Making Order in Household Accounting - Digital Invoices as Domestic Work Artifacts Making Order in Household Accounting Digital invoices as domestic work artifacts

• Published in: Computer supported cooperative work Vol. 33; no. 4; pp. 879 - 924
• Main Authors: Dethier, Erik, Kern, Dean-Robin, Stevens, Gunnar, Boden, Alexander
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Artifact identification; Computer Science; Computer supported cooperative work; Consumers; Cooperative work; Digitization; Human-computer interface; Invoicing; Psychology; Social Sciences; Support systems; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Accounting practices; Domestic workplace studies; Empirical study; Household management; Consumer informatics; Financial practices; Administrative work
• ISSN: 0925-9724; 1573-7551
• DOI: 10.1007/s10606-024-09495-w

The digitization of financial activities in consumers' lives is increasing, and the digitalization of invoicing processes is expected to play a significant role, although this area is not well understood regarding the private sector. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research have a long history of analyzing the socio-material and temporal aspects of work practices that are relevant for the domestic domain. The socio-material structuring of invoicing work and the working styles of consumers must be considered when designing effective consumer support systems. In this ethnomethodologically-informed, design-oriented interview study, we followed 17 consumers in their daily practices of dealing with invoices to make the invisible administrative work involved in this process visible. We identified and described the meaningful artifacts that were used in a spatial-temporal process within various storage locations such as input, reminding, intermediate (for postponing cases) buffers, and archive systems. Furthermore, we identified three different working styles that consumers exhibited: direct completion, at the next opportunity, and postpone as far as possible. This study contributes to our understanding of household economics and domestic workplace studies in the tradition of CSCW and has implications for the design of electronic invoicing systems.