ES_2011_1_Vinck

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by: [Vinck, Dominique]On: 19 April 2011Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 936289382]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Engineering StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t792815951

Taking intermediary objects and equipping work into account in the studyof engineering practicesDominique Vincka

a PACTE Politique-Organisations, University of Grenoble, Grenoble, France

First published on: 11 February 2011

To cite this Article Vinck, Dominique(2011) 'Taking intermediary objects and equipping work into account in the study ofengineering practices', Engineering Studies, 3: 1, 25 — 44, First published on: 11 February 2011 (iFirst)To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2010.547989URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2010.547989

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t792815951

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2010.547989

http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

Taking intermediary objects and equipping work into account in the

study of engineering practices

Dominique Vinck*

PACTE Politique-Organisations, University of Grenoble, BP 47 le patio,Grenoble cedex 9, Grenoble 38040, France

(Received 10 September 2010; final version received 8 November 2010)

This article shows that the equipping of intermediary objects is a centralconcern of engineers and technicians. Through the process of equipping, newproperties are conferred on the intermediary object and this contributes to theshaping of the design space and collective work. I follow in particular howequipping is used in practices of mediation, temporal set-up and frameworkoutlining and how it creates spaces of exchange. The argument developed isbased on ethnographic studies of engineering design activities in themanufacturing industry and in a design office in charge of developing a largeinstrument for the CERN cyclotron.

Keywords: intermediary object; equipping; equipment; data exchange; engineeringdesign

Introduction: one more step in the study of engineering design practices

This article contributes to the detailed study of engineering practices, focusingspecifically on the case of engineering design. It offers a vocabulary for naming,following and assessing these practices. Its aim is to make a methodologicalcontribution to the study of engineering practices by developing and extending thenotion of ‘intermediary object’. It explores in particular the notion of ‘intermediaryobject equipping’, which bridges the gap between the study of engineering design andthe study of design engineers as people.

The central argument is that the equipping of intermediary objects changes thestatus and ontological properties of these objects and contributes to the shaping ofthe design space and work collective. By equipment, we mean any element added tointermediary objects enabling them to be connected to conventional supports andspaces of circulation. The ‘equipping work’ is the collective activity that involvesagreeing about the features to be added to intermediary objects so that they can beenrolled in the space of exchange between actors. Various aspects of engineeringdesign practices can be better understood by following intermediary objects and theirequipping process. Hence, this analysis returns to the engineering design activity tolook at the kind of intermediary objects it produces and uses. More specifically, itshows that the equipping of these objects is really a central concern of technicians

*Email: [email protected]

Engineering Studies

Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2011, 25–44

ISSN 1937-8629 print/ISSN 1940-8374 online

� 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2010.547989

http://www.informaworld.com

Downloaded By: [Vinck, Dominique] At: 20:09 19 April 2011

and engineers. Explaining the intermediary object’s features and the ways they areequipped helps to categorise the key features of engineering design practices.

The argument developed is based on the review of ten years of fieldwork onvarious engineering design activities occurring in the manufacturing industry and ina design office responsible for the development of a large instrument for the CERN1

cyclotron.2 However, the analysis also seems relevant to many engineering activities,for instance the case of environmental management in the chemical industry.3

The first part of the paper examines the potential of the concept of intermediaryobject in the study of engineering design practices. It briefly recalls the genesis of theconcept in studies of scientific cooperation networks before concluding by assessingpossibilities for engineering studies. The second part of the article reviews somefindings from our investigations on engineering design activity in which we focusedon the concept of the intermediary object. It shows how the concept was used inprevious work by the author and his colleagues and underlines how it can advancethe study of engineering design practices. The third part, the core of this article,extends the concept in a new way, looking at how these intermediary objects areequipped with various marks or codes that produce transformations in both theobjects and the work collectives. It demonstrates that studying the equipping ofintermediary objects leads to a better understanding of the co-construction of peopleand of practices in design and engineering.

The intermediary object as a potentially useful concept for engineering studies

When the notion of intermediary objects originated in a sociology-of-scienceinvestigation, it served to describe and to characterise scientific cooperation networks.4

As it identified the actors and characterised the forms of organisation andcoordination, and the agreements binding them, the survey strove to capture thecontent of activity (the objectives of each network, the acquired or expectedintermediary results). The investigation followed the objects that were exchangedand circulated among the networkmembers, referred to then as ‘intermediary objects’.5

The methodological idea of following both the actors6 and the intermediaryobjects proved to be useful for data collection. It pointed to the fact that the mostactive scientific members of these networks devoted a considerable amount of time todesigning, negotiating, producing and disseminating all kinds of ‘objects’: texts(reports, forms, protocols), computer files, biological samples (DNA probes, HIV

1European Organisation for Nuclear Research.2These investigations were performed by the author and his colleagues, all mostly trained inboth mechanical engineering and in sociology and anthropology. Part of this fieldwork ispublished in Vinck, Everyday Engineering, 2003, 13–27.3Reverdy, ‘‘Writing Procedures’’, 2003.4The Actor-Network Theory called attention to the importance of materiality and reports onsociotechnical constructions (knowledge statements, devices, actors, etc.), in terms of networksof associations between entities (human and non-human) obtained following a translationoperation. Akrich, ‘‘Beyond Social Construction of Technology,’’ 1992; Callon, ‘‘SomeElements for a Sociology of Translation’’, 1986; Latour, ‘‘On Interobjectivity’’, 1996; Latour,‘‘When Things Strike Back’’, 1999; Law, ‘‘After ANT’’, 1999. Others authors, like Dick Pelset al. (‘‘The Status of the Object,’’ 2002), pointed out that it was time to rediscover the ways inwhich social and material relations are entangled.5Vinck, ‘‘Les objets intermediaires dans les reseaux de cooperation scientifique’’, 1999.6Latour, Science in Action, 1987.

26 D. Vinck


viral strains, brain sections), instruments, animals, phantoms and even patients.Given the time and energy taken up by these activities and the detailed attentiongiven to these objects by the network members, it was assumed they were importantfor the interactions inside the network. Looking at the preparation, circulation anduse of intermediary objects appeared to be a fruitful means of describing the networkand the scientific activities of its members. Following these objects revealed somepreviously invisible but crucial activities such as the design and preparation ofintermediary objects or their logistic management (object circulation, inventory-taking and conservation). This helped to better understand what was going on inscientific cooperation networks.

The actors’ focus on intermediary objects emphasised the objects’ importance interms of the action undertaken, either because the objects contributed something tothe action, or because they extended or transformed it. The hypothesis then emergedthat the details of these objects should be taken into account in order to understandthe collective action, the structuring of the network and the results generated:publications, reference materials, best practices and health devices, notably.

Within the framework of actor-network theory (ANT), the intermediary objectwas considered and theorised as a form of representation and a form of translation.7

Representation referred to the inscription of something in the matter of the object. Inthe case of scientific cooperation networks, intermediary objects represented both theobject under study (samples of viruses or of pathological tissues, reports outliningthe medical history of a patient, medical imagery of a patient’s body) and the specificperspective of those who designed and prepared them.

