This paper presents project design and initial experiences of involving users and collaborating between disciplines within the newly started project Tilltal (Berg et al.). The long-term goal of the Tilltal project is to make speech data at the Swedish memory archives more accessible to SSH researchers. We achieve this not only by describing methods by which speech technology can be used to reach SSH research goals, but also by providing fruitful examples of involving users, studying usage and collaborating between disciplines using the approach of participatory design (e.g. Kensing & Blomberg 1998). We use activity theory to survey the research activi-ties surrounding the archival materials (e.g. Nardi 1996). We model characteristic situations of use following ideas in Hansen et al. 2014, propose language technology solutions and assess their usefulness in practice by means of use cases (Jacobson et al. 1992, 2011).