Cultural theory: from armchair critic to star performer

When designing mobile technologies for young people in social situations, there is a need for methodological approaches that allow the researcher to capture the intricacies of use within the context of day-to-day situations. As will be discussed in this paper, one of the most effective ways of achieving this is through the use of multi-disciplinary methodologies provided by HCI. However, while traditional approaches usually draw on ethnography or psychology for the sociology component, the study reported on in this paper, inspired by the work being conducted within the emerging field of Critical Technical Practice, introduces cultural theory into the multi-disciplinary mix of a user centered design project. The result is the development of the Swarm mobile phone prototype.