Paper long abstract:

The study follows the construction of a TDE during a product development process of a food package. In the process, a development team of a paper company worked with a customer and the providers of materials and equipment to design and produce the hybrid package, which combines paperboard and plastic. We observed work practices of the participants during the different phases of the process. The study focuses on the trajectories of the different objects to explore how their roles shifted during the process through their engagements in different activities.

The process was organised around the design and production of objects. In the beginning, the composing parts of the package and its manufacturing technology were in an abstract form; they materialised through the technology-mediated activities of the participating companies. These different material objects were brought together in the phase of trial runs to test their functionality. This took place as iterative experiments where operators adjusted the positions of the objects and the parameters of the manufacturing equipment and observed the following behaviour, visible as test packages. To be able to evaluate the functioning of the objects, the operators needed to set up an infrastructure supporting the experiments. The operators' care for the working together of the objects enabled the TDE, which allowed them to concentrate on the qualities of the packages and their correspondence with the requirements of the customer. The shifting concerns of the participants were reflected in the roles of the objects in the different phases of the process.