Transcending Disciplinary
Boundaries in Interaction Design
Eli Blevis
Indiana University at Bloomington | eblevis@indiana.edu
Erik Stolterman
Indiana University at Bloomington | estolter@indiana.edu
[ 1] We have elsewhere
described the potential
shift in interaction
design from disciplinary to transdisciplinary
perspectives: Blevis,
E. & Stolterman, E.
(2008). The Confluence
of Interaction Design
and Design: from
Disciplinary to
Transdisciplinary
Perspectives. In Proc.
2008 Design Research
Society Conference.
Sheffield, UK: Design
Research Society.
344/1-12.
Some of this article
owes to this prior publication. Yvonne Rogers
is also advancing the
idea of the transdisciplinary perspective
as a trend in interaction design and HCI:
Rogers, Y. “A New
Framework for HCI.”
(2010, in preparation).
As an interaction designer or
researcher, chances are you’ve
collaborated in a team of contributors with different disciplinary backgrounds. You may
remember such collaborations
warmly, painfully, or anywhere
in between. Communications
between collaborators in working teams may be effective or
fraught with misunderstandings.
People may have differing ideas
about the value of their contributions. Some may think their
skills are more valuable than the
skills of others. Some may think
their tools are better than the
tools of others. Some may think
their knowledge is more important than the knowledge of others. Some may think their way of
thinking about what is important
trumps everyone else.
Despite the problems associated with working in teams
comprising differing disciplinary
backgrounds, the need to form
such teams endures. Working
this way raises issues of and
distinctions between notions of
disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity,
and interdisciplinarity [ 1].
service of a single body of knowledge. We have elsewhere characterized notions of disciplines
in terms of philosophical norms
and practical norms [ 2].
Under philosophical norms,
what unifies a single disciplinary
perspective is the belief in common notions of values, methods,
and reasoning (VMR), where
value is how you perceive your
discipline, method is how you
engage in your discipline, and
reasoning is how you represent
your discipline. Table 1 shows
characterizations of some disciplinary perspectives germane to
HCI in terms of values, methods,
and reasoning.
Under practical norms, what
unifies a single disciplinary perspective is the belief in common
notions of mind-set, knowledge
set, skill set, and tool set, where
mind-set is what you think is
important to you and to your
discipline, knowledge set is what
you think everyone in your discipline ought to know, skill set is
what you think everyone in your
discipline needs to know how
to do, and tool set is what you
think everyone in your discipline
should use to practice the discipline [ 3]. Table 2 shows characterizations of some disciplinary
perspectives germane to HCI in
terms of mind-set, knowledge
set, skill set, and tool set.
Given these differences when
it comes to disciplinarity, it is not
a surprise that these varied disciplinary perspectives can lead to
issues in collaborative teams.
September + October 2009
[ 2] Blevis, E., Lim, Y.K.,
and Stolterman, E.
“Regarding Software as
a Material of Design.”
In Proceedings of
Wonderground (2006).
interactions
[ 3] The notion of disambiguating mind-sets,
knowledge sets, skill
sets, and tool sets owes
to Harold Nelson [pri-vate communication].
Disciplinarity
Disciplinarity is an approach to
a particular problem space using
a single, identifiable collection of
methods informed by or in the
Multidisciplinarity
and Interdisciplinarity
Multidisciplinarity is an
approach to a particular problem
space using coordinated outputs
from distinct collections of methods informed by or in the service
of respective distinct bodies of
knowledge. Interdisciplinarity
is an approach to a particular
problem space using integrated
outputs from combined collections of methods informed by or
in the service of combined bodies
of knowledge. Both approaches—
multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity—answer the need for
teams to work across disciplinary
boundaries in the service of certain kinds of problems or goals.
As a means of overcoming the
potential effects of disciplinary
parochialism, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity have
both promises and issues of their
own. For example, Rogers, Scaife,
and Rizzo critically distinguish
interdisciplinarity from multidisciplinarity:
“There is a widespread view
that interdisciplinary research is a
