Socio-technical innovations and participation

Background: The dual nature of socio-technical systems requires new design paradigms that go beyond conventional informatic instrumental approaches. With the realization that digital applications change social practice but also that social influences affect design principles of digital technologies, design principles must be oriented towards real-world practices and thus towards situated forms of appropriation of the intended user groups. This is achieved with newer approaches of practice-based design, which are based on ethnography-based and participatory design principles and share a number of basic assumptions of participatory approaches in gerontology. Objective: The aim of the article is to explain basic approaches of practice-based design from the field of socio-informatics and to relate them to participatory approaches in gerontology. Material and methods: The article develops an interdisciplinary perspective on the design of socio-technical systems. Results and discussion: Interdisciplinary connecting lines are listed that can inspire current development projects, thus opening a corridor for efforts in the further development of analytical, conceptual and methodological perspectives. The discussion provides interdisciplinary approaches for the conception, design and appropriation of IT applications and infrastructures for and with older people on the basis of participatory and qualitative empirical approaches. The aim is to align IT design more closely with situated practices, sociocultural contexts and sense-making processes of older people.