Interaction Design Research Research Articles

On the significance of making in interaction design research

On the significance of making in interaction design research

Framing IxD knowledge

Interaction design (IxD) research cuts through many domains of HCI yet remains distinctive. There are convincing arguments that Research through Design (RtD) is a valid research method in the conce ...

Not So Not-for-Profit

To address the sub-theme of the journal: Artistic Practices in a Time of Crisis, the author discusses the context of economic cuts and recent international crises on his PhD interactive and visual design research project undertaken in Australia. Identifying an apparent root-cause of current global crises, the author in reply, has structured a research plan and created a suite of new media, interactive, technology artworks, and installation art. Notions of Zen Buddhism, and stillness through meditation, are applied in the research and context of the artworks to support awareness of wellbeing, in response to the root-cause condition. The discussion will focus on the overarching question: how can one obtain value through the arts during current times of economic reduction conditioning?

This is a robot and you're going to love it

The creation of Stanford University's Interaction Design Research Lab at the Centre for Design Research (CDR), the footstool, named the Mechanical Ottoman, is an example of the laboratory's efforts to design non-humanoid robots that largely rely on non-verbal cues to foster social interaction with people. The lack of anthropomorphic features is an important constraint in my work. I also think this is the natural progression of the robotic technology as we start to see products in the space between industrial robotics and consumer devices.

A survey of assistive technologies and applications for blind users on mobile platforms: a review and foundation for research

This paper summarizes recent developments in audio and tactile feedback based assistive technologies targeting the blind community. Current technology allows applications to be efficiently distributed and run on mobile and handheld devices, even in cases where computational requirements are significant. As a result, electronic travel aids, navigational assistance modules, text-to-speech applications, as well as virtual audio displays which combine audio with haptic channels are becoming integrated into standard mobile devices. This trend, combined with the appearance of increasingly user- friendly interfaces and modes of interaction has opened a variety of new perspectives for the rehabilitation and training of users with visual impairments. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of these developments based on recent advances in basic research and application development. Using this overview as a foundation, an agenda is outlined for future research in mobile interaction design with respect to users with special needs, as well as ultimately in relation to sensor-bridging applications in general

Sustainable Making? Balancing Optimism and Criticism in HCI Discourse

We examine the recent move from a rhetoric of “users” toward one of “makers,” “crafters,” and “hackers” within HCI discourse. Through our analysis, we make several contributions. First, we provide a general overview of the structure and common framings within research on makers. We discuss how these statements reconfigure themes of empowerment and progress that have been central to HCI rhetoric since the field's inception. In the latter part of the article, we discuss the consequences of these shifts for contemporary research problems. In particular, we explore the problem of designed obsolescence, a core issue for Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) research. We show how the framing of the maker, as an empowered subject, presents certain opportunities and limitations for this research discourse. Finally, we offer alternative framings of empowerment that can expand maker discourse and its use in contemporary research problems such as SID.

Book Review: Collaborative Media: Production, Consumption, and Design Interventions, by Jonas Lowgren and Bo Reimer