The intermediary object as a form of translation referred to the shift fromintention to the realisation of an idea, a shift that involved some form oftransformation. The resulting object generated something different from what wasoriginally sought. The expectation was transformed and socialised8 through theconceptual and material preparation within hospitals and laboratories. The materialnature of objects (e.g. a blood sample) was seen as a source of opaqueness in theaction. This could not be reduced to initial intentions (e.g. representing a typical caseof such and such a disease) as these were overridden by other factors entering intothe situation. Latour showed that when inscriptions were followed (e.g. plots fromanalysis instruments, tables of figures, diagrams and texts), it was possible to analysescientific practices differently and to deflate some of the abusive questions raised inepistemology.9 These inscriptions were not just pieces of information; they were alsomaterial entities, which could prove difficult to produce, keep and use.

Later, when social scientists moved towards engineering studies, the following ofintermediary objects as a methodological innovation was found to be potentiallyuseful for the study of engineering design practices as a complementary approach tointerviewing, observing and following people. While interviews and documentanalysis (e.g. engineering manuals and literature) mainly provided an official,idealistic and normative representation of design activities, it was also important tofind a way to look at real activity and practice. One way was to follow the engineersand designers in their day-to-day activities, to observe them, to ask them to explainwhat they were doing and to describe their ethnomethods. The idea was to shed

7Vinck, ‘‘Les objets intermediaires dans les reseaux de cooperation scientifique’’, 1999.8Knorr-Cetina, Laboratory Studies, 1995.9Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life, 1979.

Engineering Studies 27


additional light on the activity by looking at the objects being manipulated andproduced, even if they were common, unspecific (e.g. a pencil) and apparentlyunimportant. The hypothesis was that by looking at these objects and theircirculation from one designer to another it was possible to produce a real picture ofengineering activity and organisation rather than an idealised version.

The notion of intermediary objectswas seen to help piece together how interrelationsare formed in a design process, without simply reducing this activity to the cognitive andinstrumental aspects of engineers’ work. Given that everything concerned witharticulating, aligning, adjusting, exploring, etc., could be potentially important forunderstanding the design activity, sociologists needed to study the details of material,bodily and conversational practices together with their lot of local and contingentaccomplishments. For these reasons, we undertook the study of intermediary objects,seeing in this a useful methodological strategy for the study of engineering design.

Revealing engineering design activities

This second section reviews some of the findings from our observations intoengineering design activity using the notion of intermediary objects. It documentsthe payoff of the notion in the study of design practices, in particular the benefit of abetter understanding of the intermediary object equipping process.

In the 1990s, when social scientists and mechanical engineers began to performethnographic investigations into engineering design activities in the manufacturingindustry, the literature available mainly comprised engineering manuals andarticles.10 These referred to design methods, tools and organisation, either in anormative way or in an idealistic style (i.e. referring to the potential benefits of theuse of tools or methods). Similarly, engineering scholars had no real knowledge ofthe practices inside design offices. Sometimes, they had meetings with the heads ofdesign offices and with specialists of design methodology inside firms. On rareoccasions, they also visited the offices. We thus decided to go and see for ourselveswhat was really happening in design offices. From going out into the field, our groupof engineering and social science scholars and students learned to observe and writefield notes. This activity taught us to use notions like actors, social worlds,organisational setting and intermediary object in order to capture the ongoing designactivities, real practices and organisation. Through our fieldwork, we discoveredquantities of sketches, drawings, models made of cardboard or modelling clay,prototypes, broken parts, listings and screen shots in the design offices visited. Thesewere many in number and of different kinds. Although the designers worked withCAD software, many of the intermediary objects observed were textual documents(sales or technical instructions, price and lead time plans, forecast cost pricedocuments, product creation notifications, detailed methods, operation plans,summary documents, anomaly sheets, open-ended specifications, etc.), graphicdocuments (definition outlines, manufacturing plans, block diagrams, etc.) andphysical objects (prototypes and dies).

The list of these intermediary objects was specific to each design office. Onedesign office displayed a disorganised mass of large sheets portraying industrial

10The term ‘‘engineering design activities’’ refers to the devising of a component, a system or aprocess to meet normally specified needs. Among the fundamental elements of these activitiesare the establishment of goals and criteria, analysis, calculation and testing.

28 D. Vinck


drawings and manual annotations, with people touching them and talking aroundthem. In another design office, well-ordered stacks of these sheets could be found,folded and apparently not used very often but showing many lists of data andequations. In yet another office, there were few papers but many pieces of metal,prototypes and broken parts. The designers here could be seen to be looking at theseobjects, picking them up and moving them between their table and the test bench.Before even commencing the interviews, the situations described, thanks to theintermediary objects followed, proved to be very different from one office to the next.

Looking at and following these objects also revealed much about the activities,some of which appeared to be clandestine (e.g. the use of modelling clay in a firmwhose management insisted on the use of digital modelling only). Identifying anddescribing these intermediary objects, in addition to performing interviews andobserving what people did and said, made it possible to capture and report on aconsiderable part of the design processes.11 It also helped to shed light on crucial butuncovered relations between people who were not in the description of the officialworking process, e.g. between the production shop operators and the designers. Thisimproved access to the actors engaged in a given technological design and led to amore detailed view of the relations (mapping of the real design process), activitiesand practices that would otherwise have been difficult to achieve in the official andspontaneous presentations of the actors interviewed. In one firm, the designersexplained the usual circuit followed by a drawing, its validation by the people in theproduction shop and its transformation into an executing drawing to be used by theoperators. However, by following the digital drawings sent by the designers tothe production shop, it was found that the operators validated these drawingswithout properly checking them. They did not add anything to the digital file,referred to as the ‘anomaly sheet’, which they were supposed to use to express anycriticism of the design. Later, when they received the executing drawings, they wereoften angry and sometimes went up to the design office to insult the designers. Atother times, when they received the drawings for validation, they went up to thedesign office to discuss them with the designers, express their criticism, ask questionsand make suggestions, orally and using their hands, touching the computer screen orthe drawings on the table. In the latter case, it was the designers who filled in theanomaly sheet on behalf of the operators. In other cases, the operators went back tothe production shop with the designers to show them the machines and theoperational or broken products.

Several findings were drawn from these observations: (1) the official circuit didnot reflect the real activity; (2) the trajectory of the drawing varied from one time tothe next (depending on whether or not any informal discussions took place betweenthe designers and the operators before validation); (3) the operators did not expresstheir comments by adding text to a digital file; (4) the operators and the designersoften preferred unofficial and informal discussions to help set up an agreementbefore validation; (5) the quality of their informal discussions depended on the kindof objects they picked up, touched or annotated (screen, sheet of paper, part, etc.).

