Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System

This paper introduces Evaluation Framing, a method of analysing the impact of an innovation such as a new product, a change to an organization, or more specifically, a new information system. It is based on a taxonomy of cultural patterns of behaviour. The object is to be able to perceive the primary, secondary and more tenuous impacts of an innovation upon these patterns of behaviour in order to detect how the people involved will be affected and how they will feel about the intended change. Their evaluations can, in this manner, be placed in a framework against which design proposals can be assessed.