Collaborative Media: Production, Consumption, and Design Interventions. Jonas Lowgren and Bo Reimer. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013. 198 pp. $35 pbk.Jonas Lowgren and Bo Reimer, co-founders of Malmo University's School of Arts and Communication, came together again to write Collaborative Media: Production, Consumption, and Design Interventions. Acknowledging the changing media due to the emergence of new media, the authors created a new term-collaborative media. This contemporary phrase describes media driven, produced, and designed by consumers. Lowgren and Reimer recognize that a change has taken place in consumer behavior-increasingly, people not only consume media, they also produce media: blogs, music videos, and so on. And they organize their media practices in new, innovative ways. This book is an exploration of that new relationship and consumer developments.The authors refer to their book as a scholarly monograph based on teamwork between their two fields: interaction design (Lowgren) and media research (Reimer). This innovative field of collaborative media sits comfortably astride the gap between the two existing fields and leads to a new understanding of the relationships between production and consumption. Thus, the authors argue, through this collaboration, the two fields become less distinct. This is not meant to merely describe a new discipline in media studies, but rather it is indicative of a complete alteration of the current understanding in the field. In other words, it is not simply that consumers are now producers, but that our basic conception of what we mean by audience must change. Now, with collaborative media, we can see the fact that viewers increasingly becoming media producers is a game changer.Whether these changes are positive or negative is a subject the authors review throughout the text. This strategy is beneficial to the reader, in that they do not answer this question too early and permit one to reach some conclusions on one's own. Ultimately, collaborative media is discussed as a form of practice, calling for participation and action. Furthermore, this art form disrupts the historical notion of mass media. The topic is interesting, innovative, and certainly at the forefront of the mass media discipline. In this day and age, we cannot study mass communication without reference to new technology. Of course, along with new technology come consumers and questions about how they use and relate to media. To this end, Lowgren and Reimer have put together an easily accessible text that appeals to a wide audience.For students and faculty, the text is heavily cited with academic work and instruction. …

Embodying phenomenology in interaction design research

hroughout life, I have been taught to think by generalizing, ordering, discretizing, modeling, measuring, calculating, objectifying, structuring, and so forth. Educated in the Netherlands and trained as an industrial designer, I possess a skill set built profoundly upon these approaches. With them, I feel acquainted and comfortable; they form a solid basis for my being in the world. But ever since I was introduced to the writing of David Abram [1] and embraced by Kees Overbeeke, becoming enchanted by his Designing Quality in Interaction group and their approach [2] to design

Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Bioinformatics Tools

Human factors contribute significantly to the information visualization design considerations and usability evaluation process, and have been shown to play an important role in the design, development and quality assurance of bioinformatics tools. Despite the technological advances in bioinformatics computational methods, humans are an indispensable part of the data mining and decision making process. The complexity of biology data visualization can make perception and analysis a complex cognitive activity for professionals in the bioinformatics domain. Information Visualization (InfoVis) can provide valuable assistance for data analysis in bioinformatics by visually depicting sequences, genomes, alignments, and macromolecular structures. InfoVis coupled with interaction modalities of bioinformatics tools also impact the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making tasks in applied bioinformatics computing. However, the way people perceive and interact with bioinformatics tools can strongly influence their understanding of the complex data as well as the perceived usability and accessibility of these systems. In this paper, we present a synthesis of research studies and initiatives that have recently examined human factors in interaction and visualization for bioinformatics tools, particularly in perception-based design. Although bioinformatics’ visualization and interaction design research that involves human factors is considered in its infancy, a plethora of potentially promising areas have yet to be explored. The aims of this paper are to review current human factors research in interaction, usability and visualization within bioinformatics tools to provide a basis for future investigations in systems and software engineering of bioinformatics tools, and to identify promising areas for future research directions in interaction design of bioinformatics tools.

Research of Landscape Interactive Design

Based on the understanding of dual symbiosis of landscape, interactive relationship between people and landscape in landscape environment is analyzed in this paper. In addition, basic ideas and methods of landscape interactive design are discussed. After that, combining with landscape interactive design, some researches and analysis of Flexible Landscape are done.

Peripheral interaction: characteristics and considerations

In everyday life, we are able to perceive information and perform physical actions in the background or periphery of attention. Inspired by this observation, several researchers have studied interactive systems that display digital information in the periphery of attention. To broaden the scope of this research direction, a few recent studies have focused on interactive systems that can not only be perceived in the background but also enable users to physically interact with digital information in their periphery. Such peripheral interaction designs can support computing technology to fluently embed in and become a meaningful part of people’s everyday routines. With the increasing ubiquity of technology in our everyday environment, we believe that this direction is highly relevant nowadays. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of three case studies on peripheral interaction. These case studies involved the design and development of peripheral interactive systems and deployment of these systems in the real context of use for a number of weeks. Based on the insights gained through these case studies, we discuss generalized characteristics and considerations for peripheral interaction design and evaluation. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to support interaction design researchers and practitioners in anticipating and facilitating peripheral interaction with the designs they are evaluating or developing.

