Understanding agency in interaction design materials

We draw on the concept of agency in order to understand the process of how design materials 'talk back' to designers. In so doing, we illustrate the various levels at which agency can emerge in the context of intensive short-time prototyping sessions. In HCI, it is often assumed that the designer is the agent that acts intentionally in the design process. Contrary to this, recent notions of agency provide a way of analysing the performative role of design materials as intra-actions between components within a given phenomenon, rather than as meanings merely ascribed by actions of designers. The notion of agency puts focus on the emerging properties of materials and how they actively contribute to the way that design activity unfolds. The analyses showed how interaction design is to a large extent driven by emergent characteristics of available materials. The results have implications for understanding material interactions and materiality in interaction design.

[1]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Seeing like an interface , 2007, OZCHI '07.

[2]  Johan Redström,et al.  Computational composites , 2007, CHI.

[3]  Mikael Wiberg,et al.  Texturing the "material turn" in interaction design , 2010, TEI '10.

[4]  Adrian Snodgrass,et al.  Is designing mysterious? challenging the dual knowledge thesis , 1991 .

[5]  J. Lave.  Cognition in practice , 1988 .

[6]  Katherine Hayles,et al.  How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics , 2001 .

[7]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Where the action is , 2001 .

[8]  Daniel Fallman,et al.  Design-oriented human-computer interaction , 2003, CHI '03.

[9]  Kristina Höök,et al.  Hand in hand with the material: designing for suppleness , 2010, CHI.

[10]  Peter C. Wright,et al.  Experience-Centered Design: Designers, Users, and Communities in Dialogue , 2010, Experience-Centered Design.

[11]  Robert Ramberg,et al.  Where all the interaction is: sketching in interaction design as an embodied practice , 2008, DIS '08.

[12]  A. Pickering.  The mangle of practice : time, agency, and science , 1997 .

[13]  Bruno Latour,et al.  On Interobjectivity , 2002 .

[14]  Lucy Suchman.  Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication , 1987 .

[15]  Keith M. Murphy,et al.  Collaborative imagining: The interactive use of gestures, talk, and graphic representation in architectural practice , 2005 .

[16]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  Interaction criticism: a proposal and framework for a new discipline of hci , 2008, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[17]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions , 2006 .

[18]  Giulio Jacucci,et al.  Performative roles of materiality for collective creativity , 2007, C&C '07.

[19]  D. Schoen.  The Reflective Practitioner , 1983 .

[20]  Sharon Poggenpohl,et al.  Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology , 2007 .

[21]  Jacki O'Neill,et al.  'Talking about (my) Generation': Creativity, Practice, Technology & Talk , 2009, ECSCW.

[22]  三嶋 博之.  The theory of affordances , 2008 .

[23]  Colin Potts,et al.  Design of Everyday Things , 1988 .

[24]  Karen Barad.  Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter , 2003, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

[25]  JOHN F. Young.  Machine Intelligence , 1971, Nature.

[26]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI , 2007, CHI.

[27]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[28]  Giulio Jacucci,et al.  Supporting Collaboration Ubiquitously: An Augmented Learning Environment for Architecture Students , 2003, ECSCW.

[29]  Daniela Karin Rosner,et al.  Antiquarian answers: book restoration as a resource for design , 2011, CHI.

[30]  Austin Henderson,et al.  Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice , 1995 .

[31]  D. Schoen,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action , 1985 .

[32]  Ian Hunter,et al.  Talking about My Generation , 2008, Critical Inquiry.

[33]  P. Agre.  Lucy A. Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Commuinication (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987) , 1990, Artif. Intell..

[34]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Where the action is , 2001 .

[35]  R. J. Bogumil,et al.  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action , 1985, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[36]  Tracee Vetting Wolf,et al.  Dispelling "design" as the black art of CHI , 2006, CHI.