Domestication of Technology

CORE DEFINITION

A framework from media and consumption studies holding that adoption is not a single purchase decision but a social process. Users give a device a nickname, place it somewhere in the home, adapt their routines around it, and often use it in ways the designers never intended, so the object shifts from a foreign thing to a belonging. The same process explains why identical products end up meaning different things in different households. Qualification: the concept concerns how meaning is made in use rather than technical capability, and designers cannot fully control it, though they can leave room for it.