This paper offers reflections on information systems design based in everyday practices. Drawing on experience in what I name the hyperdeveloped world of industrial research and development in the United States, I outline a series of concerns, organized under the themes of information flows, local improvisations and work practices. I then offer a set of alternative understandings of change and innovation that underwrite a practice-based design approach. These include a view of innovation as indigenous to technologiesin-use, an emphasis on the investments needed to create sustainable change, and an orientation to artful integration as an objective for information systems design.