The essence of interaction design research: a call for consistency

design has a distinctively ill-defined apprenticeship. The proliferation of interaction-design job titles demonstrates this vagueness. A lack of standardization is liberating for many but has the unintended consequence of undermining the interaction designer's autonomy. To become an accountant, professor, or engineer, individuals must meet compulsory standards , pass examinations, and prove their mastery of the pro-fession's " canon " of knowledge in order to practice it. Jobs that involve a canon are typically called a " profession " instead of a mere " occupation. " Indeed, a profession is not simply a job that requires skill. A profession differs from an occupation in that its members exercise exclusive control over a specific body of knowledge [2, 3, 4]. A profession must therefore have a clearly defined certification process, which in turn allows its members to exercise a sort of monopoly over the work itself. If a doctor is fired from a hospital, he or she continues to be a doctor. No hospital administrator can remove the ability to write prescriptions, for example; only a doctor's peers can remove or grant this ability. Those peers have decided the It started with an innocent query to the IxDA listserv [1]. Someone was sure they had read an article in interactions magazine once but could not find it again: " Wasn't there something written sometime by someone about something like sample size in usability research? " asked an expectant interaction designer. Woe is the hapless interaction designer who is unprepared for the firestorm that follows the dreaded " sample size " question. Some 106 replies later, not only was the question clearly left unanswered, but worse, it also left many scratching their heads in genuine confusion. What is the essence of interaction design research? Is it data-driven and " scientific " ? Is it exploratory and qualitative? No consensus was reached. Again. This schizophrenia is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, an interaction designer has the freedom to assemble their research program like an artist assembling an installation: Whatever inspires them can indeed find a place in the final result. Yet such a lack of standards leads to a distinct lack of consistency and expertise. If interaction design research is whatever you want it to be, what is to stop other occupations from " colonizing " what ought to be the purview of interaction research? See, for example, Dan …