Socio-Technical Barriers Induced by the Design of Emerging Technologies A Perspective Situated in iDTV Applications

Emerging technologies may impose barriers on groups of people or even the whole society. These barriers are of a socio-technical nature and impact the acceptance, adoption and use of technology. In this paper we investigate Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) as an example of such emerging technology. We identify and discuss socio-technical barriers that arise in the domain of iDTV. As our method, we present, analyze and discuss a study of iDTV application design situated in the real context of a Brazilian broadcasting company. News and documents from the Brazilian Digital TV Forum portal were used to understand external forces that act on Digital TV and the society. Our findings indicate that iDTV acceptance is negatively influenced by project decisions that do not consider socio-technical constraints, and also the beneficial of the "Socially Aware Computing" perspective to propose design solutions that make sense for stakeholders, including end users.