As another example, the activity inside an open space design office at one firmshowed designers surrounded by various kinds of drawings and different versions of

11Vinck and Jeantet, ‘‘Mediating and Commissioning Objects in the Sociotechnical Process ofProduct Design,’’ 1995; Boujut and Blanco, ‘‘Intermediary Objects as a Means to Foster Co-operation in Engineering Design,’’ 2002; Vinck, Everyday Engineering, 2003.



these. The picture presented to the observer can be summarised as follows: there area few drawings on the table in front of them and one displayed on the engineer’scomputer screen. Two designers are talking while pointing alternately at some sheetsof paper and the screen. One of them is making some annotations to one drawingand explaining the relations with another drawing. The other designer picks up aprevious version of the drawing and points to it. They discuss the differences betweenversions. After drawing up a precise description of the various drawings and theseries of movements involved, the observer concludes that the order of appearance ofthese objects and the system of mutual cross-referencing they shared could be used topiece together their inter-relations and the way they linked up in a design process.

This kind of reconstitution, built up from various design offices and designprojects, also unveiled the design process organisation, the sharing of tasks, theirsequencing and regulation points (i.e. when they met to compare and contrast pointsof view, ask for explanations, provide their colleagues with help or set up anagreement on a technical design or on a design strategy). By analysing each of theseobjects and its effective use in detail, it was thus possible to qualify the sequential,cooperative or integrated nature of the design process. By listing, characterising andsituating the objects, the study outlined contrasting configurations from oneorganisation to another, underlining how different design offices can be, even whenthey perform very similar technical activities.

This fieldwork produced a very different picture of design activities comparedwith that provided in engineering literature presenting only specific designprocedures, CAD software, calculation methods and rules (e.g. pertaining toindustrial drawings).12 This picture is much more complex while at the same time itsuggests something ordinary and routine.

As yet another example, in one design office, the operators and designers met tocompare and contrast their views about a specific point. This point was relevant toboth the design and the production process as it concerned where to start themachining. While being an important factor for the operators, it also had a numberof consequences on the design solution. Through discussion and pointing, theoperators and designers managed to reach an agreement. One of them could be seento add an annotation to a drawing on the table translating their joint decision. Inother cases, when they only had a computer screen to work on, they were unable toinscribe their decision in this way.

Seeing their difficulty, the field observer conducting this investigation, who wasboth a mechanical engineer and a sociologist, invented ‘inter-professionalsymbols.’13 These were graphic objects that could be incorporated into the designers’3D viewing tools in order to facilitate their comparative work and enable theiragreement to be inscribed. Thus, as demonstrated in this case, following the actors

12Engineering design has been the focus of some attention (see Bucciarelli, DesigningEngineers, 1994; Downey, The Machine in Me, 1998; McDonnell and Lloyd, About, 2009). In ajournal like Design Studies, except a special issue in 2000 on ‘‘Studying design withethnographic methods,’’ most of the papers concern normative thinking on how to design andhow to train designers, but there are very few articles on how these designers actually work.Most of the journal’s papers report research on principles, procedures, methods, knowledgeand techniques pertaining to design activity, management and education (see Visser,‘‘Design,’’ 2009, for the state of the art in the experimental study of cognitive aspects).13Laureillard and Vinck, ‘‘The Role of Graphical Representations in Inter-ProfessionalCooperation,’’ 2003.

30 D. Vinck


and the objects helped to reveal the socio-cognitive processes involved in the designsituation, e.g. evaluation, analysis and decision-making. This provides a sharpcontrast with engineering literature where the designer is represented alone in acognitive process where the aim is to solve design problems. Observing the in situactivity and looking at the traces and intermediary objects produced, mobilised andcirculated by the actors are effective ways of gaining access to these socio-cognitiveprocesses, which are, in fact, much more collective and interactive than expected.Our approach also shows the bodily and material component of these processes.Looking at intermediary objects helps to shed light on things, such as cognitiveaspects, which are not entirely clear when the focus is on people.

The above review underlines the quantity and importance of these intermediaryobjects in the engineering design process. They reflect contrasted situations andprocesses. They help to reveal socio-cognitive dynamics, real networks inside theindustrial engineering organisation and the effective practices of engineers. Tounderstand what is going on with these intermediary objects and their importancefor the actors involved, it is useful to look at the relevant processes in detail.

The intermediary object helps to reveal representation and translation processes

Engineering designers are very careful with the details pertaining to intermediaryobjects and their circulation because these are the places where importantphenomena occur. Among other things, the intermediary object is where therepresentation process unfolds, i.e. the idea of inscribing something in the matter ofthe object. This representation concerns the processes upstream of the object and theprojections downstream. Upstream, the intermediary object reflects those whodesigned, prepared and circulated it. Sometimes they put their name or signature onit. The intermediary object materialises their intentions (i.e. what and how they wantto design), their working or thinking habits,14 their interactions and the compromisesthey introduce (e.g. the agreement settled between designers and operators). Theintermediary objects, therefore, are seen to act as a trace or mark of the designersand their relations.

Sometimes, the inscription is negotiated, for instance, when designers andmarketers meet to agree on what a client really wants. They discuss and finally set upa list of specifications representing the initial demand of the ‘client’. It is nottherefore just a straightforward social construction reflecting the social milieu ofengineering. In this respect, the intermediary object is required to channel part of thedesire and purpose of the client, the end-user and other actors in society.

One example of these negotiations was seen in the CERN design office when anengineer had to design a shielding wall, for which he had received no specificationsfrom the client. The ‘client’, in fact, was the high energy physics internationalscientific community comprising over 500 high level scientists. These scientists werepreoccupied by the design of the original instruments but not interested in thisshielding disk. They did not want to define it because they considered it to be of littleimportance. Defining it would have introduced unnecessary constraints. However,the head of the design office anticipated that if the design of this shielding disk wasleft to one side any further, this could lead to an impossible-to-solve problem as

14See, for instance, the notion of technical paradigm: Constant, The Origins of the TurbojetRevolution, 1980.



nobody would consider the space required by the disk. He wanted the designer tomake the shielding disk exist. The designer in charge of the disk therefore imaginedits possible specifications and drew up a first version of the solution. He then put thissolution before the community of physicists expecting them to react and express theirdesires. Discussions and negotiations then commenced between the designers,the head of the design office, the technical coordinator of the projectand the representatives of the community of physicists. The final drawingrepresented the specific journey required to set up the specifications. By followingthe various versions of the intermediary objects involved (drawings, specificationslists, meeting minutes, etc.), it was possible to trace how the client’s desire wasactually formed and how the designers contributed to the shaping of this demand.

