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Colour management is a socio-technical problem

Published: 08 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes how achieving consistent colour reproduction across different devices is a complicated matter. Although there is a technological infrastructure for managing colour across devices this is very rarely used as intended. This infrastructure has been created by modelling the problem of colour management as a wholly technical one. In this paper we illustrate the importance of understanding the management of colour as a socio-technical problem, by describing the findings of a multi-sited ethnography of designers and print shops. Our analysis of the ethnography reveals that designers build up practical, tangible, visual understandings of colour and that these do not fit with the current solution, which requires users to deal with colour in an abstract manner. This paper builds on previous research in CSCW which has considered the importance of socio-technical systems, bringing the work into a previously unexplored domain. It shows how an understanding of the social can also be central when designing technical infrastructures.

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Cited By

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  • (2015)Color PortraitsProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2702123.2702173(4207-4216)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2015
  • (2014)Ethnography in ParallelCOOP 2014 - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France)10.1007/978-3-319-06498-7_16(259-275)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2014
  • (2013)Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCWComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-012-9183-122:4-6(373-423)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2013
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
CSCW '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
November 2008
752 pages
ISBN:9781605580074
DOI:10.1145/1460563
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 08 November 2008

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Author Tags

  1. colour
  2. colour management
  3. ethnography
  4. ethnomethodology
  5. graphic design
  6. printing
  7. socio-technical design

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CSCW08
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CSCW08: Computer Supported Cooperative Work
November 8 - 12, 2008
CA, San Diego, USA

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Cited By

View all
  • (2015)Color PortraitsProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2702123.2702173(4207-4216)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2015
  • (2014)Ethnography in ParallelCOOP 2014 - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France)10.1007/978-3-319-06498-7_16(259-275)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2014
  • (2013)Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCWComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-012-9183-122:4-6(373-423)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2013
  • (2013)Creative practices in the design studio cultureCognition, Technology and Work10.1007/s10111-012-0232-915:4(415-443)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2013
  • (2010)The human infrastructure of ICTDProceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/2369220.2369258(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2010

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