• Images captured by Affector, a system for affective communication by office friends. Affector was used by Sengers over a period of three years.

Conversely, autobiographical
design requires building a system
from the start that really works—and
not just in test cases, because the
design is actually being used. As
Whittaker said, “This is a generic
problem with building systems
for ourselves. You do need to
have an end-to-end system, in
particular if you are trying to
substitute something that is really
important to people.” Sometimes
it is possible to quickly create
an initial simple system and
then iterate its feature set; but
if a system requires substantial
complexity before it can be realis-
tically used, then autobiographi-
cal design may not be feasible.

What Can You Learn From
Autobiographical Design?
In HCI research practice, evalua-
tion with other users is the gold
standard for establishing knowl-
edge about a system. Yet our
respondents felt that they had
learned a great deal from trying