Interactions - May/June 2010

FORUM SUSTAInABLY OURS

P
Predispositions
Analysis
R
Research:
Literature
Observations
Ethnography
I
Insights
C
Concepts
Systems
Synthesis
P
Prototypes
Exploration
Appearance
Usability
S
Strategies
Initial
hypotheses
Literature
search
Research
hypotheses
Experiment
design

• Instead of setting assignments—as a professor
or instructor—provide model (better) solutions.
• Instead of constraining scope—as a professor
or instructor—push limits.
There are a number of research questions that
one can ask about DCBL. For example, does the
values-centered transdisciplinary approach of
DCBL have the potential to broaden diversity of
participation in informatics and computing? Will
others use DCBL? How specific to design-oriented
HCI is it? What tools must be provided to enable
others to use the paradigm? Does DCBL foster
motivation and preserve rigor? How can such
effects be measured? How well does DCBL scale
in class sizes, and what are the effects of imple-
menting DCBL at various scales? What are the
implications of DCBL for foundational theories of
interaction design and transdisciplinary design?
Some disciplines focus on analytic research
and some disciplines focus on synthesis. Design
disciplines are interesting because designers need
to do both analysis and synthesis tasks. Figure 6
shows a framework we use in our HCI program
called PRInCiPleS to provide HCI and design
students with a tool for organizing their project
work [ 7]. The framework is not a scientific frame-
work, but it does have an analogy to an idealized
notion of a scientific framework. One of the big-
gest issues in pedagogy is how to get students
(and designers in the world of practice also) to
ensure that analysis leads to synthesis in a sound
way and that synthesis follows from analysis
in a sound way. The pairing in DCBL of design
research projects and design concept projects is
targeted at addressing this issue. The degree of
success of this paradigm in so doing is also an

open research question with implications for the
effectiveness of DCBL as design pedagogy and our
hypothesis about DCBL as a pedagogical para-
digm that is itself sustainable and that promotes
sustainable design.
The syllabi, design challenge project descrip-
tions, and model “solutions” are available on my
site ( http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/). Feel free
to use them and adapt them [ 8] if they are useful
to you in your own classes. I would be delighted
to hear about your experiences if you do so.
acknowledgements

I thank my associate instructors—John Wayne Hill,
Heiko Maiwand, Kevin Makice, Katie O’Donnell, and
Kathleen Surfus—for their invaluable contributions to
this approach, especially Shunying Blevis for her many
discussions with me about this approach. Thanks to
Erik Stolterman and Tom Duffy for very helpful com-
ments on this article. Finally, thanks to the School of
Informatics and Computing at Indiana University and
to my many colleagues there for creating an environ-
ment where alternative notions of teaching are possible.

[ 7] The PRInCiPleS
framework is my
renaming of a notion
of a framework for
strategic design plan-
ning I learned from
Greg Prygrocki, Dale
Fahnstrom, and Patrick
Whitney. I have used
this diagram elsewhere,
particularly in Blevis, E.,
and Siegel M. (2005).
The Explanation for
Design Explanations.
11th International
Conference on
Human-Computer
Interaction: Interaction
Design Education and
Research: Current and
Future Trends, Las
Vegas, NV. My col-
league Martin A. Siegel
and I have adapted,
refined, and used
the framework as a
pedagogical tool in our
design-oriented HCI
program.

About the Author Eli Blevis is an associate
professor of informatics in the Human-Computer
Interaction Design program of the School of
Informatics and Computing at Indiana University,
Bloomington. His primary area of research, and the
one for which he is best known, is sustainable inter-
action design. This area of research and his core expertise are situ-
ated 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 practice of critical
design. His research also engages design theory, digital photogra-
phy, and studio-based learning.