Design in practice: bridging the gap between design and use dichotomies in practice-based studies

Various trends related to technology, organizations and environment have resulted in fuzzy differences between 'design' and 'use' or 'designers' and 'end-users'. But despite the growing intricacy between the ICT design and organizational practice, the bulk of the IS literature still enact classic dichotomies “design-use”. First, in order to synthesize the current IS literature aiming at overcoming design-use dichotomies, the authors suggest two notions: Design In Use (DIU) and Design In Making (DIM). Four DIU-DIM configurations are also put forward before introducing Jean-Daniel Reynaud's Regulation Theory as a relevant framework to put them in broader sociotechnical perspective. Then, in order to test and refine the resulting theoretical framework, two case studies are presented: case A on an e-learning system in a French university, and case B on a loan management system in a Latvian bank. Lastly, the authors discuss the limitations, contributions and perspectives of this work.