Hello Barry and list, Early on, I found the personal opinions about the iPad in themselves so interesting that I conducted a study of 'anticipated user experiences'. The study focuses on online discussions about the iPad after the Apple event, but before the public release of the material product. The paper is under review, but the current abstract reads as follows: Pre-prosumption and the remediation of virtual products Abstract How do prosumers experience ICT products prior to actual use? This paper examines a particular form of concurrent consumption, use and production (i.e. prosumption) that has emerged with the rise of digital media and communication. It reports on the results from an online ethnographical study of the Apple iPad conducted before the public release of the material product. Consequently, most users had not physically interacted with the device in question. Nevertheless, the release of the technical specifications and marketing material generated a massive amount of produsage related online discussion. As such this paper explores the concept of pre-prosumption. Pre-prosumption can be compared to a form of predicted or expected use, relating to products or services that are only accessible to users as a form of representation (e.g. technical specification, virtual prototype, design sketch, or even idea), but with an added element of user-generated design suggestions, conflict coordination and software development. Remediation the process by which new digital media technologies reuses features of previous technologies and enter an existing media ecology is a prevalent theme in pre-produsage and involves a tension between features that support protracted use and features that provide total innovation. The paper argues that an analysis of pre-produsage can bestow designers with insights that relate to overall user experience, user satisfaction, and prioritization of usability-related problems. More specifically, pre-produsage analysis can trace the underlying reasons for a certain problem, intention or concern and connect it to a specific set of features. Finally, the paper shows how even proprietary products can become subject to prosumption resulting in artefacts negotiated by production, use and consumption.
From: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:17:37 -0400 To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Internet Researchers?
Mebbe I missed it in the rush of emails, but aside from danah's discussion of her fieldwork, does anyone have any EVIDENCE on iPod use?
I'm seeing lots of personal opinions but the R in this list should be real.
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
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