Seeing Potential Is More Important Than Usability: Revisiting Technology Acceptance

Abstract

With ever-increasing technology complexity, there is a need to consider how technology integrates within typical and specific environments. Empirical work with technology acceptance models has to date focused largely on perceived or expected ease-of-use along with the perceived or expected usefulness of the technology. These constructs have been examined extensively via quantitative methods. Other factors have received less attention. There is some evidence, for instance, that technology adoption may depend on how technology contributes to self-efficacy and agency. Less accessible perhaps to standard quantitative instruments, it is time to consider a mixed-methods approach to examine these aspects of technology acceptance. For this exploratory study, we have begun to evaluate a security modeller tool within a healthcare. We asked IT professionals working in hospital environments in Italy and Spain to work with the technology as part of a limited ethnographic study, and to complete a standard ease-of-use questionnaire. Comparing the results, we found that the quantitative measures to be poor predictors of a willingness to explore the affordances presented by the technology. Although limited at this time, we maintain that a more nuanced picture of technology adoption must allow potential adopters to be creative in response to how they believe the technology could be exploited in their environment.