Category: theory building

• design Design Education design methods design pedagogy design research design theory HCI/d Human-Centered Design Human-Computer Interaction Instructional Design theory theory building theory development User experience UX

  Interactivity Profiler

  Last year, along with Omar Sosa-Tzec and John M. Carroll, I published a paper at SIGDOC introducing the concept of visual references. Visual references combine bibliographic information with photographic images, textual annotations, and diagrammatic annotations, in order to communicate what we called design-related intellectual influence. The following diagram distinguishes visual…

  June 5, 2020
• design design research HCI HCI/d Human-Computer Interaction knowledge production knowledge tools research science scientific method theory theory building theory development

  Theory Use has not been framed as an HCI Problem

  Theory in HCI research appears to be of interest to a number of researchers working in the field. Theory use, which refers to the different roles or functions theory may play in scholarly research or publishing, is one way of exploring the topic, but, in my view, neither topic has…

  December 5, 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 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
• design design research design theory hci research karl popper knowledge production knowledge tools theory theory building theory development theory-practice gap

  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…

  July 14, 2016