Unbounding the interaction design problem

Proceedings of the International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2019 Game and Entertainment Technologies 2019 and Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing 2019, 2019

Literature highlights that the reason for non-acceptance of health technologies is complex (Sligo et al. 2017, Standing et al. 2018, Bentley et al, 2014). The context where the technologies will operate and how they relate to the end users' lives are key factors to uptake and utilization. A number of researchers have suggested that the poor design of many devices and subsequent non-uptake may be directly attributed to the failure of technologists to engage end users and elicit understanding of their requirements. To date few studies have articulated how this might be achieved. This paper describes the outcomes of the first phase of a Horizon 2020 project, which adopted a participatory design research method, called 'exhibition in a box' developed by the authors which is predicated on 'thinking with things'. Over one hundred older people across four countries participated in the study, which sought to develop a virtual digital coach to support active ageing. This paper discusses the themes that arose in relation to the barriers and enablers to engagement with technology as identified by participants within the study. It critically reflects on the strengths and challenges of the co-design methodology.

Proceedings of the 22nd Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics, 2018

The paper describes the need for expansion of the role of humancomputer interaction (HCI) professionals into the field of e-health interventions, including games, virtual reality, and social media. Authors summarize critical practical, methodological, and philosophical gaps that prevent further synergy and collaboration. The necessity for closing these gaps is guided through a discussion on ethics and a health equity framework.

XVI Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais, 2017

This paper presents a preliminary discussion about the Three Waves of HCI in consonance with the theory of the sociologist Bruno Latour to point out the tension and approximation between Social Sciences and HCI field of Computer Sciences. To inform our discussion, we presented Latour's theory along with some major names to Social Sciences field as Umberto Eco, Clifford Geertz, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. With this reflection, we aim to start a path towards a transdisciplinary approach for inquiries on technology design and use in HCI.

2008

Whilst science has a strong reliance on quantitative and experimental methods, there are many complex, socially based phenomena in HCI that cannot be easily quantified or experimentally manipulated or, for that matter, ethically researched with experiments. For example, the role of privacy in HCI is not obviously reduced to numbers and it would not be appropriate to limit a person's privacy in the name of research.

In recent years, we have seen an explosion of wellness interventions and technology applications focused on human's wellness with the intention of helping people avoid needing medical care. Given the increasing emergence of wellness applications, there is a need to integrate existing diverse research endeavors and discuss key challenges and opportunities for the next generation of wellness interventions and applications. We suggest four topics for wellness intervention research: theory, practice, technology, and, as a cross-topic issue, design. We identified challenges and opportunities related to motivation strategies, life-long use of technology, and aligning toward adoption.

There has been an ongoing conversation about the role and relationship of theory and practice in the HCI community. This paper explores this relationship privileging a practice perspective through a tentative model, which describes a “bubble-up” of ideas from practice to inform research and theory development, and an accompanying “trickle-down” of theory into practice. Interviews were conducted with interaction designers, which included a description of their use of design methods in practice, and their knowledge and use of two common design methods—affinity diagramming and the concept of affordance. Based on these interviews, potential relationships between theory and practice are explored through this model. Disseminating agents already common in HCI practice are addressed as possible mechanisms for the research community to understand practice more completely. Opportunities for future research, based on the use of the tentative model in a generative way, are considered.

Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 2018

This paper presents an analysis of the presence and potential of a postphenomenology as a research method in human-computer interaction (HCI). Specifically, we introduce Rosenberger's method of variational cross-examination; an empirical approach that explores technological mediation through a critical comparison of multiple stabilities of a given technological artifact. With this outset, we revisit and analyze two existing HCI projects, a shape-changing bench and digitized sticky notes, and illustrate how a postphenomenological perspective may supplement these projects. Based on this analysis, we highlight the strengths and benefits of a postphenomenological approach to HCI research. Finally, we propose strategies for applying such an approach in future research.

Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems - DIS '14, 2014

There has been an ongoing conversation about the role and relationship of theory and practice in the HCI community. This paper explores this relationship privileging a practice perspective through a tentative model, which describes a "bubble-up" of ideas from practice to inform research and theory development, and an accompanying "trickle-down" of theory into practice. Interviews were conducted with interaction designers, which included a description of their use of design methods in practice, and their knowledge and use of two common design methods-affinity diagramming and the concept of affordance. Based on these interviews, potential relationships between theory and practice are explored through this model. Disseminating agents already common in HCI practice are addressed as possible mechanisms for the research community to understand practice more completely. Opportunities for future research, based on the use of the tentative model in a generative way, are considered.

When looking out across the intellectual landscape of HCI, how do we make sense of it? More impor- tantly, how do we evaluate what constitutes legitimate investigation? As an interdisciplinary field, HCI faces challenges in incorporating sometimes conflicting intellectual approaches. While new approaches enrich our view of interaction, they can also lead to conflicting notions of methodology and validity, whose resolution remains murky without explicit discussion of their underlying epistemological commit- ments. Informal histories of HCI commonly identify two major intellectual waves that have formed the field: the first orienting from engineering and human factors with its focus on optimizing man-machine fit, and the second stemming from cognitive science, with an increased emphasis on theory and on what is happening not only in the computer but, simultaneously, in the human mind. HCI also draws on a wide variety of apparently disparate approaches, such as participatory design, si...

I-com, 2017

In contrast to the first and second wave of Human Computer Interaction, the third wave grapples with wicked problems. However, resolutions to wicked problems embodied in artifacts frame and change the understanding of the problem itself. Research through Design (RtD) is a constructive methodology to understand this interplay of problem framing through designing artifacts. RtD is also suited to resurface the theory within those artifacts through annotation. These annotations expose and emphasize qualities, values and assumptions held within artifacts by its creators. In addition to those modes for annotation, we will suggest two additional abstract frames through which RtD artifacts can be further annotated: Open Research Agenda and Interdisciplinarity. We will apply both frames to one research artifact, Loaded Dice to distill qualities from this artifact's framing. Through this we will show how creating and deploying an artifact can change its environment which also includes its creators.