[ 10] Sterling, B. “Design Fiction.” interactions 16, 3, (2009): 20–24.

messiness of the design process. Not simply about design in the abstract, but a forum for examining how design choices emerge on a smaller individual scale. Doing so will ideally draw out epistemologies at play.

The suggestions to seek out shifting ground, ask foundational questions, draw out the personal, and make it messy are an encouragement to collide, examine, and ultimately revisit our design epistemologies. But by challenging fixed epistemologies, and encouraging their dynamic interplay, we lose the sureness of our footing. In the May + June 2009 issue of interactions, Bruce Sterling suggested that design has more to learn from literature [ 10], although if we take on the idea of including more complex narratives and even personal accounts, perhaps the opposite is also true. What stories do we enact through design? What stories about design do we project and promote? What new stories could we tell?

 

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Phoebe Sengers, Bill Gaver, Katherine Isbister, Michael Mateas, Kia Höök, Lucian Leahu, and Alex Taylor.

November + December 2009

interactions

epistemologies. The field of HCI, with its range of disciplines, is quite used to these intersections. Important dialogue has emerged when collaborators reach across disciplines to find a wider than expected gap. From a representation as response perspective, this gap is a fertile ground for insight.

The recent interest in intersecting the sciences with the arts and humanities in computing design is epistemological reflection in action, examining conflicting values and divergent practices. A bricolage approach might mine different techniques, such as using situationist art practices as a tactic for participatory design. A dialectic approach might look to create a third space between art and science. An antagonistic approach might try to revolutionize science through provocative art and art through provocative science. All of these possible conversations would be interesting for HCI and the design of interactive systems.

Raise Foundational Questions.

Observing or participating in an exchange across epistemologies raises foundational questions, particularly when it’s at the proverbial paradigm-shift level. Yet foundational questions can always be usefully revisited even on a small scale. Why is one mindset or technique being used in place of another? What is gained, what is lost? What would the effects be if the driving mindset and/or the pursuant techniques were tweaked?

Foundational questions serve as, well, foundations. We ask them so we can move on. But they can also serve as blinders, boxing us into static patterns of practice and ways of thinking. Revisiting such questions

illuminates overlooked areas for design and provokes new ideas. Questions of epistemology force us to examine what we focus on, ignore, assume, and value.

Draw Out the Personal. Perhaps the most obvious antidote to abstraction is personal experience, such as the passport-con-trol delay, where models are fine until they completely misrepresent your own personal situation. One strategy then is to draw out and draw on one’s own personal lived experiences.

We tend to erase the designer or researcher’s fingerprints in representing our designs due to the requirements of blind review, principles of scientific objectivity, and the issue of relevance. Does anyone really care to hear about my fear of flying? Certainly in the age of twitterdom, we might have sparse appetites for more personal details woven into our publications. But personal experiences inform choices and reform epistemologies. My take on representation as response is slightly different from that of others. Finding ways of drawing out and sharing these subtle fissures is as important as distinguishing tectonic plates in terms of provoking and advancing the fields of interactive design and HCI.

Make It Messy. Published work in HCI tends to recount linear narratives using a normative template. We rarely acknowledge failed systems; nor is there room for discussing the difficult choices and trade-offs we encounter along the way. Choices are made and forgotten. Our stories of design are neat and concise.

As designers are required to focus on more wicked and messier design problems, perhaps we need channels to present the

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kirsten Boehner is writing a
book on interpretive
approaches to human-
computer interaction. Her
current research revolves
around moments of transformative partici-
pation, in particular dialogic arts practices
and the intersection with information tech-
nology design. She recently completed her
Ph.D. in communication and postdoctoral
research in information science at Cornell
University.

DOI: 10.1145/1620693.1620700
© 2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/1100 $10.00