Lawrie, its a well trodden path the “tech or pedagogy or people first argument”, as you can atest we have all been involved in these conversations for years, no decades, and the answer will always be both are critical in establishing any “viable system” ,getting cybernetic. Its the interplay and feedback between the two. “Awkward” as you suggest or the now dreaded “Disruption” can be good (and bad) in equal measure.

If we had adopted an exclusively anthropological, or people first approach, you wouldn’t necessarily be sat in the train carriage you may be still running in a loin cloth spear in hand. I would be hard pressed to cite one example of an exclusively anthropologically motivated educational technology intervention, its always a little “push” and “pull” . Of late I have observed so much of the “anti tech” rhetoric ( and I’m not suggesting you are being so in this post) in the ed tech community ” plumbers not liking pipes” is the metaphor I have seen applied.

Its a good that jisc is piloting tech tools and methods with users to play, break or construct with and
I’m sure that even Cross Country trains would claim to have adopted a “service design” approach to their reservation system “our users want the convenience of booking seats before the board the train” “here is my evidence of user demand ” ” here is the input form our focus group” so on and so forth.