Article

"It's Just a Method!": a pedagogical experiment in interdisciplinary design

Authors:

Steven Harrison,

Deborah TatarAuthors Info & Claims

DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems

Pages 261 - 270

https://doi.org/10.1145/1142405.1142445

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

What does a student need to know to be a designer? Beyond a list of separate skills, what mindset does a student need to develop for designerly action now and into the future? In the excitement of the cognitive revolution, Simon proposed a way of thinking about design that promised to make it more manageable and cognitive: to think of design as a planning problem [11, 29]. Yet, as Suchman argued long ago [32], planning accounts may be applied to problems that are not at base accomplished by planning, to the detriment of design vision. This paper reports on a pedagogy that takes Suchman's criticism to heart and avoids dressing up design methods as more systematic and predictive than they in fact are. The idea is to teach design through exposure to not just one, but rather, many methods---that is, sets of rules or behaviors that produce artifacts for further reflection and development. By introducing a large number of design methods, decoupled from theories, models or frameworks, we teach (a) important cross-methodological regularities in competence as a designer, (b) that the practice of design can itself be designed and (c) that method choice affects design outcomes. This provides a rich and productive notion of design particularly necessary for the world of pervasive and ubiquitous computing.

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Chivukula SGray CLi ZPivonka AChen J(2024)Surveying a Landscape of Ethics-Focused Design MethodsACM Journal on Responsible Computing10.1145/36789881:3(1-32)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
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Pivonka AMakary LGray C(2024)Organizing metaphors for design methodsInternational Journal of Technology and Design Education10.1007/s10798-024-09880-y34:5(1859-1877)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2024
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Index Terms

"It's Just a Method!": a pedagogical experiment in interdisciplinary design
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Touch screens
    2. Interaction paradigms
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. User centered design

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cover image ACM Conferences

DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems

June 2006

384 pages

ISBN:1595933670

DOI:10.1145/1142405

General Chair:
John M. Carroll
The Pennsylvania State University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Susanne Bødker
Aarhus University, Denmark
,
Julie Coughlin
The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

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Published: 26 June 2006

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June 26 - 28, 2006

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https://doi.org/10.48371/PEDS.2024.73.2.018
Chivukula SGray CLi ZPivonka AChen J(2024)Surveying a Landscape of Ethics-Focused Design MethodsACM Journal on Responsible Computing10.1145/36789881:3(1-32)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678988
Pivonka AMakary LGray C(2024)Organizing metaphors for design methodsInternational Journal of Technology and Design Education10.1007/s10798-024-09880-y34:5(1859-1877)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-024-09880-y
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