User Influence on Electric Shutter Design: An Actor–Network Theory Ethnographic Approach

A growing body of architectural research has recognized the influence of users on technologies and the various and transformative nature of their use. A particular strand of this research applies actor–network theory (ANT) to highlight how the user is embedded in socio-material relations with technologies and captures the influence of users on design through the creation of relations in scripts and the changes in these relations through translations. These accounts help reveal the varied and dynamic realities of use by uncovering diverse and continually negotiated relations; however, they are still limited. This highlights the need to deploy such approaches and benefit from their potential to tackle the different aspects of use that might not be revealed in traditional research. This article deploys an ANT-inspired ethnographic approach to explore the electric shutters’ use in the residential buildings in Al Rayyan neighborhood. The findings illustrate how users respond to the building scripts of designers through a range of translations that may include support, acceptance, alteration, interference, abandonment, or resistance. They also show how this diversity of responses could transform and extend from one type of response to another, due to changes in knowledge, interest, engagement, circumstances, and technologies as the translation continues and develops. This perspective has significant implications in recognizing new ways for unpacking users’ contributions to design to inform design decisions and potentially influence the diffusion of technologies.