Intermediary objects are also the places where translation processes take place.Translation refers to the shift that occurs during the development of an intermediaryobject and, thus, throughout the whole design and engineering process. This shift isnot necessarily desired or even controlled, and may even betray the designer. Whenthe intention is materialised, something new is introduced owing to the materiality orto the formalism used. Translation was observed in a design office where a designerwas drawing a metal part based on a list of specifications. However, there wereunspecified features as well, namely surfaces considered to be unimportant. Yet, theformalism required by the industrial drawing meant that the designer had to defineall the surfaces. He thus took it upon himself to make a number of decisionsregarding the unimportant surfaces. As the observer of this case followed theintermediary objects circulating from the design office towards their validation byseveral engineers in different positions, he met the operator having to manufacturethe product. When the operator looked at the executing drawings, he discovered thatone of the surfaces would be difficult and costly to make. However, he was bound tofollow the indications on the drawing. A few weeks later, the operator and thedesigner met up by chance in the firm’s canteen. The operator told the designer howdifficult the design would be to make. The designer discovered that the difficultyrelated to the ‘unimportant surface’. The operator proposed to change the design inorder to get over this difficulty. This made the designer realise that the definition ofthis unimportant surface, which was imposed by the industrial drawing formalism,transformed it into a specification for the operator. This example underlines that oneof the advantages of following intermediary objects is that this makes it possible todescribe the wanted or unwanted translation processes unfolding through the designprocess.15

The resulting object generates something different from what was originallyaimed at, which is one of the reasons why engineering design actors worry about theobject’s details and circulation. The object does not simply materialise the values,demands and specifications, presiding over its making, or the cognitive processesinvolved; it also introduces something into the action – a constraint, a shift,something opaque – and this leads the designer to equivocate about theconsequences of its design. The material nature of objects (written records orprototypes) is a source of opaqueness in engineering action. Similarly, while a list ofspecifications might represent a client’s expectations, these are transformed and

15These translation processes have also been well documented by Nieusma and Rileyregarding engineering for development initiatives: Nieusma and Riley, ‘‘Designs onDevelopment,’’ 2010.

32 D. Vinck


socialised through the development of the intermediary object as technical andconceptual changes take place within the engineering office. These phenomena(representations and translations, and others not developed here)16 lead the observerto look closely at what is going on with these intermediary objects and theircirculation.

The major considerations when equipping intermediary objects

The third section now extends the notion of intermediary objects in a new way. It isbased on the observation of controversies between design technicians and engineersregarding some of the details of these intermediary objects. We observed that manydiscussions inside and between design offices and production shops concern the waythese objects should be equipped with marks or codes. These details seem to beimportant for the actors because the marks or codes appear to structure the actors’activity and relations. This section will show that looking at the equipping ofintermediary objects provides insight into the co-construction of the people and ofthe practices in design and engineering. The equipping of intermediary objects provesto be central to the actors. Indeed, the equipping process changes the status of theintermediary objects, structuring the social and technical world of the designers.17

An ethnographic study inside the design offices of a major scientific facility

In the 1990s, our investigations took us inside the design offices of the CERN inGeneva in charge of designing part of the ATLAS detector.18 The CERN is a worldcentre for fundamental research. Its scientific objectives are to explore the structureof matter by simulating the conditions underlying the origins of the universe (the BigBang). The facility has several particle accelerators and colliders in which theparticles enter into collision. The detectors are used to record the effects produced bythese collisions (notably the trajectories followed by the particles after collision, theenergy emitted and the large electrons generated). The physicists (working in manydifferent institutes spread across the globe) had defined the principles of a newdetector. This detector, called ATLAS, was designed to be installed on a ring (i.e. aparticle accelerator) with a circumference of 27 km and set in a cave roughly 100 m

16See Vinck, Everyday Engineering, 2003, regarding the intermediary objects as mediators,operators of change and temporal markers, and spatial markers and framework.17Sometimes intermediary objects are transformed into boundary objects. Boundary object is aconcept originating in the work of Star and Griesemer, (‘‘Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’and Boundary Objects,’’ 1989) who demonstrated the role of all manner of artefacts –directories, classifications, maps, standardised methods – involved in the distributedmanagement of knowledge inside a specific collaboration between groups. The notion seeksto qualify articulation mechanisms of actors belonging to heterogeneous ‘‘social worlds’’(groups of activity having neither a clear border nor a formal and stable organisation). Thenotion helps to look at the ecology of the workplace and at all the things involved in themediation of knowledge. See Trompette and Vinck, ‘‘Revisiting the Notion of BoundaryObject,’’ 2009; Star, ‘‘Ceci n’est pas un objet-frontiere,’’ 2010.18ATLAS is the name of a detector used in particle physics experiments at the Large HadronCollider at CERN for the search for new discoveries in collisions of protons of high energy.The experiment would provide information about the basic forces that have shaped theuniverse since its origin. The accelerator and the ATLAS detector were inaugurated in 2008.



underground. ATLAS has a diameter of 25 m and a length of 40 m. The design officeengineers and technicians were in charge of the detailed design of this detector.

The design of the detector was in fact the result of international collaborationinvolving several thousand researchers (mostly physicists from across the wholeworld) and over 100 design offices spread across 20 countries (in other words, severalhundred engineers and technicians speaking different languages and using differentdesign tools).

Our ethnographic study was limited to the design offices located at the CERN inGeneva. Inside these offices, the observer came across physicists (some of whomwould be using the detector), mechanical engineers and members of the ATLASproject Technical Coordination team. Roughly 20 people worked in the officediscussed in this article (designers, structural engineers and project engineers). Theoffice had an open-space layout with the exception of the manager’s office, which wasseparate and fitted with a window looking out on to the open-plan design area, and asmall meeting room. The members of the design office were in charge of designingand modelling various parts of the detector. They worked mainly with computer-assisted design tools in order to do drawings, run calculations and manage technicaldata. However, their desks were also piled up with a large quantity of A1 drawingsand screen shots.

The designers and their boss did not stay put in their seats the whole time, even ifeach person had a dedicated task. Several times a day, small groups met fordiscussions around the plotter, in front of a computer screen or around a table whereseveral sheets of paper were laid out. Sometimes, the discussions involved all thedesign office members. Sometimes, one designer would go across to anotherdesigner’s desk, even if the designer was absent, to look at a drawing. Sometimes, thedesigner would borrow the drawing and maybe make a copy of it before going backto their table. Sometimes, people from outside the office (a designer from anotherdesign office, a member of the technical coordination team or a visiting physicist)would come to visit the design office, talk to some of the designers, and perhaps leavea sketch or a drawing behind.

Equipping

Of course, the discussions taking place concerned the detector and its design. Themembers of the team would talk about different requirements, technical problemsand solutions, but also about the details of the sketches and drawings. It was notsurprising to see that the designers invested greatly in these objects in terms of theirpreparation, calculation and development, but also in terms of the logistics theyrequired (e.g. checking who would receive a specific version of a drawing and whowould give and explain the drawing, etc.) and control over their use (e.g. checkingwho would use an intermediary object and for what use).

The observer found thatmany of these discussions also concerned the circulation ofpeople and drawings: who would receive which version and what was the status of adrawingwere subjects of dispute. Some of these controversies attracted attention to thetechnicians’ and designers’ recurring major concern: the signatures, codes and datesappearing on industrial drawings, in other words the signs used to ‘equip’ these objects.The design project seemed to depend on these. If a drawing was improperly numbered,this represented a threat to the design project as a whole: it jeopardised the meeting ofobjectives, the integration of the results coming from each designer or engineer and the

34 D. Vinck


validation of decisions. The quality of this intermediary object ‘equipping’ appeared tobe central in many of their formal and informal discussions. The structuring ofindividual and collective activities seemed to depend on it. These marginal details (i.e.the codes, dates and signatures appearing in a small box in the bottom right-handcorner of the drawings) were managed as if they completely changed the status andcharacteristics of the drawing. These additional elements seemed to modify its future.

