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The RSU approach is characterized by its focus on the consequences a technological device will have on various social practices. Thus, it’s focused on uses rather than just the user experience, since the introduction into society of any innovation will have an impact on the various practices stakeholders will include it in. Take the example of a device for self-measurement that has medical uses: the device is introduced into the whole therapeutic relationship, from diagnosis to therapy. Thus, the introduction of the device could alter various practices, including:

• The patient’s practices
• Natural caregivers’ practices
• Nurses’ practices
• Physicians’ practices
• Pharmacists’ practices
• commercial practices

It is by taking into account the transformations in various stakeholders’ practices that a reflection can be elicited on responsible social uses. It’s a question of accounting for—being responsible, or answerable, for—decisions that will have an impact on the lives of others. The legal notion of responsibility takes account only of impacts that cause harm to stakeholders.

The procedure presented herein is intended to conduce to the introduction into society of a final-product device that incorporates functions allowing for stakeholders’ responsible uses. To this end, players must be able to reflect on the technological and economic choices their company or start-up is faced with. In this sense, the responsible social uses approach is in line with recent developments in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Canada (Global Affairs Canada 2017).

An analysis of the purpose, the principles, and the component parts of the procedure will make it possible to specify its nature and scope.

The Procedure’s Purpose

The RSU procedure is one part of a set of approaches devised to support technological development in crossing what has been called “Death Valley”. Technological development involves two distinct worlds, those of engineering and commerce. In the world of engineering, the intellectual curiosity of a researcher who wonders, for example, if it’s possible to exploit the properties of such-and-such materials is based on the quest for the possible and the feasible; whereas research in developing a marketable product satisfies different imperatives. And even if the incentive to technological development is rooted in a certain social need voiced by some players, nothing says a company will profit from the technological development that would meet that need.

Taking a Darwinian approach, it might be said that the Death Valley is the equivalent, for spinoffs and start-ups, of a non-adaptive mutation for a living organism. All support approaches have the same broad goal: to minimize the role of trial-and-error in technological development. But different kinds of support have different specific purposes, and each purpose, be it that of user experience design (Norman 1998), design driven innovation (Verganti 2006, 2008), or RSU, gives rise to its own kind of information gathering and integration procedures.

The RSU approach is close to user experience design to the extent that users’ experience of the device is acknowledged to be important: if users dislike the product, it will be used only rarely. But once a user is asked how the device is altering her or his way of doing things, in other words what practices it makes possible, this immediately opens up the whole dimension of the device’s impact on practices that are a part not just of private life but also of professional and organizational life. Opening up the user’s experience in a way that goes beyond user-friendliness and satisfaction issues to the impact of the device’s uses on social practices enables a better understanding of the social impacts of the device’s adoption.

And once the device’s various professional and organizational uses are taken into account, it becomes possible to better identify stakeholders. Here is the definition adopted here for “stakeholders”:

A company’s stakeholders are comprised of all those who participate in its economic life (salaried workers, customers, suppliers, shareholders), those who track the company’s actions (unions, NGOs), and those who are influenced by it directly to a greater or lesser degree (civil society, the local community). (Novethic 2016).

The RSU approach, then, seeks to take account of the impact of a device’s uses on various social practices in order to be able, if need be, to propose modifications to the concept, the prototype, or the marketing process and thereby promote its implementation.