Boundary Objects or Coordination Mechanisms?

Boundary Objects (BOs) and Coordination Mechanisms (CMs) are terms with a long history in CSCW. They have both been used widely since their initial definition. We find the concepts used in the same settings to describe some form of collaboration among different peoples or group of people. Sometimes it seems that the choice of concepts has not been thought through. Thus, in this paper, we give a detailed description of both concepts, and then we discuss them side by side by highlighting six issues that researchers should take in consideration before defining an object as a coordination mechanism or a boundary object

Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds

This paper introduces “infrastructural speculations,” an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the “lifeworld” of artifacts—the social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds