Criticism is an integral part of the ongoing knowledge construction that is embraced in the more mature design disciplines—architecture, industrial design—and in the arts. Critics interpret, contextualize, interrelate, abstract, and question the artifacts of design to clarify opportunities for designs to improve everyday life and to explore the ways in which designs deliver on this promise. In doing so, they feed an ongoing dialogue between design and criticism, through which knowledge grows for the benefit of practitioners, scholars, and the general public. Interaction design, in general, does not really accommodate criticism and the role of the critic, with some exceptions in new media [1, 2], HCI [3, 4], and video-game studies. As HCI's interdisciplinary expansion continues to incorporate design, criticism's day is coming. As our work becomes increasingly culturally and socially complex, we will need both the "expert readings" of erudite critics and everyday design "crits" from practitioners to provide the knowledge we need to design. We expect interaction criticism to emerge as a skilled practice, closely tied to interaction design. Our intention here is to fuel this development by providing an example of what interaction criticism could offer members of the interaction design community.

Prototyping Futures gives you a glimpse of what collaborating with academia might look like. Medea and its co-partners share their stories about activities happening at the research centre – projects, methods, tools, and approaches – what challenges lie ahead, and how these can be tackled. Examples of highlighted topics include: What is a living lab and how does it work? What are the visions behind the Connectivity Lab at Medea? And, how can prototyping-methods be used when sketching scenarios for sustainable futures? Other topics are: What is the role of the body when designing technology? What is collaborative media and how can this concept help us understand contemporary media practices? Prototyping Futures also discusses the open-hardware platform Arduino, and the concepts of open data and the Internet of Things, raising questions on how digital media and connected devices can contribute to more sustainable lifestyles, and a better world.

How can design be performed as a means of constructing relevant knowledge for other designers, as opposed to performing design in order to create new products? This question is addressed in nine essays by PhD students from interaction design, product design, and human-computer interaction. Many interesting perspectives and ideas are provided for the ongoing debate on the relation between design and research.

In recent years, information and communication technology has taken on whole new meanings in Western society and everyday life: from productivity tools for industry and administration, to everyday household activities, major entertainment sectors, new modes of communication and cohabitation, digitally enhanced pervasive infrastructures and more. In this situation, interaction design is emerging as a new and challenging design discipline. It has a design-oriented focus on human interaction and communication mediated by digital artefacts. This report presents a contribution to the emerging understanding of interaction design and its theory. Six doctoral students of the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, present canonical work in relevant disciplines including media studies, virtual reality, work life studies and the arts. They analyze the works they have chosen from an interaction design perspective and contextualize it in the knowledge field of designing digital artefacts and media.

This design study reports on how information visualization was applied to the common problem for knowledge workers to find people with relevant expertise and interests in a large organization. The outcome is the Pinpoint concept, an interactive visualization where the user's most closely related colleagues are presented radially for browsing, filtering and further exploration of the topical networks of the organization. Based on design reasoning and empirical validation, we claim that the concept approaches desirability as well as usefulness and usability in its intended use situation. We further argue that it is feasible for deployment under certain conditions, and that it is applicable in a range of large organizations if organization-specific policies and standards are taken into account.

A cross-media platform was designed for a community of young teenagers oriented towards societal change. The platform involved an interactive web-forum featuring creative and communicative collaborative tools in a 3D avatar environment, and a weekly show in national public-service television. Informal assessment of the work indicated that (1) an integrated spiral of production and consumption across the two media channels involved is a viable design concept to support community building, (2) off-the-shelf avatar technology and consumer-grade Internet connectivity can form a feasible infrastructure for collaborative storytelling tools, and (3) a participatory design process wherein participants transition into the role of mentors and norm carriers upon deployment can be a feasible way to support subcultural community building towards “difficult” topics, even though it entails considerable resource demands. All of these findings are potentially transferable to other design domains and audiences.

In this work, we investigate how visualization techniques could address the challenges of transportation simulation data analysis in order to facilitate the decision-making process for transportation simulation users. For this purpose, we have applied the visualization methods in a real implemented agent-based transportation simulator called TAPAS as a case. We have analyzed the visualization related requirements of users using a user-centric approach and an interactive visualization toolkit has been designed and developed based on the identified requirements. This paper presents a description of the visualization toolkit which will be used to investigate how the actors in a transport chain are expected to act when different types of governmental control policies are applied, such as, fuel taxes, road tolls, vehicle taxes and requirements on vehicles.

