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Articles and Book Chapters
Limbo - Bending over Backwards in an In-between Place

Author
S. Finken

Reference & Publication Year
S. Bjørnestad et al. (eds.): Proceedings of the 24th Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia, Ulvik, vol. 3, pp. 479-489, 2001

Abstract
Research with an emphasis on empirical work often presents
findings from the field in a very smooth and ready made way. This may
be the way things work for most researchers, but in the case presented
here, it wasn't easy getting started with the fieldwork. The company - a
Danish web company - merged shortly after our entry and the contact
persons got loaded with work. Describing the work of getting on doing
research in the field, the article investigates the first groping steps of
participant observation, and looks into an episode of usability testing
concerning categorizations of a future web site. By using the metaphor of
'limbo' both as a state of the in-between and as a regulation where one
has to yield to the surroundings, the article puts an emphasis on different
situations and things, which may, as a first sight, seem easy fitting into
tidy boxes.