Participatory design

Scholars conducting analytical research in multimodal interaction design have not paid enough attention to the use of disabled participants in their work. In this column I argue that participatory action research with these users is overdue for the sake of building a culture of accessible designs. Working on a larger project on participatory design for a book, this commentary records my initial thoughts on how participation by disabled users needs to be central to the overall production cycle. I begin with the premise that each disabled user participates in this multimodal discourse from an entirely different vantage point shaped by their social, physical, and artistic experiences. It also emphasizes that each user interacts with multimodality differently depending upon the body they have, the adaptive technology they employ, and the uses they have for multimodality.

Designing a Musical Instrument: Enlivening Theory Through Practice-Based Research

Introduction The Arcontinuo is an electronic musical instrument that was conceived with the intention of overcoming the difficulties of other instruments that have failed in getting a consistent place in the musical scene. Its creation was based on a model founded in concepts of interaction design research and narrative identity that we intend to describe in detail in the first part of this article. This model, we hope, could be applied to any design research process providing an approach to creating products, services and experiences with a quality rooted in the personal and collective organization of meaning. The second part of the article explains the implementation of the model as a case study, the Arcontinuo.

Interaction design research and the future

Interaction design research and the future

3-D projection installations—three design strategies for a new medium

Three-dimensional projection installations are particular kinds of augmented spaces in which a digital 3-D model is projected onto a physical three-dimensional object, thereby fusing the digital content and the physical object. Based on interaction design research and media studies, this article contributes to the understanding of the distinctive characteristics of such a new medium, and identifies three strategies for designing 3-D projection installations: establishing space; interplay between the digital and the physical; and transformation of materiality. The principal empirical case, From Fingerplan to Loop City, is a 3-D projection installation presenting the history and future of city planning for the Copenhagen area in Denmark. The installation was presented as part of the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2010.

Design Strategies in Different Narrative Frames

Introduction During its evolution, design—both as a discipline and as a practice—has expanded its sphere of influence and its typical object of intervention, acknowledged until 20 years ago above all as the industrial product. In recent years, because of causes linked to the evolution of organized production systems and social and cultural consumption market dynamics, the design core moved progressively from tangible objects—where design was responsible for the technological aspects of the product to fix the use value—to intangible offerings—where the value for users became a variable of other additional factors. These intangible offerings not only included the use of the product but also aspects linked to the purchase experience, product access dynamics, product availability, and connections with other services and offerings. The productservice system became a consolidated approach in science and project practice, where integration between tangible and intangible components of the offering is becoming an important area for design.1 In designing a product-service system, design includes not only the identification and organization of each component but also the links and connections between the tangible and intangible parts that create value for users.2 The broadening of the design spectrum went beyond the systemic composite concept of offering. Accordingly, design became a thinking form—design thinking3—an approach and a series of tools serving changes in different systems, including economic, social, and environmental systems. For many decades, the discipline of design considered the user to be the primary reference of its action. A rich literature linking user-centered design and ergonomics emphasized user centrality for design action,4 until more recent theories started regarding user involvement in the various design phases.5 The basic concept of the user-centered design paradigm seems to be sound when design creates products and product-service systems for existing markets and known consumers, which take into account, a priori, defined cognitive and cultural patterns and needs, purchase models, logics, and use contexts. However, this favorable condition of 1 Stephen L. Vargo and Robert F. Lush, “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” Journal of Marketing 68 (2004): 1–17; Susan M. Goldstein, Robert Johnston, JoAnn Duffy, and Jay Rao, “The Service Concept: The Missing Link in Service Design Research?” Journal of Operations Management 20, no. 2 (2002): 121–34; Ezio Manzini and Carlo Vezzoli, “A Strategic Design Approach to Develop Sustainable Product Service Systems: Examples Taken from the ‘Environmentally Friendly Innovation’ Italian Prize,” Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003): 851–57; Rajkumar Roy and David Baxter, “The Product–Service System,” Journal of Engineering Design 20 (2009): 327–28; Ezio Manzini, Carlo Vezzoli, and Garrette Clark, “Product–Service Systems. Using an Existing Concept as a New Approach to Sustainability,” Journal of Design Research 1 (2001): 12-18. 2 Roy and Baxter, “The Product–Service System,” 327–28; Manzini, Vezzoli, and Clark, “Product-Service Systems;” Francesco Zurlo, Le Strategie del Design. Disegnare il Valore Oltre il Prodotto (Milano: Il Libraccio, 2012). 3 Roger Martin, The Design of Business (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2009); Tim Brown, Change by Design. How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (New York: Harper Collins, 2009). 4 Donald Norman, “Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful,” Interaction 12 (2005): 14-19; Donald Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and Shelley Evenson, “Interaction Design Research in HCI, a Research Through Design Approach,”

