Hi Stefan, all:
I have been asked for months by a number of people about where to start
reading, if one wants to practice critical HCI but obviously can't go back
and get a Ph.D. in the humanities first. Inspired in part by this
conversation (especially Stefan's excellent list of readings), I finally
wrapped up a post that has been in draft form on my blog for months, which
is an annotated bibliography of readings for critical HCI. I hope it is
helpful!
http://interactionculture.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/interaction-criticism-how
-to-do-it-part-7/
Jeffrey
On 8/6/08 10:59 AM, "Stefan Holmlid" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> criticism is viewed as an extremely valuable practice for any design field.
> This
> is held to be a truism of the developing designer, such as the desk-crit in a
> learning situation.
> Interestingly, in other disciplines than interaction design at least, there
> has
> been a shift from a traditional institutionalization of critics (such as
> professional art critics in magazines and news-papers) towards a more open
> space
> for anyone to act as a critic. It's been a gradual shift, starting in fanzines
> and narrow community-based initiatives, and now appearing in blogs etc.
>
> As Jaffrey points out in his blog, there are a lot of commentary of
> interactive
> artefacts "out there". He also states that few can be considered to be
> critique.
> Tying that together with criticism in other fields, it points towards some
> important issues;
> - are there today informal critics that rules the judgments?
> - do we strive for an institutionalized relationship between
> critics-designers,
> or will an interaction critique be a practice for any designer?
> - is there already a language of critique that can be extracted, and who is
> supposed to develop the language of the interaction critique?
> - can professional critics contribute to the development of the field?
> - who is the audience of the critique (or are there several different
> audiences), and where do the critics meet them?
> These are intended as open questions, even though I realize that the way I put
> the words might give them a more negative feel than intended.
>
> There is a lot of work done in other fields, and I would suggest that anyone
> who
> is interested in the subject of criticism should read Blanchot (especially the
> essay Qu'en est-il de la critique, from Lautréamont et Sade), and
> forward-trace
> his work. And of course, Lodge's modern criticism reader.
> Dickie's introduction to aesthetics, Danto's 1964 article on "The artworld"
> are
> good starting points for discussions on art-theory and institutionalization,
> as
> is Åhlberg's "Concepts and conceptions of art". For those of you that read
> Swedish, Vilks' "Konst & Konster" and "Konstteori: Kameler går på vatten" are
> inevitable.
>
> keep up the good work!
>
> Stefan Holmlid
> ---
> ass professor Interaction & Service Design
> Linköpings universitet
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey
> Bardzell
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 2:59 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design Criticism
>
> Hi Bosse and Alireza,
>
> Thanks for the kind words and reference (Bosse). The interaction criticism
> blog series is a warm-up to a new paper on interaction criticism. While
> that's in the works, please not that we have, in fact, already published one
> paper on this topic, which can be downloaded from the ACM digital library at
> the following URL:
>
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1358628.1358703
>
> Additionally, we are working on a series of related papers to continue
> developing something of a theory of interaction criticism as well as to
> apply it in interaction design practice. We'd love to hear from anyone
> interested in the subject! In the meantime, enjoy the blog!
>
> Jeffrey
>
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