Making new technology understandable through multimodal instruction: A digital mobility stick in customer training interaction

Authors

• Tiina Räisänen University of Oulu
• Niina Hynninen University of Helsinki

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33352/prlg.120940

Keywords:

multimodality, conversation analysis, technology, customer training, interaction, workplace

Abstract

With a variety of smart technologies on the market, health technologies have become an increasingly everyday phenomenon. This paper focuses on customer training in the use of a new technological device, a digital mobility stick, which is an exercise stick with a built-in haptic component. It can be used as a measuring and training tool to analyze the body’s ability to balance, bend, and rotate and to guide the trajectory of one’s exercise movements. We focus on the mobility stick as a training tool, investigating how the haptic technology is introduced to the customer in instructional interaction, and what roles the technology obtains in the process. The paper uses video-recorded customer training interaction data from a health technology company. It draws on multimodal conversation analytic research on instructions and instructed actions, objects, technologies, and touch in interaction. We show that the company representative’s specific orientation to the mobility stick was consequential to the instructed actions of the customers and their learning. The analyzed cases also illustrate that the mobility stick gained different roles in the interaction, ranging from a technological and sensorial object to a technology representing information to an active participant in interaction guiding human action. The study thus contributes to our understanding of the multimodality of instructional interaction and the potentially varied roles of technology in such interaction.