INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG MARCH–APRIL 2015 INTERACTIONS 67 Daniela K. Rosner, University of Washington

as law and education—seeking to inform practice through field trials, for example. Instead, I argue for a mode of research through design [ 2, 4] that treats the design as social inquiry (hereafter referred to as design inquiry).

This positions designed systems and processes as tools with which to examine social phenomena. Design becomes a means rather than an end.

This work is hardly new to strains of art practice, or to speculative, adversarial, or critical design. From the Gutai group [ 5] to Survival Research Labs [ 6], a long legacy of performance art has highlighted the meanings forged through action and intervention, using technologies to question assumptions about our social worlds and the place of the technical within them. Similarly, cultural probes [ 7] and other forms of intervention fit comfortably in this form of inquiry. Here the work of building serves to extend and restructure the conceptual frameworks that order daily practice.

Consider a recent design research
project from my lab, a study on
walking. Today, software developers
typically use GIS-routing (as in Google
Maps) to specify target destinations,
emphasizing geographic precision over
“local improvisation” [ 8]. To rethink
this orientation, I worked with a design
team at the University of Washington
to develop Trace, a mobile application
that generates walking routes based
on digital sketches people create,
annotate, and send to others without
reference to a map. We gave the Trace
application to 16 people to explore how
they took up this form of walking in
their daily lives. During field trials, we
As early as Christopher Frayling’s
discussion of research in art and
design [ 1], concerns for generalizable
knowledge have pervaded design
research. Whether to legitimate design
in the academy or to inform design
pedagogy, such connections between
theory and practice have spawned
attempts to formalize [ 2] and reorient
[ 3] how design projects might improve
or design methods might travel. For
these scholars, research produces design
knowledge in the form of frameworks,
philosophies, or implications for design

[ 2]. Theory generation remains design-oriented and not the other way around.

A few important challenges follow from this line of reasoning. The first concerns the analytic reach of design research. By limiting design research to the work of informing design, we generate research outcomes that contribute little beyond guidelines, principles, and so on. Design recommendations prioritize “improving” technology over understanding technology in action.

The second issue has to do with our
frame of investigation. Design research
operates within a specific temporal
and geographical scope: namely, the
times and places in which design work
unfolds. This presents challenges
for explicating how a set of design
techniques might work beyond the
site in which they are built or studied.

In this, design research resembles the ethnographic case study, which is, in sociologist Michael Burawoy’s words, “inherently particular” [ 3].

The third issue relates to the normative character of design. As designers, we tend to advance (often unwittingly) our own concerns through what we build. Though we may aim to develop a better system, through prototyping we begin to define what that “better” means (reusable parts, learning by doing, guidance for the vision impaired, etc.). Even as we try to avoid idealistic or universalist solutions, our projects build suggestions for a standard way of living and what “ought” to be.

To address these concerns, one might suggest further separating design scholarship and professional practice.

This could place design departments alongside professional fields such

Insights
→ Some researchers are using design
as a means to study social
phenomena, rather than as an end
unto itself. I call this design inquiry.

→ Design inquiry relies on provocation.

→ While potentially providing new directions for design, design inquiry also promises to engage and refine social theory.

Reshaping the Limits
of Design in HCI

This forum highlights conversations at the intersection of design methods and social studies of technology. By highlighting a diversity of perspectives on design interventions and programs, we aim to forge new connections between HCI design and communication, science and technology studies, and media studies scholarship. — Daniela K. Rosner, Editor

FORUM DESIGN AS INQUIRY