Information visualization, as a way of presenting different data types in an understandable form, has the potential to support the analysis of transportation data. Visualization can often help decision makers to efficiently analyse large amount of information. One application area of information visualization is to support the analysis of the transportation data and thus facilitate the decision-making process. Most of the previous studies in this area have focused on visualization of transportation infrastructures such as roads, bridges in order to enhance the public awareness regarding upcoming projects which makes it easier to reach a consensus on the high-level decisions. However, the main focus of this article is on methods for visualization of data generated by transportation simulation systems to support analysis of the consequences of applying different transport policy measures, such as the introduction of road user charging or investment in new infrastructure. In this work, we investigate how visualization techniques could address the challenges of transportation simulation data analysis in order to facilitate the decision-making process. For this purpose, we have applied the visualization methods to a real implemented agent-based transportation simulator called TAPAS. In this case study, we have analysed the visualization related requirements of users using a user-centric approach and the visualization tool has been designed and developed based on the identified requirements.

We present Mediated Body, an exploration into designing for engaging experience in embodied interaction. Mediated Body entails a Suit worn by a Performer engaging in social play with a Participant. The Performer and the Participant each wear a pair of headphones, and when they touch each other’s bare skin, they both hear a complex sound pattern. Our approach, which we call research-through-explorative-design, is a combination of experimental design in the lab and explorative design in the field, where qualitative assessments are used to elicit transferable knowledge contributions. This paper represents a case study of this somewhat innovative research approach in action. On the topical level, our results include three artifact-level elements that contribute to engaging experience: connecting touch and audio with the right balance between direct and emergent responsivity, justifying bare-skin touch between strangers, and providing open-ended action props with non-trivial internal complexity. Moreover, we suggest three experiential qualities as analytical tools pertaining to engaging experience in embodied interaction: the duality of performative immersion, the "magic circle" of transformative social play, and the explorative nature of emergent meaning-making.

We present five design cases as an annotated portfolio, exploring ways to design for intimate, interpersonal touch and social intimacy in interaction design. Five key qualities are elicited from the cases, including novel connotations sparking curiosity; providing an excuse to interact; unfolding internal complexity; social ambiguity; norm-bending intimacy. The work highlights novel interaction design approaches fostering social play, turning participants into performers of their own narratives.

Research in HCI involves a wide variety of knowledge production bringing forth theories, guidelines, methods, practices, design case studies / exemplars, frameworks, concepts, qualities and so on. This workshop is about mapping out the spaces, forms and potentials of such knowledge production in interaction design research.

Design-oriented research practices create opportunities to construct knowledge that is more abstracted than particular instances, without aspiring to be at the scope of generalized theories. We propose an intermediate design knowledge form that we name strong concepts with the following properties: generative, carries a core design idea, cuts across particular use situations and even application domains; concerns interactive behaviour, not static appearance; is a design element, a part of an artefact, and at the same time speaks of a use practice and behaviour over time; and finally, residing on an abstraction level above particular instances. We exemplify with two strong concepts: social navigation and seamfulness, and discuss how these fulfil criteria we might have on knowledge, such as being contestable, defensible and substantive. Our aim is to foster an academic culture of discursive knowledge construction of intermediate-level knowledge and how it can be produced and assessed in design-oriented HCI research.

People depend on news to make sense of happenings in the world, but current digital news products do not live up to their potential in this regard. Interactivity in relation to news is often seen as a way to give the consumer control over when to consume something and on which platform. Less attention has been placed on what should be consumed and how. Within the project MyNews- MyWay, a news service has been constructed that makes possible a more in-depth and varied media consumption than what traditional news services offer today. In addition to time-shifting, the service makes it possible to shift also the shape of the material consumed. 

