Abstract
This article is about the role of film in interaction and product design research with technology, and the use of film in exploring and explaining emerging technologies in multiple contexts. We have engaged in a reflective design research process that uses graphical, audiovisual, and time-based media as a tool, a material and a communicative artefact that enables us to approach complex, obscure and often invisible emerging technologies. We give a discursive account of how film has played an intricate role in our design research practice, from revealing the materiality of invisible wireless technology, to explaining complex technical prototypes, to communicating to a public audience through online films that may fold broader social and cultural discourses back into our design research process. We conclude by elaborating on discursive design approaches to research that use film as a reflective and communicative medium that allows for design research to operate within a social and cultural frame.
Highlights
In the last decade, interaction design has found itself in a rather unique position
The designed objects presented in the films emerged from an iterative process of conceptual and practical designing, making and testing that draw on product and interaction design methods, but these objects and products are created with a focus on how they are going to be presented through audiovisual media
As we have shown through the films, the analysis of them and in the discussions above, there are a number of perspectives on the role that film can play in conceptualising and communicating about emerging technology
Summary
Interaction design has found itself in a rather unique position. As an interdisciplinary field, drawing upon many domains such as Human Computer Interaction (HCI), product and graphic design, informatics, art, engineering and critical practice, it has grown the potential to situate itself in a critical position between emerging technologies and culture. In this article we discuss our design research activities that use film as a material for exploring, conceptualising and communicating with emerging technology. We analyse this through existing framings of audiovisual media in HCI, technology, and interaction design research. The films are meant to be watched at critical points in the text where they act as both cases and arguments We analyse these films through addressing their role in unpacking, conceptualising and visualising emerging technology, how the films themselves provide us with new design materials, and by looking at their role in communicating about technology on both an explanatory and experiential level
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