Lone Koefoed Hansen

Research through Design is centered on making things, services and systems as a way to construct knowledge. At the same time, the act of making happens behind-the-scenes, often overlooked, outsourced or rushed through. We would like to propose a one-day workshop of making at DIS. Specifically, we propose the making of samplers as a site for constructing a shared space to contemplate the interplay of memory and imagination in design research, inspired by traditional needlework samplers as well as modern subversive stitchwork [24]. By making together, we aim to take time to consider our personal and collective commitments and stance within and outside our roles as design researchers.

In this paper we discuss how interaction design experiments and interventions can play a role in sensitising humans to the more-than-human—specifically to plants and their significance to our lifeworld. Our work is rooted in two ideas (1) that deepening the understanding of human-plant relations is important for navigating the multiple planetary crises that we are currently facing, and (2) that interaction design allows for exploring the posthuman ontological model that rejects human exceptionalism and regards all entities as entangled and mutually constitutive. In discussing how design on several levels makes possible more-than-human reflections, the paper presents qualitative data gathered from interviews, diary entries, and observations from deploying two of our plant-electronics designs. Through identifying and organising surprises and recurring patterns in how people responded into three types of sensibilities (hermeneutic, existential, and socio-cultural), we discuss what happens when interaction design mediates entanglements between humans, plants, and other more-than-human actors.

Understanding that not all users are the same is a foundational principle in teaching Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Learning to recognize how the diversity of users and their circumstances condition their experience of interacting with computers is essential in educating reflective, effective, and user-centric HCI professionals. Within this field, the term affordance has been a both heralded and contested term for years, but remains important. A recent contribution to the discussions is the Mechanism and Conditions Framework by Jenny Davis that productively nuances the term. However, translating the framework into a context of HCI education presents itself with a set of challenges. In this paper, we present insights from teaching Davis’ framework to over 500 university students within a constructivist/socio-cultural tradition of HCI. Our work articulates pedagogical strategies that enhance students’ understanding of context-specific analyses of user interfaces and in so doing it advances the HCI affordance discourse. By integrating theoretical critique and educational practice, we aim to aid the spread of the mechanisms and conditions framework among future HCI professionals.

Researching a phenomenon like the Norwegian TV-series SKAM further complicates the inside-outside notion already debated within ethnographic methods. With SKAM, the reception takes place in a multi-platform and always-on environment: the fan culture(s) happen(s) across several online platforms and the series makes use of a particular understanding of 'liveness' when it updates the story throughout the week, at random times, and on several platforms. This directly influences a researcher's positioning and modes of action. In this paper, we discuss the act of researching SKAM through analysing empirical data from our conversation on Messenger in which we—in the eight months it lasted—acted both as fans or viewers and as researchers aiming to understand SKAM's fandom. In this case of an continuously updating narrative that seems to happen in a parallel universe to our everyday life, what might 'being-there' entail for researchers?, we ask. The methodological perspectives thus discussed here relate to auto-ethnography as well as to media-ethnography, allowing us to discuss how SKAM was a phenomenon that interfered into our professional but definitely also into our private lives.

The term “natural” is employed to describe a wide range of novel interactive products and systems, ranging from ges- ture-based interaction to brain-computer interfaces and in marketing as well as in research. However, this terminology is problematic. It establishes an untenable dichotomy be- tween forms of interaction that are natural and those that are not; it draws upon the positive connotations of the term and conflates the language of research with marketing lingo, often without a clear explanation of why novel interfaces can be considered natural; and it obscures the examination of the details of interaction that ought to be the concern of HCI researchers. We are primarily concerned with identify- ing the problem, but also propose two steps to remedy it: recognising that the terminology we employ in research has consequences, and unfolding and articulating in more detail the qualities of interfaces that we have hitherto labelled “natural”.

The paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that in order to legitimize and make use of research through design as research, HCI researchers need to explore and clarify how RtD objects might contribute to knowledge. Leveraging the tradition of aesthetics in the arts and humanities, we argue that while the intentions of the object's designer are important and while annotations are a good mechanism to articulate them, the critical reception of objects is equally foundational to RtD's broader knowledge impacts within HCI. Such a scholarly critical reception is needed precisely because of the potential inexhaustibility of design objects' meanings; their inability to be paraphrased simply and adequately. Offering a multilevel analysis of the (critical) design fiction Menstruation Machine by Sputniko!, the paper explores how design objects co-produce knowledge, by working through complex design problem spaces in non-reductive ways, proposing new connections and distinctions, and embodying design ideas and processes across time and minds.