Autobiographical design in HCI research

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Abstract
Designing a system with yourself as a target user and evaluating the design through your own self-usage is commonly considered a questionable approach in HCI research. Perhaps for this reason, HCI research including extensive self-usage of a design is underdocumented. Yet such self-usage does happen and many researchers have found great value in the lessons learned from it. Our goal in this paper is to bring these hidden practices to light and offer guidelines for how HCI researchers can usefully engage in what we term 'autobiographical design'---design research drawing on extensive, genuine usage by those creating or building a system. Through interviews with HCI experts who have engaged in variations of autobiographical design, we draw out the possibilities and limitations of autobiographical design methods and lay out best practices for its use as an HCI research method.
Funding Information
  • Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS-0847293)

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