Developing Information Systems for Large, Non-Profit Organisations – design and democracy in DLK

Sofie Pilemalm

Information technology has in recent years reshaped lives and organisations. It has been connected with concepts like power, democracy and emancipation and is today seen as necessity for organisations if they want to strengthen or even retain their position. This also applies to non-profit organisations and trade unions, which are often less resource-intensive and may thereby have a disadvantage in the rapidly changing information society.

User participation in the system development process is of great importance in order to make the introduced systems useful and used. Still, many approaches to system development tend not to actively involve the users in the design process. An exception is Participatory design (PD), which has as its focus active participation of users throughout the entire process. PD has a strong connection to trade unionism and technology. It was introduced in Scandinavian trade unions in the 1970´s and 80´s as collaboration between designers and worker with the mutual aim of realising the good work at the workplace. It has also strong connotations to non-profit organisations in general, since it shares with them ideological values like equality and work according to the principles of democracy. However, it is a fact that PD has thus far mostly been applied in small parts of organisations, in projects of less strategic importance and with a demarcated user group. Using the approach when developing information systems for entire, large non-profit organisations with a differentiated user group requires its partial rethink and modification.

Cultural-historical Activity theory is a theoretical framework originating from psychology. It has however also been used in the analysis of new technology and change, in system development and in Human-Computer-Interaction. Activity theory has repeatedly been claimed to bring context and organisational knowledge into process of designing and implementing information systems. It is also said to have a collective focus. Activity theory and Participatory design have many points of contact, both in theory and practice, e.g. the emphasis on context and user when applied in the development of new technology. But Activity theory also shares with Participatory design the limitation of being mostly applied for a group of individuals in smaller or fractions of organisations.

This talk will be on experiences from system development in the DLK-project. In the design work, the PD approach was used but was extended and modified in order to fit with system development in large, non-profit organisations. The focus was on making the approach more effective and to reach explicitly or implicitly to the entire user group, while not losing the democratic aspect that is so fundamental to PD design. Further, the design work was integrated with the use of Activity theory for analysis of the present and future status of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and its shop stewards. Also the Activity theoretical framework was modified in order to suit an entire organisational context.