Future Research

Abstract

In this final chapter, we reflect on what we see as the main lessons learnt for each of the three streams of academic literature we have brought together in this work: human–computer interaction, visual media studies, and science and technology studies. Most of the research lessons we recommend for these individual disciplines involve greater acknowledgement of each other’s contribution to understanding photography What we call for is a ‘meso’ level of study: looking at a single service or product from a broader perspective than typical design research does but at the same time having a closer focus than studies on organisations or industries. A meso perspective could pay more attention to the network of actors shaping technology, business, and practice in the context of a product or a service – from a historical perspective and from a contemporaneous perspective. In future research, new understandings will be needed that takes into account, for example, the increasing importance of non-visual data in photographs. We see the role and uses of metadata as a potentially fundamental change in people’s relationship to photographs and photography.