An Aesthetic Confrontation
Recently interaction-design.org sent me a preview of an upcoming encyclopedia chapter on aesthetic interaction, entitled “Visual Aesthetics in HCI and Interaction Design,” by Noam Tractinsky. I read...
View ArticleSomaesthetics Slides
Last week at CHI’2012 I was invited to respond to Richard Shusterman’s talk on somaesthetics. Since then, a number of people have asked me for my slides, so I’ve uploaded them here. For what it’s...
View ArticleCriticism, in Six Parts: Noël Carroll
Download a printable version. Noël Carroll is a philosopher of aesthetics, known for his work on the philosophy of film and in particular, horror film. A former student of George Dickie, Carroll is...
View ArticleOn Peer Reviewing Argument Papers in HCI
Here is my thesis, so if you skip the rest of this post, you at least know what I want to say: if you peer review an “argument” paper for HCI this year (also known as an essay), whether or not you...
View ArticleA False Dichotomy: Critics and Aesthetic Judgments
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...
View ArticleAesthetic Understanding
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...
View ArticleStudy of Film and HCI
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...
View ArticleThe Logic of Foucault’s “Author Function”
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...
View ArticleThe “Intentional Fallacy” and the “Affective Fallacy” of Interaction Design?
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...
View ArticleRoger Ebert and the Social Value of Criticism
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...
View ArticleA Visual Representation of Dewey’s Notion of Experience
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,...
View ArticleAn Erotics of Research
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...
View ArticleHCI as “Core” or “Relation”?
I write this blog post in response to a blog post published a week ago called “A Growing Problem in HCI Research,” written by my colleague Erik Stolterman. The “growing problem” that Stolterman refers...
View ArticleResearch Through Design: A Humanistic Conception
Note #1: This is adapted from a post I submitted to the PhDDesign distribution list’s thread on “Research through design.” Note #2: This is a preliminary attempt to formulate the perspective I am...
View ArticleThe Criterial Knowledge Argument for Research Through Design
NOTE: This post was prompted by a lively discussion on the PhD Design distribution list. Special thanks to Mike Zender for prompting me to flesh this out.. One of the methodological strategies I have...
View ArticleThe “Knowledge as a By-Product of Artistic Practice is Still Not Research”...
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...
View ArticleA Dark Pattern in Humanistic HCI
I have noticed a dark pattern among papers that align themselves with critical or humanistic approaches to HCI. I myself have been guilty of contributing to that pattern (though I am trying to reform)....
View ArticleCritiquing Scholarly Positions
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...
View ArticleThe Materiality of Research Practice
This is a quickie today. Recently (readers might have noticed) I have been reflecting a lot on my research practice. I have been trying to find those moments when I got things right and better...
View ArticleShould the critical-interpretavist researchers of CHI leave the design...
In this month’s Interactions magazine, there is an article I feel ambivalent about. It is Gaver and Höök’s “In Search of the Elusive CHI Design Paper“. I am ambivalent because there is much that I...
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