The situated accomplishment (aesthetics) of being a cyranoid

One aim of participatory innovation is to find new ways of engaging people in various situations that result in ideas and suggestions. For a socio- technical system – whether the design process or its implemented result – to work smoothly (aesthetically) as a specific social order, we should understand just how it is practically accomplished.
In this paper, the just-thisness of an experimental teaching situation is explored in which students were acting as cyranoids for their teacher who was located elsewhere. The situation gives us empirical materials about a relatively simple task (listening through headphones words to repeat and instructions for action), though extraordinary circumstances (mediating teaching which would normally have been relayed through video/audio). We show how the surrogate has to orient to the on- going lecture as intelligible, to show their understanding of the situation to the absent teacher, and to recipient design the delivery to the fellow students. They have to become a porous membrane that mediates between the two sites, exactly like a user friendly interface or any fitting part of a socio- technical system would. Thus the data shows what seen but unnoticed interactional work is required to participate, rather than to purely mimic or mediate.