Studying Designers, Artifacts and Users: Learning to Frame Research (Sometimes Mislabeled as “Design Thinking”) that Informs Interaction Design from Three Intersecting Perspectives
Michael Gibson, The University of North Texas, United States
Keith Owens, The University of North Texas, United States
Participants in this actively collaborative, methodologically focused, two-hour workshop came prepared to use an extant or proposed interaction design project, or a possible IxD research trajectory or line of inquiry, as primary subject matter for examination. This subject matter could consist of work that participants are directly involved in designing and developing, or that their students have worked or are working on, or some aspects of both. The learning experience that Professors Gibson and Owens facilitated helped participants broaden and deepen their abilities to contextualize, or “situate,” what they’re working on in relation to one of three investigational approaches:
- a critical examination of the design(er) and his/her/their decision-making processes;
- a critical examination of how and why the designed artifact or system affects and is affected by its social, technological, economic and political surroundings;
- a critical examination of how and why the user’s interaction with the participant’s proposed or extant artifact or system will or could affect the intended user’s reality (or perception of reality).
In short, this workshop has been designed to ensure that participants emerge from it with knowledge of and about how to situate the analysis and assessment of their work from the perspective of the design(er), the artifact or system, and the user. Constructing this type of knowledge is crucial to ensuring that projects guided by research — as most interactive projects tend to need to be — actually yield useful, usable and desirable understandings that 1) positively affect a specific project’s outcome and that 2) enable other interaction designers, educators and researchers to learn from the work undertaken to produce a given project or pursue a specific research endeavor. Engaging in this “three-perspective” approach to framing research that informs interaction design can enable desirable change across a diverse array of landscapes.
About Michael
I am the graduate program coordinator for the MA program in Interaction Design operated by UNT’s Department of Design. I am also the graduate program coordinator for UNT’s Design Research programs, which are also operated by UNT’s Department of Design. Along with Professors Keith Owens, Troy Abel and Clinton Carlson, I try to forge and sustain collaborative, user experience and interaction design partnerships between groups across UNT’s academic spectrum AND into the private sector that surrounds our facilities in Frisco, Denton and Dallas, Texas.
About Keith
Keith Owens is an Associate Professor of Communication Design at the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Visual Arts and Design (CVAD), and from 2010 until 2013, was the Director of the college’s Dallas-‐based Design Research Center (DRC). Faculty and students working at the DRC focus on understanding and providing evidence based design solutions to complex social, economic, technological and environmental issues. Owens has advocated for increased design responsibility and evidence-‐based practice in the International Journal of the Humanities, Design Philosophy Papers, Design Philosophy Politics and Visual Communications Quarterly. As a design volunteer supporting farm cooperatives in Haiti, Owens operationalizes his activist philosophy.