Hi all, some thoughts embedded below.
Hans Samuelson wrote:
> Hello list. It's another grey morning here in Montreal.
>
> [...]
> To return to the more specific case of interaction design, I was early
> obliged to face the rather pedantic and academic reality that the word
> 'interaction' is used in quite different ways by European and North American
> researchers and practitioners. In somewhat crude and stereotyped terms
> (naturally the reality is more complex), Europeans often weigh the social
> aspects of the term 'interaction' more heavily, while North American work is
> frequently skewed toward the technological aspects of man-machine research,
> or what has come to be known as 'interactivity' (consider, for example, the
> Interaction Design Group at interactiondesigners.com, where the web-based
> and web-centric discussion is extremely technical in its focus). This made
> the question of definition that much more difficult: who do you believe?
> Where are the primary sources?
Isn't it a matter of context? If the interactions of concern are
between human & machine, then perhaps a different body of knowledge is
required than if one were concerned with interactions between human and
human. There will be some commonality between these bodies of
knowledge, based on treating the interacting participants as "agents".
One might also consider whether the interaction is directly between
agents, or whether the interaction is mediated by something else (though
not necessarily an agent).
I don't think it's a matter of who you believe. I think it's a matter
of what the problem calls for.
> Based on my experience, I might accordingly suggest that some notion of what
> the bounds and parameters of what the researcher considers to qualify
> as'interaction' might in turn help in the definition of what a theory of the
> design of interaction might be (I can share some of the results of my work
> with anyone who might be interested), following which the equally thorny
> issues of the practical applicability of the resulting words, and research
> strategies and practices, and prototypes, models and communication
> strategies -- and the many other by-products of research -- might be better
> addressed.
This is another way of saying that context matters. Context even
matters with respect to the level of generality. There's no reason that
a general study of interaction cannot yield interesting/useful results.
But I do agree that wherever the boundaries are, there should be some,
if for no other reason than to ground the work and thus facilitate
communication.
> Failing that, and eliminating the ambiguous but intriguing 'interaction,'
> there seems to me some risk that we will find ourselves yet again looking
> out over that familiar chasm between design research and design practice, a
> gap which is littered with the debris of many an elegant bridge.
I shall resist the temptation of suggesting that the chasm isn't really
that big, and defer that discussion to some other thread, some other
day. :-)
Cheers.
Fil
--
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
350 Victoria St. Fax: 416/979-5265
Toronto, ON email: [log in to unmask]
M5B 2K3 Canada http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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