Why Research-oriented Design Isn’t Design-oriented Research

Abstract

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the discipline concerned with the implementation of Typically, HCI design, existing technologies, of evaluation, interaction, and interactive computing systems. researchers do not primarily study styles vehicles or interface solutions. On the contrary, one of the core activities in contemporary HCI is to design new technologies—prototypes—that act as through which the researchers’ ideas for novel and alternative solutions materialize and take on concrete shape. Despite this situation, there is very little discussion in the field on HCI as design discipline and what the role of design is as an activity in the research process. This paper is specifically about the element of design as currently manifest into HCI as a analyzing, and discussing what appears to be two competing traditions design and research; that of design-oriented research and research-oriented design.