Jeffrey Bardzell Indiana University (version: August 2018) [Background: This is a handout for MS HCI/d students that I’ve been iteratively working on for a decade or so. Given the recent interest in this topic–see, e.g., howtocrit.com–I’ve decided to make it publicly available.] Introduction As both design practitioners and everyday citizens, we all critique. We do…
In a 2017 paper, Forlizzi, Koskinen, Hekkert, and Zimmerman called for a “divorce” between “pragmatic” and “critical” threads of “constructive design research” or CDR. At DIS 2018, they have a workshop around the theme of the paper. (Full disclosure: they invited me and my frequent coauthor Shaowen Bardzell to co-organize it, which we would have…
Read more Design Researchers Need a Shared Program, Not a Divorce
If I am right that HCI and neighboring fields will increasingly rely on the essay as a means of scholarly contribution and debate in the future, then it follows that the construction, articulation, and criticism of intellectual positions will become increasingly important. In Humanistic HCI, we talk about the essay, the epistemic roles of positions,…
I spoke to some colleagues about my earlier post, The Criterial Knowledge Argument for Research Through Design, who are themselves experts in research through design [EDIT: the researchers in question are Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman]. While these colleagues were generally sympathetic to the claim that art and design can contribute to knowledge in general and even…
This is going to be short, more like a provocation than a serious post. This quote really stirred me. What [philosopher Arthur Danto’s book] The Transfiguration [of the Commonplace] really attempts to do is to display a certain train of ideas, a certain set of discoveries and the questions opened up by them. It is…
Dewey’s notion of aesthetic experience is both reasonably easy to learn and use, and it has been very influential in user experience design practice and theory. Because I teach it at least once a year, and because I always seem to be drawing the same basic picture of it, I decided to make a more…
Read more A Visual Representation of Dewey’s Notion of Experience
On Friday, April 5, 2013, I saw something I would never expect to see: the passing of a critic reported as front page news in the New York Times. The critic in question was, of course, Roger Ebert, the celebrity film critic who passed away presumably (the obituaries aren’t clear on this) due to complications…
This post is a speculative exploration of an interesting position. I do not present it as my considered position; rather, I am just trying to think through some interesting thoughts. I encourage people to engage with me on this via comments. The gist of the issue has to do with what we take to be…
Read more The “Intentional Fallacy” and the “Affective Fallacy” of Interaction Design?
Periodically I post something on my course blog, Interaction Culture Class, that might be of broader interest than just the class. In such situations, I repost them on my personal blog. This is one such example, and its original post can be found here. I mentioned during class today that HCI luminary Elizabeth Churchill had an interesting…
Periodically I post something on my course blog, Interaction Culture Class, that might be of broader interest than just the class. In such situations, I repost them on my personal blog. This is one such example, and its original post can be found here. Every year that I teach this class, the first few weeks…
Read more A False Dichotomy: Critics and Aesthetic Judgments
Interaction Culture 