UnderStanding Interaction Design Research

Recently i came across a paper in the latest issue of "design issues".
The paper was titled "Triangle of design practice, design studies and Design Exploration" by Daniel Fallman
The author has very well explained the domain of interaction research, and particularly wats interesting is the classification into three main types of design practice, design studies and design exploration.
What was insightful in reading the paper was the good balance given to design researchers in interaction design domain.
The broad categories helps you put yourself in domains and helps you realize career directions when needed.

Here are some excerpts

Particularly when it comes to interaction design research, issues of aesthetics concern not only how something looks and feels, but also the aesthetics of the whole interaction including how something works, how elegantly something is done, how interaction flows, and how well the content fits in. Thus, design exploration is the activity area that allows the interaction design researcher to work with wholes—with complete, dynamic gestalts.



And about Design Explorations here

Design exploration often seeks to test ideas and to ask “What if?”—but also to provoke, criticize, and experiment to reveal alternatives to the expected and traditional, to transcend accepted paradigms, to bring matters to a head, and to be proactive and societal in its expression.



On Design Studies....
Most activities in this area strive to be part of “[a] systematic
inquiry whose goal is knowledge of, or in, the embodiment of configuration, composition, structure, purpose, value, and meaning in man-made things and systems.”


Herbert simons famous lines
“everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”


Interaction design, like all design disciplines, thus resides in people, methods, processes, and artifacts. Activities in this area therefore are centered on issues such as “construction as a human activity” (i.e., the study of how designers work, think, and carry out design activity, including the study of the methods and processes designers use); “how designed artifacts perform their jobs” and how they work; “the study of the artifacts that are produced” (i.e., how an artificial thing appears and what it means), following Cross’s model of design epistemology, praxiology, and phenomenology


In the end he sums up with possible discussions that may come out with his model.
Where more or less the following points are highlighted.

Design Practice deals with Particular
Design Studeis have less interest in particular but rather in what is general aspects, issues and elements.
Design Exploration poses the question what would an ideal artefact have??


After reading this paper i personally felt i belong to the design exploration end, however as rightly pointed out by the author most of the times we keep switching roles between the three and thats what makes interaction design so unique.

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