Future-proofing: Making Practice-Based IT Design Sustainable
Carla Simone, Ina Wagner, Claudia Müller, Anne Weibert, and Volker Wulf
Abstract
Sustainability is crucial for the future of our societies. From a computing perspective, the challenge is to design IT artifacts that contribute to improving people’s work and everyday lives in a sustainable way, thereby also contributing to social and ecological sustainability. The book documents the experiences of several leading research groups in Europe, North America, and South Africa, describing their efforts to achieve sustainable design results, the difficulties that barred the way, and the strategies they adopted to achieve the goal of sustainability. The analysis of this rich empiric ... More
Sustainability is crucial for the future of our societies. From a computing perspective, the challenge is to design IT artifacts that contribute to improving people’s work and everyday lives in a sustainable way, thereby also contributing to social and ecological sustainability. The book documents the experiences of several leading research groups in Europe, North America, and South Africa, describing their efforts to achieve sustainable design results, the difficulties that barred the way, and the strategies they adopted to achieve the goal of sustainability. The analysis of this rich empirical material aids consideration of how to more systematically address and possibly overcome impediments to achieve a design result that is sustainable in practice. It points to the importance of considering the socio-technical nature of innovation, focusing on the relationship between ownership, appropriation, and learning early on in a project, and not only striving for technological flexibility but also taking care of issues of maintenance repair in designing computer support. The book discusses the changes that would be necessary to make the main stakeholders in IT design more open to creating environments for sustainable innovation. The examples discussed in this book and their analysis can inspire researchers, institutions, managers, IT professionals, and educators to promote the goal of sustainable design and increase the overall awareness of its strategic relevance.
Keywords:
sustainable IT design,
practice-based research,
socio-technical innovation,
case study approach,
comparative analysis,
sustainability strategies
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2022 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198862505 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2022 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198862505.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Carla Simone, author
Visiting Professor, University of Siegen, Past Professor, University of Milano Bicocca
Ina Wagner, author
Visiting Professor, University of Siegen
Claudia Müller, author
Assistant Professor of Information Systems, University of Siegen
Anne Weibert, author
Research Associate, Institute for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen
Volker Wulf, author
Professor for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen
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