I had to go back and re-read the CHI paper by Zimmerman, Forlizzi and Evenson from 2007 "Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI". It was a pleasure to read it again and it made me more sure and convinced about their basic argument, which is that there is a possibility for people with design competence to use that specific design competence when doing research. They do a great job in proposing how such (design) research can be carried out, and maybe even more important, they discuss how to evaluate that kind of research and how it differs from "real" research. I think there are way too many HCI researchers today who do not do "real" research, instead they perform a sloppy version of design research, but without understanding the relation between design and research in the way that these authors propose. I hope we will see a change in the field. Read their paper!
Interaction Design, HCI, Philosophy of Design, Technology and Society
Comments
When I wrote about this in May, my only big contention was with the requirement for invention. Repetition is good science (to add evidence to a theory, or to help iterate it through its flaws), and it is also good design (since the context of our artifacts are constantly changing).
Thanks for your insightful comments. I think we need more of paper and text critique so this is good!!
Erik