People depend on news to make sense of happenings in the world, but current digital news products do not live up to their potential in this regard. Interactivity in relation to news is often seen as a way to give the consumer control over when to consume something and on which platform. Less attention has been placed on what should be consumed and how. Within the project MyNewsMyWay, a news service was constructed that makes possible a more in-depth and varied media consumption than what traditional news services offer today. In the follow-up design study OurNewsOurWays, additional attention was put on the possibility of combining professional news material with user-generated content.

Based on an episode from a design case, it is argued that explorative interaction design with hybrid materials combining physical and digital properties is better conceptualized as palpating the hybrid materials, rather than having a conversation with them. This leads to a proposed design strategy for designers working with hybrid materials: to build prototypes and do material experiments in a way that foregrounds immediate sensate feedback and externalizes responses that are normally not perceivable.

The use of digital products and services has expanded from largely instrumental, work-oriented settings to include entertainment, leisure, personal communication, and other classes of hedonistic use. The development of foundational concepts in the interaction design community to succeed usability and utility has lagged behind considerably. I argue that interaction design would benefit from attempts to articulate experiential qualities of digital products and services, and illustrate the approach by presenting the concept of fluency. It refers to the degree of gracefulness with which the user deals with multiple demands for her attention and action, particularly in augmented spaces where the user moves through shifting ecologies of people, physical objects, and digital media. I develop the concept of fluency by analyzing a range of digital artifacts in use situations, addressing the main themes of (1) social norms and practices and (2) peripheral interaction and calm technology. In terms of research methodology, this paper illustrates how design and criticism can be merged to construct elements of transferable knowledge for communication with design-research communities.

Digital design materials are temporal as much as they are spatial, which means that specific concepts are needed for understanding the use experiences of digital artifacts and the aesthetics of interaction design. In this paper, the quality of pliability is introduced to characterize the degree to which interaction feels involving, malleable, and tightly coupled - and hence to what degree it facilitates exploration and serendipity in use. Three sets of contrasting artifact examples from different domains (online maps, digital-image management, and online thesauri) are analyzed with regard to pliability. It is argued that the use of everyday digital products, normally perceived as instrumental and utility oriented, has an important experiential-aesthetic dimension consisting of temporal and visuo-tactile qualities (including pliability). The paper concludes with a discussion of related work and the role of experiential qualities in interaction design.

When painting the broad-brush foundation appropriate to an introduction, the development of computing in society can be characterized in terms of three main epochs. In the first, computing took on the form of mainframe data storage and processing units supporting enterprises in handling organizational information. The second epoch consisted of the personal computing (PC) revolution where the power of information technology became available for individual domestic and leisurely use in the form of affordable and accessible desktop devices. Finally, the third epoch of ubiquitous computing has been predicted since the early 1990s (Weiser 1991) and is presently turning into the dominant computing paradigm in the wake of technological developments concerning the miniaturization of digital technology and the coverage of mobile Internet connectivity. 

Even though the emerging field of user experience generally acknowledges the importance of esthetic qualities in interactive products and services, there is a lack of approaches recognizing the fundamentally temporal nature of interaction esthetics. By means of interaction criticism, I introduce four concepts that begin to characterize the esthetic qualities of interaction. Pliability refers to the sense of malleability and tightly coupled interaction that makes the use of an interactive visualization captivating. Rhythm is an important characteristic of certain types of interaction, from the sub-second pacing of musical interaction to the hour-scale ebb and flow of peripheral emotional communication. Dramaturgical structure is not only a feature of online role-playing games, but plays an important role in several design genres from the most mundane to the more intellectually sophisticated. Fluency is a way to articulate the gracefulness with which we are able to handle multiple demands for our attention and action in augmented spaces.

The notion of design research entails research where design practice forms part of the knowledge production. Based on our characterization of the nature of design, we propose to conceptualize this kind of research as programmatic design research. Two ongoing PhD projects in interaction design are presented as examples of programmatic research processes, highlighting issues to do with the virtues and qualities of the processes, the interplay of optics and engagements in a hermeneutical dynamic, and the production of takeaways for the academic community.

With many new forms of digital media–including such popular social media as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr—the people formerly known as the audience no longer only consume but also produce and even design media. Jonas Löwgren and Bo Reimer term this phenomenon collaborative media, and in this book they investigate the qualities and characteristics of these forms of media in terms of what they enable people to do. They do so through an interdisciplinary research approach that combines the social sciences and humanities traditions of empirical and theoretical work with practice-based, design-oriented interventions.

