Quand la conception d’un outil de travail amène à la conception du travail : cas de deux agriculteurs-concepteurs en conversion à l’agriculture biologique

Abstract

This article focuses on a research-intervention involving two farmers and their apprentice who were converting to organic farming. In this context, the farmers made a request concerning their need to better anticipate their work, a need exacerbated by the fact that they were developing practices that were more agroecological. With the help of the ergonomist, the farmers thus designed a tool that could help them to anticipate their work in two stages, spread over a total of five workshops. We analyze the design activity, of both the tool and the future work situations of these farmer-designers using a dialogical design model that focuses on how farmers navigate between the virtual, designable and real poles. The results show that the farmers’ design activity constantly goes back and forth between their design object and their work objects, through the mobilization of the three poles. This article thus underlines that the particular posture of these farmers, workers and designers plays a key role in the implementation of their design activity and allows them, during the workshops, to both design this tool and return to their past and present work situations so as to consider their future work situations.

Keywords

• ergonomics
• participative design
• anticipation
• agricultural work
• agroecological transition