Theories of ICT design : where social studies of technology meet the distributed cognitive perspective

Abstract

In this paper we examine the possibility to bridge theory of Distributed Cognition with popular theories of Social Studies of Technology (in particular, Actor-Network Theory and Social Construction of Technology). Responding to a recent call for revisiting the design metaphor, in this paper we aim to obtain more precise terminology for describing the phenomena of ICT design in theoretical terms. We argue that establishing correlations between the two bodies of literature adds new knowledge to a community of scholars caters for betterment of managerial practice in complex design tasks.