Overview

A sociocultural study of workers' ad hoc genre innovations and their significance for information design. In Tracing Genres through Organizations, Clay Spinuzzi examines the everyday improvisations by workers who deal with designed information and shows how understanding this impromptu creation can improve information design. He argues that the traditional user-centered approach to design does not take into consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from an officially designed text. These often ephemeral innovations in information design are vital components in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a given activity). When these innovations are recognized for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied. Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way to study the different levels of activity in an organization). After defining terms and describing the method of genre tracing, the book shows the methodology at work in four interrelated studies of traffic workers in Iowa and their use of a database of traffic accidents. These workers developed an ingenious array of ad hoc innovations to make the database better serve their needs. Spinuzzi argues that these inspired improvisations by workers can tell us a great deal about how designed information fails or succeeds in meeting workers' needs. He concludes by considering how the insights reached in studying genre innovation can guide information design itself.

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Spinuzzi takes issue with many in the user-centered design community, arguing that much of the work emerging from it implicitly assumes a 'worker-as-victim, designer-as-hero' perspective. To counter this view he argues strongly for an approach that respects and builds on the worker's own agency and abilities, showing how the workers themselves adjust the system in a myriad of ways in order to fit the system to their activities. A thoughtful, and at times provocative, read. --Liam J. Bannon, Director, Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick

Author Information

Clay Spinuzzi is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Texas, Austin. Bonnie A. Nardi is Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and Cofounder of Center for Research in Sustainability, Collapse-preparedness, and Information Technology there. She is the coauthor of Acting with Technology (MIT Press). Victor Kaptelinin is Professor in the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden, and Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is coeditor of Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments (MIT Press, 2007). Kirsten A. Foot is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, and lead author of Web Campaigning (MIT Press).

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