International Communication Association
53rd Annual Conference, San Diego, California, May 23-27, 2003
Electronic Networks and Democracy: Setting the Research Agenda

Intentionality and Intertextuality in ICTs:
Designing an Information System for a Local Community*

James P. Zappen
Department of Language, Literature, and Communication
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York 12180-3590
zappenj@rpi.edu

Teresa M. Harrison
Department of Communication, SS340
University at Albany
Albany, NY 12222
Voice: 518-442-4883
Fax: 518-442-3884
harrison@albany.edu

Community-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) present special challenges for designers and programmers because such technologies develop in the context of multiple and sometimes conflicting community intentions and goals. Design is often thought of as a model, representing a solution to a problem, as in a design. But, as Mansell (1996) has suggested, design may also be thought of as an intention or purpose that guides the development of such models. Moreover, design as intention or purpose may encompass a diversity of interests as models develop in space and time (Lievrouw 2002; Star and Bowker 2002). Design of a community-based information system is especially challenging because the diversity of community interests cannot be reduced to the singular interest of a typical or representative user but must must be captured in all its complexity to ensure the successful implementation of the system. Design of such a system thus raises fundamental questions about traditional data-collection methods, about the design of complex, multipurpose information systems, and about the maintenance of such systems over time. We are striving to answer these questions in our efforts to develop a youth-services information system for a local community, Troy, New York. We call this information system Connected Kids.1

Intentionality and Intertextuality in Information-System Design

Design encompasses not a single intention but a diversity of intentions unfolding in time and space. Mansell (1996, 23) observes the fundamentally social nature of design as a phenomenon grounded in human intentions: "The word design therefore invokes the idea of intentionality or purpose on the part of social actors." She supposes that design is guided sometimes by "individual self-conscious intent" and sometimes by "the intentions of collective actors that can only be assumed to exist" (23). These collective intentions are not uniform, however, but rather a reflection of diverse and potentially competing or even conflicting interests. Lievrouw (2002, 195) explains that the design of new media technologies is "a complex, multilayered process that involves many different groups and their interests." Moreover, these collective intentions are not static but subject to change. Star and Bowker (2002, 152, 159) describe new media technologies as infrastructures either spatial or temporal and always subject to modification: good design is "modifiable," "able to respond to emergent social needs."

The concept of design as intention is deeply rooted in human psychology and in human communication conceived as a complex web of discourses. Drawing upon the work of Lev Vygotsky (1978), A. N. Leont'ev (1974, 22-28) distinguishes human operations and actions from human intentions, and contemporary studies in activity theory flowing from this work emphasize the importance of designing information systems that not only perform operations and facilitate actions but also serve human intentions (Engeström 1999, 22-23; Kuutti 1996, 30-37; Nardi 1996, 73-76). Vygotsky's contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin (1986a, 67-82; 1986b, 161-64) explains human communication as a complex web of interrelated discourses, set in a specific historical and cultural context. Julia Kristeva (1980, 36-38, 64-66; 1984, 59-60) names this web of interrelated discourse an intertextuality--though she wrenches from its broader human context (Dentith 1995, 96-97). These theories support the contention that information systems will need to develop at the strategic level of intentional, motivated activities rather than the functional level of procedural operations or even goal-oriented actions only (Kuutti 1996, 37-40) and that textual representations within these systems will be not a singular discourse but a complex set of interrelated discourses that reflect and serve a diversity of intentions and interests.

Such a concept of design as intention raises fundamentally troublesome questions for ICT researchers and especially for researchers who are also developers of new technologies:

1. How can we determine users' intentions, especially in the context of communities of diverse and potentially competing and conflicting interests? What research methods are appropriate to this task?

2. If and when we can determine users' intentions, how can we incorporate these intentions into systems that are, necessarily, complex, multipurpose rather than standardized, single-purpose systems?

3. How can we sustain these systems over time and modify them in response to emerging and constantly changing intentions?

