How Do HCI Researchers View Interaction Design?
The field of human-computer interaction has grown through collaborative participation between technologists, human scientists, and designers. As a result, the scope of HCI has broadened from a narrow focus on improving efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of use in the workplace to new contexts of use such as the homes, the vehicle, and public spaces such as cafes, stores, and streets. In addition, the goals of HCI have changed from increasing work productivity to allowing for the creation of meaningful experiences in people’s lives. New research topics are now of interest, including the relationship between experience, design, and emotion, and how to design for tangible and sensual interaction.
For these reasons, interaction design has developed a larger role within HCI. While HCI practice and education have successfully integrated interaction design, the HCI research community is still undergoing change. Our work seeks to provide a model to describe how interaction design is best integrated into HCI research. Interviews with current and potential students, our own faculty, faculty at other institutions, and professionals both in HCI and interaction design are informing the development of a model that clarifies the relationship between interaction design and HCI, and provides knowledge about what comprises research in interaction design.
Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., and Evenson, S. (2004). "Taxonomy for Extracting Design Knowledge from Research Conducted During Design Cases." Futureground 04 (Conference of the Design Research Society) Proceedings, Melbourne, Australia, November 2004, available as CD-rom. [local pdf, 1.2 MB]
Copyright 2006 Jodi Forlizzi.