The centrality of forms of exchange

Following the designers and the intermediary objects in this design office revealed theimportance of the discussions and different actions (pointing, annotating, gesturing,note-taking, coming together, occupying centre stage, etc.) taking place around theintermediary objects. They underlined the central place occupied by the exchange ofdata and information between designers. The technicians and engineers were seen tocontinually search for information (looking inside shared data bases, walkingaround the desktop of a colleague or calling up another design office or one of theresearchers representing the ‘client’).

Mobilising the information produced by others was no simple task. This isreflected in the testimony of one of the physicists attempting to recover the latestversions of the detector’s technical drawings in order to integrate them into hissimulations and evaluate whether they had any impact on the physics of theexperiment:

Lars [chief engineer] needs to get his act together. In theory, we should be able find themon EDMS [a shared data base] but these documents are not always easy to read on anormal PC. Otherwise, we’re going to have to go across to building 530 and ask for aprint-out. Getting drawings passed on has always been, and continues to be, a bigproblem at the CERN. In theory, whenever the engineers change anything, Lars shouldpick up the phone and tell me, so that I can check what that changes for the physics, butin reality, I often find out about them during meetings. The situation’s better nowbecause I’m working directly with Chris [Technical Coordinator]; he invites me to all themeetings, so I’ve got more meetings where I have the opportunity to . . . but nothing’sbeen formalised.

The drawings changed but the information about new versions was notcirculated. The new versions were stored in an accessible data base but theirmateriality was inappropriate. Furthermore, the actors concerned had to strive torecover information associated with these drawings (existence of new versions,possibilities and constraints linked to their material forms, location and access,authors and holders), without which the drawings could not be used properly.

Additionally, other data were produced by designers who attempted to preventthem from being circulated, for fear of the way they would be interpreted by others,perhaps considering the data to be stabilised and validated when in fact they werenot. This is explained by one designer during a meeting: ‘I haven’t yet put them onCDD [drawing management system], I’m being cautious. Concerning the dimen-sions, I’m playing safe, I know they’ll change.’

The search for information is not limited to obtaining technical data. Indeed, thedesigners also strove to qualify these data by finding out their origin and the historyof their construction (and in particular the identity of the author), the degree of trustthey could have in them and their restrictive or negotiable nature. In other words, the



designers strove to find out information about this information (formal or informalmeta-data), as much as they strove to unearth the data in the first place. They did nottrust isolated, de-contextualised data and drawings if they did not know where theyhad come from or who had produced them.

The head of the design office showed signs of great concern when, from time totime, he found drawings with no information about their author or status lyingaround on desks or being passed on or discussed in meetings. The risk was that apassing physicist might pick up a drawing, handed over by a projector, without anyinformation about the date, reference number or name of the person in charge, andtake it away with them. The head of the design office often met with physicists ordesigners who happened to have screen shots or print-outs of detector part drawingswith no reference. During discussions with them, he was confronted with the factthat he did not always know whether the drawings they talked about were valid.

The concern expressed by the designers about whether information was qualifiedand should be circulated highlights the importance of information exchange.Following the actors and their intermediary objects in a design office reveals otherfeatures of engineering design activity: the continuous search for and circulation ofinformation, the preoccupation with the status of the information and the degree oftrust that can be placed in it. These features relate to intermediary object equipping(e.g. the reference information on an industrial design drawing).

The discussions concerning these additional elements appended to drawings,sketches and screen shots are lively and recurrent in the design office. Theyconcerned the way information is exchanged: who gives what, to whom, when and inwhat context.

Careful examination of these forms of exchange also shows that what is at stakein this passing on of technical data has to do with the coordinated and rationalisedcirculation of information along with the anthropological issue of gift exchange; thetechnical information given is a gift carrying with it something of the person offeringit. Engineers do not just give away any form of data to anybody. Lecaille reports onthe circumstances and conditions under which a ‘trace’ produced during design is‘qualified’ to switch from one ‘design world’ to another, for example from the privatepersonal working world of an engineer to the semi-private world of a number oftrusted colleagues with whom the information is shared, or to a quasi public world ofa database shared by all engineers involved in a given project.19 He observes that thedetails of these exchanges are to be found in the additional elements equippingintermediary objects. Therefore, there would seem to be a close relationship betweenthe anthropological conditions of the exchange of information and the elementsequipping the objects being circulated.

In design, as well as in engineering, engineers strive to identify the most explicitand the least ambiguous possible definition of an object to be manufactured,installed and used in order to satisfy the needs of those who have requested it. Thequestion of the exchange of information between them is central. Indeed, it is even asensitive issue. They act as if the quality of the work accomplished depends on thequality of these information exchanges. It is, therefore, not surprising that theconditions underlying information exchanges are the subject of controversy;methodology, language, media, forms and additional elements appended to theintermediary objects being circulated are all issues of the highest importance. For

19Lecaille, ‘‘La trace habilitee, ’’ 2003.

36 D. Vinck


engineers, the problem is to agree on ‘the right type of equipping’ because this willinfluence the form and format of exchanges.

Equipping as an ontological transformation of the equipped being

Design activity ethnography has led observers to introduce distinctions between theintermediary objects produced, used or exchanged, for example a distinctionconcerning the type of media, whether it is on paper or in digital format.20 Based ona detailed analysis of practices surrounding these objects, Lecaille and Grebici,instead suggest a distinction between traceable objects to which actors can add notes(covers sketches, designs and drawings on a blank sheet of paper either done by handor printed out), and grapho-digital objects (GDO), developed with computer tools(files, screen shots and print-outs).21 Print-outs are in fact to be found at theintersection of both forms, indicating a continuum between paper media and digitalmodels. Similarly, software is currently being developed that allows for the insertionof notes, traces or graphical elements in files. The variety of routes taken by theobjects observed is characterised by different types of materialisation. These aretending to eliminate the break between graphic and digital media.

The importance attributed by designers to the possibility of annotating andleaving traces on the objects they handle demonstrates their investment in theseobjects according to the conditions underlying the use of roughs. The intermediaryobject upon which a trace can be left is called a rough. The rough is not a type ofmedia, like a kind of drawing, but a condition of the action (i.e. it can be written anddrawn on). It is produced and used in situations where actors attempt to definesolutions and test them, either for themselves or with colleagues.22 Roughs allowdesigners to express new conjectures. Produced and engaged in collective action, theyare ‘tools of synchronised cooperation’.23 These objects are intermediary, unfinishedand used by actors to compare and contrast points of view before qualifying theobjects in question.

Focusing our attention more on the forms of intermediary object use than on thesupporting media, we discover a first form of use: the rough is first and foremost atraceable object. Other intermediary objects correspond to other forms of use.Sometimes, the distinction between them boils down to a few minor details. Thesecan mean that the objects are no longer roughs but evidence or, in other situations,enabled traces.24 During design activity, some objects acquire the status of evidence.They are produced and selected by the designers to represent and materialise asolution and to try to convince their colleagues. The evidence is sometimes the ‘same’intermediary object, with or without a distinctive mark; the difference lies in its use.With the object having achieved the status of evidence, the engineers no longerexplore the problem; they act as if the solution has already been defined.

