Category: design theory

• design design research design theory design thinking HCI HCI/d theory-practice gap

  Theory-Practice Gap

  Watch this video of a talk I gave at CHI2018 on the theory-practice gap:    

  August 6, 2018
• design design theory education experiential learning HCI HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction Informatics learning learning objectives Uncategorized

  Course Design

  I’m really excited about an introductory HCI course I’m developing (with some amazing collaborators) for the spring semester. For the last week or so, I’ve been working with several practicing designers to establish a set of core skills interns and/or entry-level designers ought to know in order to succeed in…

  November 28, 2017
• art design design research design theory learning learning outcomes pedagogy research Uncategorized

  Sharing Ideas and Failing Up

  If I had to identify one thing I do well in the classroom, it’s this: I create an environment where it’s the norm to take risks, fail, and explore half-baked ideas. My guess is that I model all three of these things. I fail up pretty much all the time,…

  July 8, 2017
• design design research design theory HCI hci research HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction Informatics theory theory building theory development theory-practice gap

  Adolescence as a Metaphor for HCI

  Early in the book HCI Theory, Yvonne Rogers takes a few pages to establish that research in the field is rapidly expanding/diversifying and that it’s difficult to pin down just what kind of field HCI is and what kind of research academics who identify as “HCI researchers” do. Somewhere in…

  January 18, 2017
• design design research design theory theory theory building theory development

  New Journal Article

  Terrific news! The new issue of She Ji: The Journal of Design Economics and Innovation is out today, and it features an article I wrote with Erik Stolterman. Check it out here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/24058726 We received some excellent commentaries by Danah Henriksen, Jeff Bardzell, and Deirdre Barron. I hope you’ll read all…

  January 5, 2017
• design design research design theory HCI hci research Human-Computer Interaction Informatics Interaction Design knowledge production knowledge tools theory theory building theory-practice gap Uncategorized

  About The Theory-Practice Gap

  How is it that we distinguish between theorists and practitioners?

  December 23, 2016
• design design research design theory HCI hci research HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction knowledge production

  The Problem of Problem-setting

  One of the more interesting and recent questions I’ve been thinking about has to do with the theory-practice gap in HCI research. Now, I have very little interest at the moment in bridging the gap. And really there are plenty of folks in the field working on this problem. I’m…

  December 2, 2016
• design design research design theory HCI hci research HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction theory theory building theory-practice gap

  Bridging Theory and Practice

  Just as there are lots of discussions and debates about theory building in HCI, there are also some interesting contributions to the discipline that address the theory-practice gap. In a previous post I wrote about how important it is to think about what words mean for intellectual progress (or just for…

  August 11, 2016
• design design research design theory hci research HCI/d knowledge production theory theory building theory development theory-practice gap

  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…

  August 10, 2016
• design design research design theory HCI hci research HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction karl popper philosophy of science theory theory building theory development theory-practice gap

  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…

  August 8, 2016