Transforming Grounds

Almost anyone who is involved in some kind of research activities with the purpose of producing knowledge is also reflecting on what science really is and what it means. I have had these questions almost as a hobby since I was a student and am still curious. A few years ago, my colleague Harold Nelson told me about a book about this topic. It is John Ziman 's " Real Science -- What it is, and what it means ". After having read a lot of general philosophy and philosophy of science over the years, to read Ziman's book is refreshing. Ziman was a physicist (1925-2005). His primary area was theoretical physics and quantum theory, but he also became quite active in the philosophy of science. To be honest I have to confess that I have had this book for some year but not yet read the whole book, but some chapters I have read more than once. Ziman takes a very concrete view on science. He describes research as a practice where people engage in activities that are quite pr...

Just saw this article about some new Apple patent. It is interesting how it moves toward a situation of new interactive modes, and particularly interaction without an interface. This is something that Lars-Erik Janlert and I have written about and discussed in some detail in a recent article. Janlert, L-E., & Stolterman, E. (forthcoming). Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future. In the journal  Human-Computer Interaction . In the article we present a historical overview of how the interface has been understood over time. We also discuss some issues that interaction design is facing today, such as shrinking devices (less space for an interface) but increasing functionality (more this to do). We examine different ways this dilemma is handled today. And we specifically examine the idea of getting rid of the interface (as in the Apple patent above). We also discuss new issues such as cluttering which will become the ...

At the NordiCHI  Conference in October, Mikael Wiberg and I presented a paper: Wiberg, M. & Stolterman, E. (2014) What Makes a Prototype Novel? – A Knowledge Contribution Concern for Interaction Design Research . NordiCHI '14, October 26 - 30 2014, Helsinki, Finland. The paper is about something anyone engaged in HCI research is familiar with. Here is how we present it in the introduction of the paper: "Every time we review a paper describing a new interactive system, every time we go to a conference or when we are presented with a new interactive system from industry we repeatedly find ourselves asking “Have I not seen this system before?” or stating “This system does not remind me of anything I have ever seen...”. These questions are related to a fundamental research consideration concerning how it is possible to conceptualize and relate different designs to each other and to the existing body of knowledge. In short, we address the question “what makes a prototy...