Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI

Abstract

For years the HCI community has struggled to integrate design in research and practice. While design has gained a strong foothold in practice, it has had much less impact on the HCI research community. In this paper we propose a new model for interaction design research within HCI. Following a research through design approach, designers produce novel integrations of HCI research in an attempt to make the right thing: a product that transforms the world from its current state to a preferred state. This model allows interaction designers to make research contributions based on their strength in addressing under-constrained problems. To formalize this model, we provide a set of four lenses for evaluating the research contribution and a set of three examples to illustrate the benefits of this type of research. Author Keywordsdesign, interaction design, interaction design research, HCI research, research through design, wicked problems, design theory, design method ACM Classification Keywords H5.2. User Interfaces: Theory and methods.

Institutionalizing human-computer interaction for global health

“…Since the research is about contributing to change we apply design methods as a tool for the research [16]. …”

Concept models for design practice

“…As has often been said (Zimmerman, Forlizzi and Evenson, 2007;Gaver, 2012;van de Weijer, van Cleempoel and Heynen, 2014), these fields are interested primarily in possible futures, rather than in getting a better understanding of the present and the past. This is in large part the reason why design has historically made use of so many research methods and concept models from other disciplines.…”

The ReflecTable: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in Design Education

“…In the latter case, the students' reflection on their practices using the Digital Scrapbook system was found to make students aware of the "Processional" nature of the design processes they conducted. Additionally, in the context of design research [39], Dalsgaard and Halskov developed the Project Reflection Tool, which allows design researchers to document their practices as a series of events and notes, with the aim of supporting reflection on both design practice and broader research questions [8].…”

“…The single tablet displays an interface (Fig clips, surrounded by any annotations made by the play ed by virtual post-it notes, which are colored in order ote them. These annotations, and the videos to which t ted and resized on the interface using simple multi-to mode can be selected whereby the players are able to w d of the screen, to illustrate connections between particu s final activity seeks to scaffold the players in converg ings of the clips into an answer to their research questi shared understanding of the design process conducted he interface used in the last round of the game nd Exploratory Study gned to explore how design games and video-led reflect ge the gap between theory and practice in design educati gh-design approach [39], whereby the iterative design cTable game and hardware platform was used to scaff research question. This design and development proc of nine ReflecTable games, which were each played w he first six of these games, we focused on developing p of the final setup.…”