Collaborative media refers to digital media where people outside the traditional media industries participate in production as well as infrastructural design. We argue that (1) people’s use of computers today increasingly comprise communicating in collaborative media, and that (2) designing collaborative media implies fundamental changes to design processes and designer roles, which in turn (3) forms a challenge to the proactive position of the CHI community in shaping future computer use.

Collaborative media entail an emerging set of digitally mediated practices, characterized by collaborative communicative action within organically developing, cross-medial infrastructures. We argue that computers are increasingly turning from tools into (collaborative) media in everyday use, and that this shift poses a significant challenge to the discipline of interaction design. Particularly prominent aspects of the challenge include the way design processes are conceptualized and structured, and the way in which communicative perspectives take precedence over instrumental ones.

This paper presents our early experiences with the design of digital technology that aims to support the process of collaborative articulation taking place at patient-caregiver consultations during post surgery rehabilitation. We will suggest that augmentable paper documents (CARE paper) can be powerful resources in this process for caregiver as well as patient. The CARE paper can carry links to digital media. A prototype implementation demonstrating how to create and retrieve links between digital media and the CARE paper will be presented. The work presented was carried out and assessed along with studies at a major hand surgery clinic and with the active participation from patients and staff at this clinic.

We discuss the design ideal of explicit interaction, which is a way to approach the dimensions of explicitness versus ambience and explicitness versus obtrusiveness in ubiquitous computing. Explicit interaction refers to interaction techniques designed to make actions and intentions visible,understandable and accountable. We introduce three levels of analysis—usability, materialization, and social performance—and present the design of an explicit interaction assembly of devices for rehabilitation after hand surgery.The assembly, intended to support video recording during patient-therapist consultations, is evaluated and we find thatit provides superior usability and the potential to improve rehabilitation outcomes through materialization. Moreover,we find that the design of cues to support the social practice in the rehabilitation ward needs to be improved since the assemblyallowed for uses unanticipated during the design.

Background:  The Internet’s potential as health care tool should be explored. Aim:  One objective was to determine the feasibility of constructing a digitally based tool through an iterative design process in cooperation with potential users. The tool’s purpose is to alleviate hardships in daily life of relatives of persons with depression. An additional aim was to explore motivation and hindrances to using the tool as a basis for design decisions. Method:  An iterative design approach, including data collection through focus groups and with paper and web-based prototypes, was used. Results:  Cooperation with potential users, using an iterative design process, was valuable in developing the digitally based tool. Motivations (i.e. to create understanding and rehabilitate oneself) and hindrances (i.e. lack of time or energy) to using the tool were illuminated. Design decisions were based on consideration towards participants’ privacy concerns, needs of support and the depression’s influence on the relatives’ daily life. Conclusion:  Prototypes and cooperation with potential users were essential and valuable for the iterative development of the website.

We propose an experiential quality called evocative balance as key in designing for affective interaction that aims to empower users in and through the interaction. Evocative balance draws on the dual meaning of the word “evoke” in characterizing the user’s sense that data and actions evoke familiar recollections of lived experience, yet are still open enough to evoke multiple interpretations in an ongoing process of co-constructive making of meaning. Our aim is to capture those experiences that resonate with our lived, everyday, social and bodily experiences; those experiences that we can recognise in ourselves and, through empathy, in others. We elaborate on and substantiate the meaning of this quality by means of retrospective reflection on three of our own design projects. This account provides detailed insights on how to find the balance between openness and familiarity through design.

I samband med Donald Schöns bortgång hölls ett minnesseminarium i Malmö i april 1998. De medverkande talade om Schöns arbete och vad det betytt för dem. I den här filmen har vi samlat delar av tre inlägg. Erik Stolterman karakteriserar Schöns sätt att arbeta i relation till mer vedertagna uppfattningar om vad god forskning är. Bertil Rolf kritiserar Schön för att ge upp anspråken på sanning. Jerker Lundequist pekar på att Schöns teori saknar estetiska begrepp. Filmen vänder sig till den som studerar Schöns arbete och vill ta del av andra perspektiv på det.