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3 authors, including:
Jeffrey Bardzell
Shaowen Bardzell
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Immodest Proposals:
Research Through Design and Knowledge
Jeffrey Bardzell
Informatics and Computing
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47408
jbardzel@indiana.edu
Shaowen Bardzell
Informatics and Computing
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47408
selu@indiana.edu
ABSTRACT
As a field, HCI must answer what sorts of knowledge outcomes can come from objects in (art and) design projects; if
we cant, we cannot legitimize RtD as a way of doing HCI
research. Naming it design-oriented research, Fallman [15]
argues that it should include problem setting as an important part, the possibility of exploring possibilities outside
of the current paradigm (p231). Stolterman and Wiberg [37]
describe how a concept design carries and manifests all the
combined knowledge that has influenced the design
(p104). Such knowledge is available to designers as well as
to the user, we might add; in these objects, paradigms are
being challenged, complex ideas are being explored.
Similarly, [38] argues: art has a crucial democratic significance. Artists can experiment with the politics of things:
they draw attention to a matter, turn it into an experience,
rewrite it [] enable people to see through the [hidden]
political role of things and play with it (p26-7). Again,
some objects can shift our perspective on and understanding
of a situation, not by prescribing a particular way of looking, but by drawing attention to existing practices by designing something that questions them. This is a more open
ended version of a similar view by [40] for whom RtD is a
type of research practice focused on improving the world
by making new things that disrupt, complicate or transform
the current state of the world. This research approach
speculates on what the future could and should be by producing design exemplars. The knowledge contribution of
RtD is to offer concrete exemplars of preferred alterity,
which are generative of further design thinking.
Research through design, then, is a thing-making practice
whose objects can offer a critique of the present and reveal
alternative futures, while remaining grounded in empirical
science, behavioral theory, contemporary technological
possibility, and socio-cultural practices. Similarly, [7,12,13]
all argue that some objects lend themselves to an encounter
aimed at reflecting on contemporary technology discourses
as much as it is aimed at providing a sensual experience. In
other words, as [7] write, works of digital art are experiments in interaction design (p24) that invite us to reimagine and redefine our contexts (p28).
Gaver [22] offers another view of RtD: instead of being
extensible and verifiable, theory produced by research
through design tends to be provisional, contingent and aspirational. [..] an endless string of design examples is precisely at the core of how design research should operate, and
[..] the role of theory should be to annotate those examples
rather than replace them (p938). For Gaver, design exemplars are prioritized over theory. This suggests that rather
than viewing RtD projects as instrumentally serving better
HCI or design theory, the goal should be to build the
strongest possible collection of design exemplars and then
to annotate the exemplars to help bring forward their
knowledge contributions. It also suggests that the corpus of
research becomes not a collection of papers (as in the ACM
Digital Library) but rather a corpus of designs, with texts
existing to explain thema portfolio of annotated designs,
much like artists exhibit their work in galleries, attaching
manifestos and artists statements to the exhibition. [21] go
as far as to argue that digital artifacts themselves should
stand as peer-reviewable forms of research, worthy of professional credit and contestable as forms of argument
(p407). These calls echo structures found in other aesthetic
practices where critics, peers, and buyers assess the objects
in reviews, critiques, exhibitions, and concert bookings.
While we acknowledge important differences among the
authors cited above, we want to stress several commonalties
to the formulations offered. We note that none of these
cism alongside the development of RtD exemplars and annotated portfolios maintains the hierarchy of design exemplars over verbal explications, a hierarchy that has been in
place in the humanities for centuries. But we stress that we
need more than first-person annotations of exemplars by
their own designers, although they remain very welcome.
THE MENSTRUATION MACHINE
reinforce but dont problematize social norms such as gender; that they do not attempt to offer cultural commentary.
This is a very limiting view of an objects power. If collections of RtD exemplars are to have impact on the research
community, we will collectively need to up our game.
RE-READING MENSTRUATION MACHINE
page. While another critic or reader will likely point to other details, everyone can agree that these details are there.
But by pulling these details into view, we have also taken
the first analytic step, because this selection of details has
implications for how we read the deviceif nothing else,
the details we have provided undermine the legitimacy of
the functionalist reading by demonstrating that that reading
contradicts the artists explicit intentions and fails to account for a very high number of concrete details that are
undeniably part of the device and its presentation to us.
