Deconstructive Design as an Approach for Opening Trading Zones

Abstract

This paper presents a critical approach to software development that implements reflective competences in software engineering teams. It is grounded within qualitative research on software engineering and critical design practice and presents conceptual work in progress. Software development is a socio-technological process of negotiation that requires mediation of different approaches. Research on the co-construction of society and technology and on the social shaping of technological artefacts and processes has highlighted social dimensions such as gender and diversity discourses that implicitly inform development practices. To help design teams implement reflective competences in this area, we introduce ‘deconstructive design’—a critical-design approach that uses deconstruction as a tool to disclose collective processes of meaning construction. For this purpose, the idea of value-sensitive design is linked to approaches of practice-based, situated and context-sensitive learning and to the concepts of ‘trading zones’ and ‘boundary objects’.