Produce a Critique, Or, What and How to Write Continued from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I apologize that it has taken a week to resume writing in this series. Part of the problem was a very busy week, but another part of it was that I wasn’t quite as sure what I…
Building a Critical Interpretation This post continues a multi-part series on interaction criticism begun here. The series goal is to offer a useful introduction to criticism in the context of interaction design, targeted at interaction design professionals. In the previous part, I laid out some critical reading strategies, that is, techniques that critics use to…
Low-Level Interpretive Strategies, or, Things to Look For In Part 1 of this series, I covered three high-level critical strategies: thinking through associations, modeling the act of reading/interpretation, and identifying resonant passages/examples. Reading through them, I can imagine interaction design professionals thinking that all that sounds fine and well, but still not really knowing how…
Salon.com today has published a story on the recent book by Ronan McDonald, The Death of the Critic. I have not read the book, but I have some comments about the Salon.com story (or, more specifically, dialogue between its two main critics) and the topic in general. The primary thesis of the book seems to…
In dialog surrounding the reviews of a recent paper a colleague and I submitted, one of the reviewers, resisting our call for a greater emphasis on criticism in interaction design on the grounds that psychology already does it, asked the following question: How can you prevent the “anything-goes-subjectivism” when the judgments are not objective? This…
World-renowned violinist (and IU alumnus and professor) Joshua Bell agreed to a Washington Post stunt to offer a 40 minute solo concert in a DC-area subway station, to see if any of the DC commuters noticed the greatness around them. The Post did a long and thoughtful write-up, after filming the whole thing, and they…
Here is an article that I meant to share with all of you sooner. It is a framework for critiquing interfaces, from Bertelsen & Pold. You may find it helpful as you work on your papers. From a philosophical standpoint, I have some issues with it. But from a practical standpoint, I’m really glad it’s…
In both major readings for next week’s class, the concept of “materiality” looms large. In Lowgren & Stolterman, the first several pages talk about materiality–for instance, the notion that a carpenter knows that wood (his material) has special characteristics or “qualities”: wood can be cut into useful pieces (i.e., it can be shaped) but it…
Read more Materiality and Qualities (A Prelude to Next Week)
Interaction Culture 