20Henderson, On Line and on Paper, 1998.21Lecaille, ‘‘La trace habilitee,’’ 2003; Grebici et al., ‘‘A Unified Framework to ManageInformation Maturity in Design Process,’’ 2007.22Le Ber et al., ‘‘Modeling and Comparing Farm Maps Using Graphs and Case-basedReasoning,’’ 2003; Lefebvre, ‘‘Pictures and Boundaries Work in Mathematics,’’ 2003.23Boujut and Blanco, ‘‘Intermediary Objects as a Means to Foster Co-operation inEngineering Design,’’ 2002.24Lecaille, ‘‘La trace habilitee,’’ 2003.



Other intermediary objects are given the status of enabled trace, when engineersagree to confer this quality upon them. This status involves work to identify andselect the objects, but also, and more importantly, to qualify and equip these objects.Once equipped, the intermediary object receives a label and new distinguishingtraces, which means that the designer has agreed to circulate the object and to submitit to the scrutiny of his/her colleagues.

Our observations also revealed that the ontology of these objects is fragile,precarious and even ephemeral. It depends on the actors’ interactions. Their concernabout the equipping of intermediary objects is precisely related to this issue ofobjects switching from one ontological status to another. The equipment added tointermediary objects enables them to be connected to conventional supports andspaces of circulation. Engineering ethnography can therefore improve the study ofintermediary objects, through the definition of three significant ontologies reflectingengineers’ opinions: rough, evidence and enabled trace.

On the face of it, this qualification and equipping operation might appear to bemarginal and formal, but in fact it is not at all simple.25 It is the subject of livelydiscussions between engineers. The debates observed between engineers have more todo with the equipping of intermediary objects than with the different points of viewthey defend via these intermediary objects. Hence, the challenge relating to theequipping of these objects concerns their change in ontological status as well as theareas of exchange and circulation that are co-produced alongside this change instatus. The equipping of the object as it enters into circulation within a space ofprofessional exchange, which can have varying degrees of scope and heterogeneity,corresponds to an ontological transformation of the object, to its switch to a newstatus and to the modification of its characteristics (e.g. print-outs that have beenequipped with marks to which the engineers have agreed, receive the special status ofenabled trace and can be sent to Production).

The different roles of equipment and associated processes

Equipping refers to various ongoing processes that play different roles for theresulting equipment. Here we shall explore how equipping is used in mediation,temporal set-up and framework outlining.

Equipping is important for the designers because intermediary objects act asmediators that interact with the actors present. The drawing introduces somethinginto the action that partly escapes the actors. For instance, the graphicalexpression of an idea sometimes becomes a design constraint because the otherdesigners do not know and do not care about the status of this drawing. If anintermediary object bears no specific mark, its status is not explicit and might beinterpreted differently depending on the actors involved and the situation in whichthe object is encountered. Outside of the specific situation in which the actorsinvolved know who gave the object to whom and in what circumstances, the sameobject can be interpreted very differently. The addition of specific marks channelsthe mediation process and limits the interpretation. Intermediary object offers eachperson involved something to hold on to (each designer can grasp the object from

25Qualification is a form of equipment. However, equipping also requires the material additionof something (a symbol, a label, a piece of material, etc.) to an intermediary object.

38 D. Vinck


his/her usual point of view). This interpretative flexibility26 leads to the emergenceof a solution, partly unbeknownst to the participants because materiality buildsand constrains the design dynamics (building of compromises and sharing ofknowledge). Conscious of this, the actors fight to master the details (materialityand formalism) of these objects. Here, equipping is part of their detail-controlstrategy.

The mediating process differs according to the status of the intermediary object.Some objects, e.g. roughs, have a low level of codification, which facilitates theintegration of viewpoints during cooperative action. Others are highly codified, e.g.the definition drawings that design offices pass on to production engineering offices.They are closed objects and offer little scope for acting on design as they operatewithin a prescriptive register.27 Roughs, on the other hand, only actively supportdesign action when they are developed jointly. They do not support memory back-up.28 But some of these intermediary objects are neither clearly open nor closed.Their openness depends on their status, which is not an intrinsic characteristic. Thesame object can mediate various dynamics. This is why designers sometimes ask forspecific marks to be added to an object as these define its status and limit theinterpretative flexibility.

Equipping also plays a role in terms of temporal set-up. Intermediary objectsalready act as temporal markers. For instance, during typical design meetings,different objects are constructed (sketches, lists and tables) or mobilised (pencil,book, coffee cups). Their mobilisation and deployment reveal the temporal structureof the socio-cognitive process (understanding of the demand, exploration of possibledesign solutions and their evaluation, settling of design decisions, sharing out of thework to be done). Blanco observed 20 objects being produced and used according toa process of succession and substitution.29 Some of these objects played a specificrole in the temporal dynamics. They marked breaks or transitions between distinctphases of the activity; they heralded the disappearance of one kind of representation(e.g. a table comparing various solutions and which is put aside) and its replacementby another (e.g. the sketch of the design solution). The change of objectcorresponded also to a change in representation language and of meta-cognitivestatements (cognitive activity about cognitive activity, e.g. developing, monitoringand evaluating a plan of action) identified through conversation analysis.30

However, outside of the situation where designers are co-present, intermediaryobjects alone have no effect on activity phasing owing to their interpretive flexibility.This is why design office heads can be seen to devote much effort to adding marks tosuch objects so that they do have an effect on phasing and temporal structure (whichis, in fact, invisible and linked to project management).

Finally, equipping acts as a framework. It is used to differentiate between publicobjects, which can circulate inside a more or less open space (the drawing saved to ashared database), and private objects (for their authors’ use only or shared inside a

26Collins, ‘‘An Empirical Relativist Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,’’1983.27Vinck and Jeantet, ‘‘Mediating and Commissioning Objects in the Sociotechnical Process ofProduct Design,’’ 1995.28Blanco, ‘‘Rough Drafts,’’ 2003.29Blanco, ‘‘Rough Drafts,’’ 2003.30Gregori, ‘‘Etude clinique d’une situation de conception de produit,’’ 1999; Brassac andGregori, ‘‘Situated and Distributed Design of a Computer Teaching Device,’’ 2001.



very limited group of identified persons). Inscribed on the intermediary objects (e.g.signatures and marks of validation), this qualification links them to specific spaceswhere they circulate. The shifts between one space and another are frequent. Actionsperformed on personal objects might prepare the way for actions performed in thecommon space. Conversely, new objects circulated in a shared space are reproducedand appropriated by some of the designers who transform them into private objectswith annotations. For design office heads and project managers, equippingintermediary objects is a way to define and control their circulation spaces. Becausethe marks equipping these objects belong to a nomenclature, they set up an implicitinfrastructure that underpins their circulation.

From controversy about object equipping to the creation of spaces of exchange

The necessary equipping of objects so that their ontological status can be modifiedand they can be converted into evidence or enabled traces, keeps engineers concernedand busy.