Star and Bowker (2002, 159-60) claim that the Scandinavian school of participatory design offers a demonstrably successful approach to problems of this kind. We concur, but our work on the Connected Kids youth-services information system suggests that no one method or procedure is adequate to this task. In response to question one, we have used several methods of data collection and analysis, including focus-group meetings designed not only to determine what our potential users already know (Holtzblatt and Jones 1993, 182) but also, and more importantly, to help them to discover for themselves how a system of this kind can best serve their diverse interests and needs (Krueger 1994, 19-20, 34, 45). Below we present some of our findings from these meetings. In response to questions two and three, we can offer only partial answers based upon a system that is still very much in process of development.

The Connected Kids Youth-Services Information System

The Connected Kids youth-services information system, currently in progress, will need to have multiple functions and components of textual and visual information designed for diverse user groups in a community with three colleges but also relatively low levels of income and education within the general population. To determine these users' needs, we have conducted several sequences of focus-group meetings, participatory-design meetings, and usability-test sessions, including separate focus-group meetings with each of three major user groups: representatives from youth-services organizations, parents, and children. Based upon these meetings, we have determined that the system functions and the textual and visual content will have to include standard information storage, search, retrieval, and display functions, expanded and adapted, however, in response to the explicit and sometimes implicit intentions of our potential users.

Initial focus-group meetings conducted with representatives from participating youth-services organizations revealed that system functions will have to include not only basic operations such as storage, searching, and retrieval of information about the organizations' events and activities but also exchanges of information at the strategic level of broader missions and programs and the presentation of this information via the Web and other Internet technologies, such as email or bulletin boards, to support the planning efforts of both the organizations and the people they serve (Harrison and Zappen 2003). At these meetings, program administrators expressed reservations about maintaining routine calendar events and activities but expressed considerable interest in presenting information about their organizational missions and programs. They also identified a need for links to currently accessible Web content (for some, usually larger, organizations) and access to the Web via customizable Web pages (for other, usually smaller, organizations). A system that we had initially conceived as a database of events and activities thus became transformed into a system for creating and maintaining organizational identities.

System functions will also have to be capable of responding to users' explicit and sometimes implicit intentions and needs. Thus search functions will have to produce not only interrelated sets of information about events, days and times, locations, and costs but also assessments of users' intentions and appropriate responses to their spoken and unspoken needs. Focus-group meetings with parents in low-income housing areas revealed some of these needs. One mother told us that she was looking for music lessons for her children, who love to dance and sing. A grandmother who is the sole caretaker for her grandchildren told us that she was looking for transportation to basketball and other recreational activities. Another mother reported that she regularly rides four buses each way after a full day's work to take her daughter to Girl Scout meetings. She explained that the closest Girl Scout troop was four bus rides and more than an hour from her home--one way. But she also told us that she took her daughter to Girl Scouts as an alternative to drugs and gangs. We infer that her partially spoken, partially unspoken intention may be more complex than she herself is aware. Is she really looking for Girl Scouts, or is she looking for any one of a number of positive and creative activities for young girls? Might a "smart" search function be capable of inferring her intention and offering her alternatives to meet her real but only partially expressed need?

Textual and visual content will have to include basic factual information but will also have to provide means of connecting users to other users, intentionally and purposefully. Organizations need to connect to their prospective users, but parents also need to connect to other parents, children to other children. Organizations need to make information comprehensible and accessible to their users. Thus a description of police programs and services has to be comprehensible both to the legal community and to parents and children. Our information system has to be marketed effectively within the legal community to ensure that parents and children can access information when they most need it. A police official reminded us, for example, that some parents and children may need information such as bail-bond or alternative-sentencing information on very short notice.