Decisive constraints as a creative resource in interaction design

This article explores the observation that highly limiting, creative decisions of voluntary self-binding that radically prune the design solution space may in fact fuel and accelerate the process toward an innovative final design. To gain insight into this phenomenon, we propose the concept ‘decisive constraints’ based on a review of current, but dispersed, studies into creativity constraints. We build decisive constraints on two definitional conditions related to radical decision-making and creative turning points. To test our concept analytically and ensure its relevance to creative practice, we apply the two definitional conditions to three media façade installation projects in which our interaction design research lab has been involved. In accord with insights from these case analyses, we argue that decisive constraints may inform current research into design processes and act as a creative resource for practitioners, not only in interaction design but, we assume, also across related creative domains and disciplines.

Principles of Interaction Design Research Based on Cognitive Characteristics

Interactive products need to have human qualities. Designers need to give the characteristics to the product. Analysis of the cognitive process and cognition import the interaction design, we can sum up nine principles of interaction design for four aspect: concerns unity, visibility, visual structural optimization, memory capacity limited, simple and complex conservation, affordance, feedback mechanisms, the targeted emotional experience, fault tolerance.

Device Landscapes-A New Challenge to Interaction Design and HCI Research

BackgroundThe number of interactive digital artifacts is growing surrounding personal lives, and individuals have an increasing need to describe, analyze, and interpret what it means to own, use, a ...

Methodology for materiality: interaction design research through a material lens

Increasingly, human---computer interaction (HCI) is acknowledging the material dimensions of our subject. In doing so, a wide repertoire of methods is currently being explored for conducting interaction design research through a material lens. These methods range from material studies and studies in material cultures to methods borrowed from craft, designerly approaches to interaction design, sketching in hardware approaches, and so on. While we acknowledge these important attempts to approach the material dimensions of interaction design, it should also be noted that there is a lack of more systematic studies of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within HCI and interaction design to specifically explore interaction design through a material lens. So, there is a need for a methodology that acts as a guideline to material-centered interaction design research. In this paper, we address this need. More specifically, this paper contributes to this current state by presenting a methodology for methodological explorations in material-centered interaction design research. The development of this proposed methodology takes a point of departure in the methods available and applied so far. With grounding in design theory, this paper organizes these methods into a four-dimensional structure to guide deliberate choices of methods in different phases of interaction design research projects--that is, it serves as a framework for research design. The organizing structure for the proposed methodology follows the simple dialectic tradition in design to work back and forth between details and wholeness, materials and textures. In this paper, we describe the four dimensions of our framework and how these can be useful to guide research design aimed at advancing our understanding of the material dimensions of HCI. We illustrate how the proposed structure can be practically useful--both in advancing our studies of interaction design through a material lens and show how it brings us back to the roots of our profession--that is, back to a focus on the materials, the fundamental components of any computational composition.