The blog

Experiences and perspectives on the AIME platform

07 April 2015
catégorisé sous: ressources research

Bachelor project - Field study at the AIME project
By Joachim Thomsen & Thomas Nyrup
IT University of Copenhagen

We are two students from the IT University of Copenhagen, currently working on our final bachelor’s project in our undergraduate degree in Global Business Informatics. We are looking into assumptions and presumptions inscribed into the digital AIME platform in terms of the contribution process, affordances and constraints towards the platform and the negotiations which accompany contributions.

We have been attached to the AIME office for 5,5 weeks from March 2nd to April 7th, where we have been collecting empirical data which will be turned into a final report, due May 20th. In our research, we wanted to be close to the actual workspace, and be able to meet the actors face-to-face. Our fieldwork has been based on a qualitative approach, through semi-structured interviews. During our weeks here, we have conducted in total 12 interviews with:

Milad Doueihi (Mediator)
Vincent Lépinay (Mediator)
Guillaume Plique (Developer)
Bernhard Rieder (Testing-session Participant)
D.T. Cochrane (Contributor)
Terence Blake (Contributor)
Philip Conway (Contributor)
Aurélien Vret (Contributor)
Alexandre Monnin (Workshop Participant)
Christian Schubarth (Reader)
along with
Christophe Leclercq (Project Manager)
Robin De Mourat (Design phd-student)
Bruno Latour (Principal Investigator)

At the same time, we have been given access to approx. 1400 email correspondences regarding mediations on the various contributions, and we have based parts of our interview questions on our findings within the emails. We are also working on producing an archive to be used by the AIME team, making it easy to navigate and see the mail correspondences relating to specific contributions.

During our fieldwork we have found a wide range of differences in perception and experience towards the digital platform. All of our informants seem to agree on the overall aim of re-negotiating and re-setting modernity. However, they all articulate different perspectives on how to do this, and not least on how well the AIME platform facilitates this process. These perspectives will be our focus when moving forward with our project back in Copenhagen.

We are now moving into the analysis and writing phase of our project, where we will be coding transcriptions and digging deeper into the information and data, which we have gathered.

Our project ends with an oral defense in June, as the end of our 3-year undergraduate degree at ITU.

If you are interested in reading our final report, please let us know (at contact@modesofexistence.org). We will share it after the defense, via academia.edu or email.

We have been very pleased with our field study, and we appreciate all the help that the Médialab has so willingly provided us. A big thanks to Christophe and Robin, who have been working closely with us during the entire period.

[Update 08/31/15: See their report here: http://www.modesofexistence.org/aime-perceptions-and-experiences-by-thomas-nyrup-joachim-thomsen/]

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