A communicational framework for evaluating interaction with IT by analyzing user-reception of electronic texts

Interpreting IT as a medium for continuous communication across time and place of the communicators offers a way of analyzing the effect of IT in concrete practices. The users' readings determine the actual communication with IT. A poetics of how meaning is translated from one person to another through semiotic texts is presented, termed the poetics of the e-text. The poetics of the e-text offers a meta-communicational framework for identifying user constraints in the possibilities of interacting with the system. Identifying communicational problems with ICT-mediated interactions again offer grounds for redesigning and re-author the e-text. The poetics of the e-text are subsequently applied as a method of analyzing user-reception and evaluating the interaction with ICT. Examples are given from user-receptions of collaborating with ICT in home care, Denmark