Motivations for Interaction Design Research

In the last linked research session I mentioned three motivations for research. While this list isn’t exhaustive I think that it captures some of the core categories which may help you to navigate the often very complex world of interaction design research.

Technology Led

In some ways this category is a misnomer since all interaction design research tends to be motivated to some extend through technology. We make an assumption in this project that you will design something which uses digital networked technologies and this assumption is also a motivation. However, I use technology led here to refer to research which takes emerging technologies and asks “What cool stuff can we do with it?”. Recent examples of interaction design research in this area have been motivated by commercial products like the Wii and most recently the Xbox Kinect. Both Kinect and Wii (and specifically the WiiMote) made previously very expensive technology easily accessible. The Kinect’s ability to use optical 3D to build sophisticated representations of space and to recognize and track movement uses technology which before the release of the £100 device would have cost a lab 10s of the thousands of pounds. These devices offer many new interaction potentials and this sort of research tends to be playful but sometimes lacks the “so what factor”.

Problem Led

This is territory in which designers feel more comfortable. Problem driven research consists of finding a problem and then attempting to find a way of intervening in the problem to find a solution. The essence of this type of research tends to depend on the type of problem. The shift from Human Computer Interaction research to Interaction Design research is a recognition that in computer science that many of the User centered problems created by the design of computer systems are “Wicked Problems”. Engineering design problems tend to be well contained where the variables of the potential solution can be measured and an optimum found. Early HCI research (and some modern HCI research as well) tended to measure the efficiency of user actions when interacting with a system – e.g. how many clicks does it take to access this software tool or how much time does it take to perform this operation? Wicked problems, however, are diffuse – there are no optimum solutions but many possible approaches. Interaction designers increasingly tackle and seek out wicked problems of the sort we discussed in the last session. How can we support the communication of emotion in the classroom? How do we increase voter turnout in local elections?

Concept Led

Concept led research is more difficult to describe but emerges from a tradition closer to fine art practice than design. Concept or ideas driven work is exemplified by many of the projects that emerge from the RCA and the Interaction Design group at Goldsmiths. These projects are often speculations or provocations. They often question the role of technology or assumptions made by technology designers.