As a process, equipping involves adding something to an object (its equipment),so that its properties are modified. However, not all intermediary graphic objectsproduced in the field are equipped in this way. Without equipment, the object issometimes qualified as private and personal. As we saw through the observationwork performed at the CERN in Geneva, some engineers implied that suchunequipped objects should not exist because if they were to fall into the hands of acolleague, this might result in an error. Taking this fear even further, the head of thedesign office suggested that any object, even the simplest screen-shot printed out forpersonal use only, but then forgotten in the printer, should be equipped withminimal meta-data: a date, a number and the name of the person responsible for it.The problem, for the head of the department and for the designers, is thatintermediary objects sometimes move around too easily, escaping the control of theirauthors. The facilities offered by certain computer tools, for example an easy-to-print-out screen shot function, have contributed to the disappearance of certaintraditional types of equipment: the ‘culture of nomenclature and archiving’(equipment that used to be systematically added to graphical objects), embodiedin technical draughtsmen when drawing boards were still being used, is also tendingto disappear, generating new problems in terms of intermediary object qualification,status and circulation. Over the course of our fieldwork, the question of equippingroughs was observed to be often raised leading to substantial disagreements betweenengineers on account of the diversity of their personal working practices.

The way the object is actually equipped is also at the core of working discussions.Sometimes, the designers add specific equipment to the intermediary object tochange its status (e.g. from rough to evidence). But some computer-assisted designtools themselves also produce and automatically add certain equipping features tothe intermediary objects. Sometimes these are out of line with engineer–designerpractices. Thus, the debate not only concerns the need to add equipping features;sometimes the problem is deciding which features are unnecessary and can beskipped.

All of these problems stem from the fact that the equipping of intermediaryobjects confers on the objects a certain amount of ‘authority.’ The equipment runsthe risk of giving authority to an object for which such authority is not initiallyintended (it might be used as a reference or in a binding manner when it should not

40 D. Vinck


be), for example a design used to illustrate or clarify an idea. It often happens that anengineer prints a ‘view’ for him/herself, or in order to be able to talk about it with acolleague. This poses a problem when the circulation space is extended and theobject moves out of the designer’s private space or the space formed by a trustingrelationship between colleagues and into a singular exchange framework. Thus, thequestion of equipping is also closely linked to the space of exchange betweenengineers; it concerns the inscription of the action in a work group.

Defining the right equipment

Our fieldwork drew attention to the question of equipment owing to the controversialrelations between engineers about this point. A whole series of equipment/equippingissues were observed in everyday engineering. These concerned the references added totechnical drawings, the numbering of objects, the nomenclature of parts, the tools usedto produce traces and the invisible infrastructures31 underpinning the spatialorganisation of objects and associated practices, standards and other distinctivemarkings or affordances. Equipped in this way, the intermediary object is enrolled in aconsiderably larger assembly. Once equipped, it materialises and transports aninvisible infrastructure within the interaction. This is made up of standards, categories,classifications and conventions specific to one or several social worlds.

Intermediary objects are artefacts that move from one actor to another or aroundwhich several actors gravitate. In some cases, they help link heterogeneous socialworlds when structural elements (associated with an object or a set of objects) arepartially common to several social worlds. This is the case, for example, of inter-professional symbols, technical drawings drafted according to a graphic languagethat is common to several professions or sets of data organised in relation to anagreed structure.32 In these cases, the intermediary object reflects a more or lessinvisible infrastructure. There are two primary cases: either the object or thecollection of intermediary objects is built in compliance with structuring elements(e.g. a parts list, a code and formal language), or the object is equipped withadditional elements that confer new properties upon it, notably because they enablethe object to be enrolled in an area of exchange that is itself equipped with aninvisible infrastructure. Whatever the case, there is a minimum recognisablestructure inscribed in the object, on the object or in the collection, which can takethe form of additional equipment.

Sometimes, the controversies observed also concerned the fact that there was ‘toomuch’ equipment. This might stem from the designers of new working tools or beinherited from a collective professional past. In such cases, the engineers might askto be able to act in more open spaces, where exchange is freer and less equipped.They denounce object equipping when much of this leads to conflict, due toincompatible numbering systems for example. Such a situation occurs, in particular,

31When an intermediary object is equipped it is inscribed within an infrastructure and it thenenacts that infrastructure (Mol and Law, ‘‘Regions, Networks and Fluids,’’ 1994). See also:Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out, 1999; Bowker and Star, ‘‘Invisible Mediators ofAction,’’ 2000.32Laureillard and Vinck, ‘‘The Role of Graphical Representations in Inter-ProfessionalCooperation,’’ 2003.



at the frontier between several social worlds, each bringing with it its ownequipment.

The equipment is imagined (in the sense of being dreamed up), manufactured,tweaked, tested and negotiated by engineers. It is therefore continually beingredefined. The problem facing the engineers is the proliferation of intermediaryobjects. They wonder how these objects should be differentiated, qualified, archived,organised and associated with practices and specific circulation spaces. This problemis felt individually, as each engineer is faced with the proliferation of versions madepossible by digital tools. However, the question of equipping comes to the fore moreespecially when the objects are exchanged and circulated between technicians andengineers. The work of equipping intermediary objects is thereby closely associatedwith the collective action space. From this point of view, it is fundamentallysociological and anthropological for it concerns the foundation of social exchangeand not just a simple technical rationality associated with the activity.

The outcomes of defining the right equipping features are: (1) the control of theinformation circulation space and of the uses of intermediary objects through thedefinition of their status, their authority and the trust designers can have in them; (2)the freedom left to the designers when they are exploring provisional solutions andthe flexibility of the activity. Thus, engineering also appears to be an activityconsisting in defining the right equipment – because this has an influence on thedesign dynamics as a whole. This activity is a collective one consisting in negotiating,transforming, testing, de-constructing and stabilising the equipping features. Everygroup or individual has a point of view to defend regarding the right equipment, dueto their specific position and history. Of all the engineering activities, the definitionof the right equipment is the most cross-cutting and the one most related to theshaping of the work collective.

Conclusion

What have we learned about engineering and about those involved? Their worktransits through multiple intermediary objects. They invest much in these objects andtheir details as if their engineering activity depended heavily upon them. Theseobjects also reflect the characteristics (habits, values, objectives, traditions ofthought, etc.) relating to the technicians and engineers who authored them. Thus, thedifference between technical aspects (the object being designed) and social aspects(the engineers) is neither easily identifiable nor particularly relevant. The drawings,calculations, notes and prototypes offer an indication about the individuals and theirwork collective (with its inherent compromises, conflicts, power struggles, etc.), whilethe individuals themselves are also a kind of instrument (used to calculate and todraw according to a set formalism and rules). Furthermore, the characteristics andstatus of the objects, like the individuals, constantly change over the course of theengineering exercise.

Looking at these multiple and ordinary intermediary objects (and not only themost sophisticated and specific engineering tools) shows us the engineering activityand its social world. It demonstrates, among other things, negotiations and subtleshifts between private and public spaces and activities.

One of the key results highlighted in this article relates to the activity surroundingthe production and engagement of intermediary objects, i.e. their equipping.

42 D. Vinck


The ‘equipping work’, as collective activity, relates to features to be added tointermediary objects so that they can be enrolled in the space of exchange betweenactors. It is potentially linked to the notion of invisible infrastructures.