4. Menstruation is a physiological event. The design operationalizes its menstrual simulation in strictly physiological and even medicalized terms. Doing so is part of its
pointsee proposition 2 above. Still, it doesnt accommodate crucial physiological aspects like menstruations connection to pregnancy (e.g., the skipped periods implications for an unwanted pregnancy) or the feeling of bonding
when periods of women living together, synchronize. The
connotation that nature works in mysterious ways is left out
of the design, even if it focuses on physiology.
5. Technological innovation is regressively gendered.
The designer explicitly makes this point, I wanted to illustrate how technology doesn't necessarily evolve fairly and
contrasts the approval processes of drugs for birth control
versus erectile dysfunction. Part of the designs impact is
that it normalizes a sexually marginalized position, and the
act of doing so could be interpreted as shedding light on the
fact that the opposite is closer to the norm. In this way, it
encourages designers more generally to imagine design
problem spaces from the perspective of those who are sexually (or otherwise) marginalized, that is, to normalize their
world by inscribing their norms matter of factly in design.
6. A feminine performance is not real unless it has the
possibility of a full menstrual experience. This proposition comes through most explicitly in the video, which is
centrally about the performance of the feminine. Specifically, the video proposes that to be a kawaii involves more
than a visual performance: one also has to experience menstruation, and this experience must in some sense be transformative: I thought you really really really really want to
know how it feels and Can you ever feel the same? This
proposition rules out, for example, wearing a pair of pants
with simulated blood dyed into the crotch. This proposition
also exists in some tension with Proposition 4, that menstruation is physiological, because the video suggests that
menstruation for the protagonist is much more than that.
Analysis of Menstruation Machines Propositions
commentary on the role of design thinking in making technologies for particular purposes. In doing so, it reveals that
there is much more to be understood about a design than the
functionalist reading. This expansion of interpretive understanding is crucial, because a perspective limited to functionality is not very useful for RtD objects whose purpose,
among other things, is to work on having fewer blind spots
in design research, or, as [15] puts it exploring possibilities
outside of current paradigms. Let us return, then, to the
question of how RtD might contribute to HCI research.
Designs as Reified Arguments?
If the knowledge provided by an RtD object cannot necessarily be viewed as a scientific explanation, a reified argument, or the sum of its functional meanings, then how does
it contribute to design research, knowledge, or understanding? Let us return to MM: once we started working with
But as we hope has become clear, our objective here has not
been to decode Sputniko!s intentions or even to unpack
all the combined knowledge that has influenced the design. It has been, rather, to seek to identify and communicate ways that MM can contribute to HCI and design
knowledge beyond the immediate contexts and goals within
and for which it was undertaken. Specifically, we have argued that the design can be understood to interrogate relations among technology, design, gender, taboo, and the
body, without reducing these issues to a universal theory,
bullet list of design implications, or dogmaand that this
interrogation is a form of knowledge production.
As we, in a design critical role, begin to develop these understandings, introduce new connections, propose new links
between design materials and cultural meanings, and so on,
the device comes to mean more than Ozaki intended. This
is no more a criticism of Ozaki than it is a criticism of
Shakespeare to say that Hamlet has remained relevant
across centuries and world cultures by transforming in significance in ways he could never have begun to imagine, let
alone sanction. But this also means that design annotations,
while an important contribution to RtD and design
knowledge more generally, is the beginning, not the end, of
the articulation of a designs contributions to knowledge.
MM neither serves to make nor to illustrate a single or particular argument: it does much more work than that. By
entering into a polysemous dialogue with existing design
languages, cultural norms, user experiences, and research
literaturewhich are publicly available to design researchers and not locked in the private mind of the designerMM
can co-produce new design understandings, if we have the
ability to read it. This latter skill is why competence in design criticism is so important for HCI: without it, it will be
difficult to bridge between the compositional, formal, semantic, and experiential composition of the design and the
conceptual nature of design research. In Seels words, in
order for the object to appear, it needs to enter a qualified
and engaged dialogue with an interpretative community.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been funded by Aarhus Universitys interdisciplinary research centre for Participatory Information
Technology, The Intel Science and Technology Center for
Social Computing, and the National Science Foundation
(#1002772). Thanks also to Jodi Forlizzi, Erik Stolterman,
and our reviewers for their constructive criticisms..
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