Category: philosophy
-
curiosity and diverse interests
One of the challenges that I find myself coming up against every now and again has to do with which interests to pursue and which to abandon. Looking up at the whiteboard near my desk I see the following list of papers that are in various stages of completion: quals scientific…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Understanding Designing
How can we achieve a deeper understanding of designing? There are many ways to answer that question. We can achieve a deeper understanding by engaging in a design process, by reading about design, by critiquing designs (or designing)… all roads of inquiry lead hopefully to one thing: deeper understanding. Achieving…
-
Attachment to Things | A Eulogy
Anyone who thinks people don’t form emotional bonds with things should reconsider that position. I’ve been a staunch believer in the emptiness that accompanies attachments to things. A person can’t love a smartphone or a car. At least, not in the same way they love a person or an animal.…
-
Normativity and Design
Story: During a debate about the future importance of design–but not Designers–an audience member raised her hand. She was a designer from Peru. “I have to interrupt,” she said, “because I sense that you’re ignoring the degree to which design is already happening in a substantive, vibrant way in, for…
-
Design | Definitions
This morning there was a fantastic debate held as part of the DRS 2014. What struck me during the debate, but especially during the following comments/questions from the audience, was the importance of defining our terms. Members in the audience came from a diversity of design disciplines (interaction, graphic, architecture,…
-
HCI and Slow Theory
I co-authored an article that was published in ACM Interactions in January of this year. The article presented a conceptual framework that could serve as the bedrock for subsequent, substantive discussions in the HCI community. The title of the article is, “Slow Change Interaction Design: A Theoretical Sketch.” It was called a sketch…
-
Experience Design | Reward Systems
Rewards may be constituents (but they are not key elements) of experience design. Let’s say that experience has a beginning middle and end. In my mind, the reward is simply the end of an experience. It is not necessarily the reason why a person would return to experience an experience several times. In fact,…
-
Some Thoughts About Design
I’ve been thinking about a question put forth by people smarter than me about Design. John Heskett articulates it best: [Why has design] never cohered into a unified profession, such as law, medicine, or architecture, where a license or similar qualification is required to practice…? [1] I’m wondering if an…
jordan beck, phd 