Category: design research
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Theoretical Adequacy in HCI Research
Theoretical adequacy is an concept that comes up in some form or another in various readings in the hci literature. More often than not, authors express concern that hci is currently (or soon-to-be) theoretically inadequate. But what does this mean? What is theoretical adequacy? Is it the degree to which knowledge produced and…
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what should theory mean?
I’ve been collecting (and modifying and losing) thoughts about theory and the different ways it has been discussed and debated in academia for some time now. Recently I started organizing a collection of readings on/about theory according to different concepts like: theory development, theory-practice relationship, theory-artifact relationship, etc. What’s really…
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The Theory Project
I’ve added some new pages — well one new page and a few revised page names — to the site! I’m really excited about the new page: the theory project. It is one of the outcomes of a research project that I’ve been involved in for the past couple years…
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Questions Designers Ask
We can probably all agree that questions matter in designing. I’m a firm believer (along with many others) that ambiguity is a key characteristic of design problems, which means that posing good questions to clients isn’t just important. It’s essential. It’s these good questions that will bring clarity to the…
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Theory and Theory Building
I’ve been puttering my way through a lengthy reading list I put together toward the end of the summer. Gathering the list is one of the things I did to fulfill the requirements of my PhD qualifying exam. The other requirements: writing a paper and presenting/defending the content of the paper to…
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Demarcating Design Research
I’ve been thinking over these last few days about just what we mean when we say “design research.” Does saying we do design research or that we are design researchers imply that we do a different kind of research? Does it mean that as design researchers we make a unique intellectual…
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Knowledge Claims in Design Research
One of my summer research projects has to do with knowledge claims in design research publications. The question stems from an interest in understanding the similarities and differences between how knowledge claims are formulated in design research publications as opposed to natural and/or social scientific research. One would expect there…
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Summer Research Projects
The academic year is over, and after having taken a few days off, today is the day I launch into several really exciting and interesting projects. Following are summaries of each major project. Hopefully, writing about each of them on the blog throughout the summer will provide (1) a modicum…
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Knowledge Contributions | Discourse Analysis
Borrowing from a personal email exchange, in my final paper I’d like to look at “how publications in a journal like Nature talk about their knowledge contributions and how publications in a journal like Design Studies talk about their knowledge contributions.” The interest stems from a parallel research project I’m doing…
jordan beck, phd 