School of Communication and Culture

TY - GEN

T1 - Immodest Proposals

T2 - The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

AU - Bardzell, Jeffrey

AU - Bardzell, Shaowen

AU - Hansen, Lone Koefoed

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - This paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that to legitimize and make use of research through design as research, HCI researchers need to explore and clarify how RtD objects contribute to knowledge. One way to pursue this goal is to leverage knowledge-producing tactics of the arts and humanities traditions of aesthetics, key among which is a communitywide and ongoing critical analysis of aesthetic objects. Along these lines, we argue that while the intentions of the object’s designer are important and annotations are a good mechanism to articulate them, the critical reception of objects can be equally generative of RtD’s knowledge impacts. Such a scholarly critical reception is needed because of the potential inexhaustibility of design objects’ meanings, their inability to be paraphrased adequately. Offering a multilevel analysis of the (critical) design fiction Menstruation Machine by Sputniko!, the paper explores how design objects coproduce knowledge, by working through complex design problem spaces in non-reductive ways, proposing new connections and distinctions, and embodying design ideas and processes across time and minds.

AB - This paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that to legitimize and make use of research through design as research, HCI researchers need to explore and clarify how RtD objects contribute to knowledge. One way to pursue this goal is to leverage knowledge-producing tactics of the arts and humanities traditions of aesthetics, key among which is a communitywide and ongoing critical analysis of aesthetic objects. Along these lines, we argue that while the intentions of the object’s designer are important and annotations are a good mechanism to articulate them, the critical reception of objects can be equally generative of RtD’s knowledge impacts. Such a scholarly critical reception is needed because of the potential inexhaustibility of design objects’ meanings, their inability to be paraphrased adequately. Offering a multilevel analysis of the (critical) design fiction Menstruation Machine by Sputniko!, the paper explores how design objects coproduce knowledge, by working through complex design problem spaces in non-reductive ways, proposing new connections and distinctions, and embodying design ideas and processes across time and minds.

U2 - 10.1145/2702123.2702400

DO - 10.1145/2702123.2702400

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-4503-3145-6

SP - 2093

EP - 2102

BT - CHI '15

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

CY - New York

Y2 - 18 April 2015 through 23 April 2015

ER -