Guest Speaker: Corina Sas

Fieldwork-Inspired Implications for Design

Dr. Corina Sas, Lancaster University

A central tenet of HCI is that technology should be user-centric, with designs being based around social science findings about users. Nevertheless a key challenge in interaction design is translating empirical findings into actionable ideas that inform design. Despite various design methods aiming to bridge this gap, such implications for informing design are still seen as problematic. However there has been little exploration into what HCI researchers understand by implications for design, the functions of such implications and the principles behind their creation. We report on interviews with twelve expert HCI design researchers probing: the roles and types of implications, their intended beneficiaries, and the process of generating and evaluating them. We synthesize different types of implications into a framework to guide the generation of implications. Our findings identify a broader range of implications than those described in ethnographical studies, capturing technologically implementable knowledge that generalises to different settings. We conclude with suggestions about how we might reliably generate more actionable implications.

About Corina Sas

Dr. Sas is a Senior Lecturer in HCI, School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University. Her research interests include interaction design, user experience, designing tools and interactive systems to support high level skill acquisition and training such as creative and reflective thinking in design, autobiographical reasoning, emotional processing and spatial cognition. Her work explores and integrates wearable bio sensors, lifelogging and memory technologies, and virtual reality.