Abstract
Abstract‘Time’ and ‘temporality’ are increasingly addressed in human-computer interaction (HCI) research. From issues related to mapping and visualizing data along timelines via explorations of temporality as a design material to studies of lag and the rhythms of work, time is a recurring perspective in HCI research. In fact, time has been a recurring aspect in HCI research for the past 30 years. Based on this continuous and growing interest in HCI research, we find it to be a good time to explore if ‘time’ can be used as a way to structure and organize HCI research. In this paper, we make one such attempt based on a literature study in which we have focused on how time and temporality has been addressed in HCI research during the past 30 years. In our overview of the field, we explore how time and temporality has played out in HCI along the two dimensions of what and how it has been studied. Based on these two dimensions, we created a 4 × 4 matrix that allowed us to filter the material and categorize HCI research in relation to time and temporality. As a result of our explorations, we have identified a turn to temporality as a design material in HCI, an interest in methods for temporality studies in HCI and in temporality as a theoretical lens. We end with a discussion of some implications of our findings around the notions of (i) waves of time and temporality studies in HCI research, (ii) the potential use of the 4 × 4 matrix and (iii) the consequences of a more fundamental shift from things to events.
Highlights
As the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) develops over time, the need for overviews of our field increases
As a result from the process of creating and examining our corpus, we found that HCI research has extensively explored some areas of the time and temporality landscape, whereas other areas seem less explored
We have explored how HCI research has approached ‘time’ and ‘temporality’
Summary
As the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) develops over time, the need for overviews of our field increases. Over the past 15 years, HCI research has seen a number of literature overviews focused on different aspects of the field, but there is still a lack of overviews of how time and temporality has been dealt with in HCI research, there are a number of related overviews. We notice an increasing interest in literature reviews that seeks to add to our understanding of how HCI as a field has developed over time. In relation to this, we notice that there are still no overviews published on how the field of HCI has approached the notion of time, theoretically, conceptually and pragmatically, and how this has changed over time. One assumption behind our research is that ‘time’ has shifted from serving as a secondary or implicit dimension or aspect to more clearly denote a particular strand of research in HCI where ‘time’ is a core fundamental and even primary concept
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