Transforming Grounds

I have many times on my blog made the case for a more artifact oriented approach in HCI research. One reason, among many, is that our discipline is not paying enough attention to the actual artifacts/systems that constitute the core and the reason for existence of our field. So, developing ways to carefully study interactive artifacts and systems in a way that can lead to theoretical development is crucial. I truly enjoy the traditional philosophical method of going back and forth between theoretical definitions and concrete examples.  The purpose of this process is to increase the precision in the theoretical definitions through a step by step refinement so that they at the end capture the important qualities of the artifacts. To be able to conduct such research you need concrete examples of artifacts. One approach is to work with highly diverse individual artifacts that present definitional challenges, but it is also good to have more comprehensive collections of artifacts that c

Core77 is one of the most ambitious online magazines about design. I try to visit now and then even though it is not often enough. If you have not found it yet, they have a nice book review section . Of course, not all books are necessarily interesting, but they are all related to aspects of design. Some of the books I have also reviewed on my blog. I have not really read any reviews carefully to be able to say anything about the quality of them. Maybe I will later. Take a look.

In a recent post I wrote about " Why flat design is soon boring, old and 'flat'" . Today I stumbled across this short but very interesting article in Fast Company about some  Kingston University animation students work. The article is called " Apple Skeuomorphism Reconstructed In 3-D " with the sub title "Using paper models, a team of animation students creates an elegant critique of Apples's iOS. Meta." These students have done something great. They have tried to explore and challenge the dominant paradigm of 'flat' design in a highly creative and fun way! The text and the videos may not convince a flat design believer but at least they ask good questions and open up for richer discussion about design paradigms.

A while back I started to collect links to all the book notes and book reviews on my blog on a separate page. You can find it here or in the navigation bar above. It has been interesting to see what kind of books I have written about and of course it leads to all kinds of speculations about why I read these particular books. Anyone who wants to analyze that is welcome to comment :-) Anyway, for those who are interested in reading I hope that the notes and reviews can be of some help.