Integrative Objects in Sociotechnical Contexts: Constructing Digital Well-Being with Generic Epistemology

This paper presents a generative approach to interdisciplinary collaboration based on generic epistemology. Informed by the work of philosopher Anne-Françoise Schmid, we introduce the concept of the integrative object as a means to reorient interdisciplinary collaboration toward the requirements of the object of research itself, rather than via the requirements of particular disciplinary languages, methods, or operative logics. We show how such an approach is useful for research into sociotechnical phenomena that exceed the boundaries of discrete disciplines and their convergence. We introduce digital well-being as a case study, drawing on the authors’ own interdisciplinary collaborative experiences in this area as its empirical matter. From this, and in order to aid future research into similarly complex sociotechnical objects, we then provide practical tools to help those in the HCI community prepare and conduct interdisciplinary research in a similarly generative, non-dogmatic, and non-hierarchical manner.