Intermediary objects are not only at the centre of actions and actors’ concerns;how they are equipped is a recurrent subject of controversy and collectiveengagement. In a given situation, actors devote time to imagining, developing andnegotiating the way in which intermediary objects should be equipped. This isprecisely so that they are able to circulate inside more extensive spaces and withinheterogeneous worlds. The notion of equipping prevents us from thinking that thecharacteristics of mediation and of translation are attached to the nature of theobject alone. Once equipped, the intermediary object enters into a space that issufficiently common to several social worlds. From then on, the minimum structurerecognisable by the members of different worlds stems from the way in which theobject is equipped, rather than the object itself.

Equipping intermediary objects has much to do with outcomes like designfreedom, provisory thinking and exploration versus control of the circulation spaceand authority, and forms of use of the intermediary objects. The importance of theseoutcomes leads the engineers involved to imagine and to negotiate the rightequipment. Engineering design activity is thus also a collective process ofconstruction, transformation and de-construction of the equipping features onintermediary objects. Furthermore, this specific activity inside engineering designseems to be the most important one in terms of the collective construction of work.

Bibliographies

Akrich, Madeleine. ‘‘Beyond Social Construction of Technology: The Shaping of People andThings in the Innovation Process.’’ In New Technology at the Outset, ed. Meinof Dierkesand Ute Hoffman. 173–90. Frankfurt, NewYork: Campus Westview, 1992.

Blanco, Eric. ‘‘Rough Drafts: Revealing and Mediating Design.’’ In Everyday Engineering: AnEthnography of Design and Innovation, ed. Dominique Vinck, 181–201. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2003.

Boujut, Jean-Francois, and Blanco Eric. ‘‘Intermediary Objects as a Means to Foster Co-operation in Engineering Design.’’ Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Work 12,no. 2 (2002): 205–19.

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan L. Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and ItsConsequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. ‘‘Invisible Mediators of Action: Classification andthe Ubiquity of Standards.’’ Mind, Culture, and Activity 7, no. 1–2 (2000): 147–63.

Brassac, Christian, and Gregori Nicolas. ‘‘Situated and Distributed Design of a ComputerTeaching Device.’’ Journal of Design Sciences and Technology 8, no. 2 (2001): 11–31.

Bucciarelli, Louis. Designing Engineers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.Callon, Michel. ‘‘Some Elements for a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops

and the Fishermen of St-Brieuc Bay’’ In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology ofKnowledge?, ed. John Law, 196–223. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.

Collins, Harry M. ‘‘An Empirical Relativist Programme in the Sociology of ScientificKnowledge.’’ In Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, ed. KarinKnorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay, 85–113. London: Sage Publications, 1983.

Constant, Eduard W. The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution. Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1980.

Downey, Gary Lee. The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits among Computer Engineers.New York, NY: Routledge, 1998.

Grebici, Khadidja, Blanco Eric, and Rieu Dominique. ‘‘A Unified Framework to ManageInformation Maturity in Design Process.’’ International Journal of Product Development 4,no. 3–4 (2007): 255–79.



Gregori, Nicolas. ‘‘Etude clinique d’une situation de conception de produit. Vers unepragmatique de la conception’’. Unpublished PhD diss., Universite de Nancy 2, 1999.

Henderson, Kathryn. On Line and on Paper: Visual Representations, Visual Culture, andComputer Graphics in Design Engineering. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to the Study of Science.London: Sage Publications, 1995.

Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Latour, Bruno. ‘‘On Interobjectivity.’’ Mind, Culture, and Activity 3, no. 4 (1996): 228–45.Latour, Bruno. ‘‘When Things Strike Back: A Possible Contribution of Science Studies to the

Social Sciences.’’ British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (1999): 105–23.Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific

Facts. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979.Laureillard, Pascal, and Dominique Vinck. ‘‘The Role of Graphical Representations in Inter-

Professional Cooperation.’’ In Everyday Engineering: An Ethnography of Design andInnovation, ed. Dominique Vinck, 160–75. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2003.

Law, John ‘‘After ANT: Complexity, Naming and Topology.’’ In Actor Network Theory andAfter, ed. John Law and John Hassard, 1–14. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

Le Ber, Florence, Amedeo Napoli, Jean-Luc Metzger, and Sylvie Lardon. ‘‘Modeling andComparing Farm Maps Using Graphs and Case-based Reasoning.’’ Journal of UniversalComputer Science 9, no. 9 (2003): 1073–95.

Lefebvre, Muriel. ‘‘Pictures and Boundaries Work in Mathematics.’’ Questions de Commu-nication, no. 3 (2003): 69–80.

Lecaille, Pascal. ‘‘La trace habilitee.Une ethnographie des espaces de conception dans unbureaud’etudes demecanique: l’echange et l’equipement des objets grapho-numeriques, entre outilset acteurs de la conception’’. Unpublished PhD diss., Universite de Grenoble, 2003.

McDonnell, Janet, and Peter Lloyd, eds. About: Designing Analysing Design Meetings.London: Taylor and Francis Group, 2009.

Mol, Annemarie, and John Law. ‘‘Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and SocialTopology.’’ Social Studies of Science 24, no. 4 (1994): 641–71.

Nieusma, Dean, and Donna Riley. ‘‘Designs on Development: Engineering, Globalization,and Social Justice.’’ Engineering Studies 2, no. 1 (2010): 29–59.

Pels, Dick, Kevin Hetherington, and Frederic Vandenberghe. ‘‘The Status of the Object.Performances, Mediations, and Techniques.’’ Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 5–6 (2002):1–21.

Reverdy, Thomas. ‘‘Writing Procedures: The Role of Quality Assurance Formats.’’ InEveryday Engineering: An Ethnography of Design and Innovation, ed. Dominique Vinck,137–57. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

Star, Susan Leigh. ‘‘Ceci n’est pas un objet-frontiere! Reflexions sur l’origine d’un concept.’’Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances 4, no. 1 (2010): 18–35.

Star, Susan Leigh, and Jim Griesemer. ‘‘Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and BoundaryObjects: Amateurs and Professionals on Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.’’Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 387–420.

Trompette, Pascale, and Dominique Vinck. ‘‘Revisiting the Notion of Boundary Object.’’Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances 3, no. 1 (2009): 3–25.

Vinck, Dominique. ‘‘Les objets intermediaires dans les reseaux de cooperation scientifique.Contribution a la prise en compte des objets dans les dynamiques sociales.’’ RevueFrancaise de Sociologie XI, no. 2 (1999): 385–414.

Vinck, Dominique, ed. Everyday Engineering: An Ethnography of Design and Innovation.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

Vinck, Dominique, and Alain Jeantet. ‘‘Mediating and Commissioning Objects in theSociotechnical Process of Product Design: A Conceptual Approach’’ In Designs, Networksand Strategies, ed. Donald Maclean, Paolo Saviotti and Dominique Vinck, 111–29.Bruxelles: EC Directorate General Science R&D, 1995.

Visser, Willemin. ‘‘Design: One, but in Different Forms.’’ Design Studies 30, no. 3 (2009): 187–223.

44 D. Vinck


ES_2011_1_Vinck

Documents

Transcript of ES_2011_1_Vinck