[ 11] The general mode
of inventory-type inquiry
has also appeared in
HCI and design litera-
ture including (but not
limited to): R. Strickland,
“Portable effects: A sur-
vey of nomadic design
practice.” Tech Report
TR1998-003, Interval
Research Corp., 1998,
http://www.portablefx.
com; The “Personal
Inventory” method
card found in IDEO.
IDEO Method Cards.
ISBN 0-9544132-1-0,
2003; M. Ludvigsson,
“Energy objects:
Reflection through
interaction,” in Proc. of
‘In the Making’ the First
Nordic Conference on
Design Research, 2005;
S. D. Mainwaring, K.
Anderson, and M. F.
Chang, “What’s in your
wallet?: implications for
global e-wallet design,”
in Ext. Abs. of CHI ’05,
New York: ACM Press,
2005; J. Chipchase,
P. Persson, P. Piippo,
M. Aarras, and T.
Yamamoto, “Mobile
essentials: field study
and concepting,” in
Proc. of DUX ’05, vol.
135, New York: AIGA,
2005. Additionally,
previous design ethnog-
raphy research—such
as T. Salvador, G.
Bell, and K. Anderson,
“Design Ethnography,”
Design Management
Journal 10, no. 4
(1999) and R. Wakkary
and L. Maestri, “The
resourcefulness of
everyday design,”
in Proc. of C&C ’07,
New York: ACM Press,
2007—has ties to the
general aim and spirit
of our development
and use of the personal
inventories method. P.
Menzel’s Material World:
A Global Family Portrait
is an additional influ-
ence, however, while
his work represents a
fantastic photographic
treatment of global
cultural differences in
attitudes toward mate-
rialism—it is reductive
in its approach. In other
words, Menzel attempts
to reduce each country
to a single representa-
tive photograph, where
our aim is quite the
opposite—to display
the range of practice
and phenomena with
respect to the durability
of digital and non-digital
artifice.
In contrast, the newer systems were left in standby mode to allow for fast startup of new game play and to preserve place in game sessions. While these hardware components are not of particularly high quality or durability, we consider that these entire installation spaces are ensouled—tied to dense, enduring archives of game media, hardware systems, and the associated memories by people who are self-described as enthusiastic videogame hobbyists. One of the primary reasons to keep these game consoles around is to be able to play early versions of game software that does not run on newer systems.
We see the development and application of personal inventories as part of a larger discourse within HCI calling for methods better suited to aid designers in facilitating actual change in the world, apropos of a rigorous understanding of the nature of design practice. We have made the case for the importance of constructing individual inventories, particularly in terms of the role products play in mediating between us and the world, and, in turn, the impact this has on our experiences, actions, and relationships. This type of approach is parallel to the first step of “redirective practice”—the concept of designing to encourage the substitution of sustainable behaviors for unsustainable ones [ 12]. We must first take stock of what people have, how they use it, and what constitutes durability, in order to understand how to design things in a more sustainable way.
September + October 2008
interactions
[ 12] The concept of “redirective practice” is owed to Fry in Fry, Tony (2008, in press). Design Futuring. Berg Publishing.
Our ongoing collective research involving personal inventories aims to examine human relationships with the materials and phenomena that construct the fabric of everyday life—with emphasis on how objects become ensouled. The purpose is to establish a method that makes it possible to unpack these complex processes in a way that could inform and inspire designers. The development of this approach owes to a variety of prior work and inspirations spanning multiple disciplines.
As initial inspiration, we drew on the applied taxonomic approaches used by Alfred Kinsey to collect thousands of inventories of male (and later female) behavioral histories [ 7], Csikszentmihalyi and Rouchberg-Halton’s extensive survey of domestic objects and their role in construction of the self [ 3], and Collier and Collier’s proposition of the “cultural inventory” approach and, more broadly, photography as a research method [ 8]. While the diversity of disciplines and endeavors reflected in these approaches was influential to the construction of personal inventories as a method, each one remains different in its ultimate aim. Fundamentally, these are modes of scientific inquiry concerned with the search for “truth” or holistic understandings of entire cultures or groups. Conversely, the personal inventories method is concerned with “that which is ideal and that which is real [ 9],” improving interaction design practice based on a nuanced and reflective understanding of the nature of design [ 10], and, ultimately, producing intentional change in the world. Our purpose is in spirit and ambition the development of a designerly method of gaining knowledge and understanding of the real and situated complexity of people’s everyday lives [ 11].
ABOUT THE AUTHORS William Odom is a contributing member to the Sustainable Interaction Design Research Group at Indiana University. He recently completed his master’s in human-computer interaction/design in the School of Informatics at Indiana University. Along with his colleague David
Roedl, he recently took first place in the interface design section of the Microsoft sponsored Imagine Cup competition. Currently, he is a Fulbright Scholar at Griffith University Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia. He can be reached at www.willodom.com
Eli Blevis serves on the faculty in the human-com-
puter interaction design program of the School of
Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr.
Blevis’s primary area of research, and the one for
which he is best known, is sustainable interaction
design. This area of research and Dr. Blevis’s core
expertise are situated within the confluence of human computer
interaction as it owes to the computing and cognitive sciences, and
design as it owes to the reflection of design criticism and the prac-
tice of critical design. Dr. Blevis has published more than 40 arti-
cles and papers and has given several invited colloquia internation-
ally on sustainable interaction design and the larger context of
notions of design.
Erik Stolterman is professor and director of the
human computer interaction design program at the
School of Informatics, Indiana University.
Stolterman’s research is focused on interaction
design, philosophy of design, information technolo-
gy and society, information systems design, and
philosophy of technology. Stolterman has published more than 30
articles and five books, including Thoughtful Interaction Design
(2004, MIT Press), The Design Way (2003, ITP), and Methods-in-
Action (2002, McGraw-Hill).
References:
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