Link
Gilbert Cockton University of Sunderland
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series archive
Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction table of contents
Tampere, Finland
Pages: 149 - 160
Year of Publication: 2004
ISBN:1-58113-857
Abstract:
HCI is misdefined. We need to redefine it. HCI is misfocused. We need to refocus it. HCI has a window of opportunity to recreate itself as a design discipline. It must focus on the intention of gifted design, which is to improve the world by delivering new sources of value. A focus on value creates a paradoxical discipline that fuses subjectivity and objectivity in a single process. HCI must be objectively systematic and reliable in the pursuit of subjective value. Traditional disciplines have delivered truth. The goal of HCI is to deliver value. In my invited presentation, I will outline why we can and must change within HCI, where we are now (and how we got there), what I believe we should change to. I close with a research agenda for value-centred HCI.
My Discussion:
Whatever the evaluation is of both the ideas put forward in the paper and the shape they are put in, this papers is a great reminder of the larger trends in HCI history, from the first efforts with time-share system to the latest efforts in HCI-by-ethnographic-context. It could almost serve as a primer for Bluff Your Way Into HCI. The evaluation of the results of these trends is blistering, mainly describing any project made successful by HCI as pure luck disguised as HCI magic. Not totally unfounded considering how many HCI failures and mediocre results there are even when trying to use the same processes and guidelines. The shape of the paper is a little egomaniacal as every decade of HCI is not just dissected by trend, results, but also by what the author was doing, relevant or not to HCI. These experiences as guideposts in a journey to the central idea of the invited paper: that HCI should keep using the results of guidelines, user tests, and ethnographic methods describing context, but add to them the central notion of value to guide all the results, shaping HCI into a better design discipline.
After which the writer explictly declines to define the term value. He recommends to talk to the stakeholders about value so they will tell you what value is to them, and use the results of the discussion to guide the HCI efforts for the product or system being made. Value will rank what results from user testing are important and even which should be done, value will aid in incorporating design and computing breakthroughs into finished systems, value will properly put the scenarios and persona-defining efforts into the process without being too much of a distraction.
Probably a paper that should be reread over a couple of weeks to see if there is a there there. Every industrial HCI practitioner will already to tell the author that management carefully makes them focus on value in some form already.
Gilbert Cockton University of Sunderland
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series archive
Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction table of contents
Tampere, Finland
Pages: 149 - 160
Year of Publication: 2004
ISBN:1-58113-857
Abstract:
HCI is misdefined. We need to redefine it. HCI is misfocused. We need to refocus it. HCI has a window of opportunity to recreate itself as a design discipline. It must focus on the intention of gifted design, which is to improve the world by delivering new sources of value. A focus on value creates a paradoxical discipline that fuses subjectivity and objectivity in a single process. HCI must be objectively systematic and reliable in the pursuit of subjective value. Traditional disciplines have delivered truth. The goal of HCI is to deliver value. In my invited presentation, I will outline why we can and must change within HCI, where we are now (and how we got there), what I believe we should change to. I close with a research agenda for value-centred HCI.
My Discussion:
Whatever the evaluation is of both the ideas put forward in the paper and the shape they are put in, this papers is a great reminder of the larger trends in HCI history, from the first efforts with time-share system to the latest efforts in HCI-by-ethnographic-context. It could almost serve as a primer for Bluff Your Way Into HCI. The evaluation of the results of these trends is blistering, mainly describing any project made successful by HCI as pure luck disguised as HCI magic. Not totally unfounded considering how many HCI failures and mediocre results there are even when trying to use the same processes and guidelines. The shape of the paper is a little egomaniacal as every decade of HCI is not just dissected by trend, results, but also by what the author was doing, relevant or not to HCI. These experiences as guideposts in a journey to the central idea of the invited paper: that HCI should keep using the results of guidelines, user tests, and ethnographic methods describing context, but add to them the central notion of value to guide all the results, shaping HCI into a better design discipline.
After which the writer explictly declines to define the term value. He recommends to talk to the stakeholders about value so they will tell you what value is to them, and use the results of the discussion to guide the HCI efforts for the product or system being made. Value will rank what results from user testing are important and even which should be done, value will aid in incorporating design and computing breakthroughs into finished systems, value will properly put the scenarios and persona-defining efforts into the process without being too much of a distraction.
Probably a paper that should be reread over a couple of weeks to see if there is a there there. Every industrial HCI practitioner will already to tell the author that management carefully makes them focus on value in some form already.