Parents want information not only about when and where certain kinds of activities are offered but also information about what other parents think of these activities. Parents in high-income professional groups who were looking for information about summer camps for their children informed us that they were interested not only in what an information system could tell them about the camps but also in what other parents could and would be willing to tell them. Thus they would like to have access to a bulletin board or chat space where they could exchange information about summer camps and related activities. Can we build such a capability into our information system? Assuming that we can, what will camp sponsors and administrators think of such a capability? Will they appreciate such a free and open exchange of information about their camps?

Children want to access information not only about programs and activities but also about themselves, their families, and their friends. In focus-group meetings with middle- and high-school students, children and teenagers told us--and in other meetings their teachers and parents also told us--that they would like to see their own activities, art work, and other recreational and creative activities represented on the Web. We currently offer computer instruction in local after-school programs and post children's art work and stories on the Web. Can we also devise a safe mechanism that will permit children to access the Web directly or perhaps indirectly through their teachers? Might they or their teachers, for example, be able to access the same customizable Web pages that we are creating for our organizational users?

Obviously, many of our questions remain unanswered. We have, we believe, sound methods of gathering data and are getting useful results and developing better understandings of our prospective users' sometimes clearly articulated, sometimes largely unspoken intentions and needs. Can we build a complex, multipurpose information system powerful enough to meet these needs? If we can build it, can we maintain it over the long term?

Why These Questions? Why Now?

As may already be apparent, the challenges we have discovered as we set about the task of building this system have been more substantial and far reaching than we had previously imagined. And yet we are sure that few among us will dispute the need to be responsive to these challenges. What has surprised us additionally is that little we have read about the development of large-scale information systems has prepared us for the need to design for such a multiplicity of purposes.

This may be because most large information systems are designed as commercial products and intended either for marketing to the general public or for accomplishing tasks internal to an organization to facilitate the achievement of its missions. When organizations design information systems as products or construct them to accomplish organizational tasks, the genesis for the design comes from the product and what it is supposed to accomplish or from organizational needs. That is, design is driven by the functionality that the product is intended to provide, not necessarily by what a user wishes to accomplish. For products, this orientation is certainly understandable. Many products are sold on the basis of their ability to enable users to accomplish some pre-specified and rather singular sets of purposes. Similarly, software systems designed to accomplish organizational tasks are driven by whatever goals organizational leaders want to achieve. In both cases, users fit themselves into designs that are prescribed by for them someone else who has answered the initial questions about what a user could possibly want to do. Of course, products that do not accurately predict what users want to do fade quickly into oblivion. Organizational information systems may have similar fates; however, it may also be the case that users need to fit themselves into the particular means and mechanisms that a given information system provides.

But community information systems represent a markedly different case. Here we are working with the development of software systems that should, at least in principle, be driven by the needs and intentions of community members, which may vary by family role, community role, socio-economic status, and other factors we haven't yet thought to consider. These needs and intentions can be inferred by system designers, as has apparently been the case for so many of the community networks already in existence. But what we have learned so far is that making such inferences can short-circuit the process of understanding how community members use information. And what we also appear to be learning is that we currently know very little about how community members use information. That is, when designing an information system that is to be used by individuals positioned differently within a community, it is worth knowing what needs and intentions they bring to the processes of information seeking and consumption. As we have already suggested, many of these needs may exist below the level of discursive consciousness since it may not occur to many community members to think in terms such as information seeking and consumption.

In asking such questions, we believe we are coming a little closer to the heart of what might be meant by information democracy (Doctor, 1992). It has been argued that information is crucial to the functioning of a democracy because information is required for developing the ability to formulate opinions, create preferences, test choices, and act in decision-making arenas. The argument for providing access to information is usually focused more specifically on providing access to the technology and expertise required to access online information. However, it is increasingly clear to us that the active involvement of users in the design of information systems, and particularly those related to information about the community, may play an equally important role in enabling users to access information. In fact, information democracy may rely on the prior condition of democratic design processes.

1For more information about Connected Kids, please visit http://morpheus.db.cs.rpi.edu:8080/ConnectedKids/CKArts/CKweb/.

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*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0091505. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.