negotiated identification of breakdown, collaborative definitions of worth, the fraught nature of collaborative expertise, and the gendered stakes of repair.

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Index Terms

Designing for repair?: infrastructures and materialities of breakdown
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

February 2014

1600 pages

ISBN:9781450325400

DOI:10.1145/2531602

General Chairs:
Susan Fussell
Cornell University
,
Wayne Lutters
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
,
Program Chairs:
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Madhu Reddy
Penn State University

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 15 February 2014

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14070695
Friedman NTan ZHaskins MJu WBailey DLongchamps L(2024)Understanding Farmers' Data Collection Practices on Small-to-Medium Farms for the Design of Future Farm Management Information SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374168:CSCW1(1-28)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637416
Song KBell FDeshpande HMandel IWun TAlistar MBuechley LJu WKim JPaulos ESabie SWakkary R(2024)Sustainable Unmaking: Designing for Biodegradation, Decay, and DisassemblyExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3636300(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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