Expressing design theory through annotated portfolios

The essence of research is to produce knowledge, and the essence of design is to produce artifacts. [3]

Bødker’s third wave of HCI [4] introduces a broad range of non-work characteristics to design; pleasure, ambiguity, lived-experience, and intimacy. The diversity of these contexts combined with the nature of inter and intra-disciplinary HCI provides a problematic foundation for a theoretical approach to be explored by designers. This week’s paper, Gaver [1] asserts that design cannot be theoretical quantified as natural sciences, and instead, design theory is embodied in the design process, and the practical process of artifact creation.

Gaver introduces a methodology for communicating designs research through annotated portfolios that are a “collection of designs, represented in an appropriate medium, and combining the design representations with brief annotations” [3]. This method adds context for researchers and provides an understanding of the research outcomes, successes and failings at each stage of the design process. These benefits illustrate how this method can be used to explore design theory through abstracted representations of the research undertaken.

Despite Gaver’s opinion that “annotations are not abstractions and in fact should be seen as purely indexical and inseparable from their particular artifacts” [1], they are ambiguous in nature; having short, defined descriptions appears informative on the surface, though interpretations and inferences may be made that disregards the curators’ intentions. Annotations are used to identify what occurred in the design process and within the design space, but do not ordinarily offer insight into why, and if they are, they are generalized statements. However, when used alongside other forms of research output – workshops, papers, and presentations – they offer contextual insight into the design process and share practical experiences of this process that other designers can use in their research.

I chose this paper as Janis had previously suggested Gaver and Bowers’ Interaction publication on annotated portfolios [2] for a separate project. Admittedly, I had not read this in depth, but thought that annotated portfolios had potential for representing design research, and was interesting in learning their origins, and practical purpose for researchers.

[1] Bowers, J. The logic of annotated portfolios: Communicating the value of ‘research through design.’ Proc. Symp. Designing Interactive Systems. ACM Press, New York, USA, 2012, 68-77.

[2] Gaver, B. and Bowers, J. Annotated portfolios. Interactions 19, 4 (2012), 40-49.

[3] Löwgren J. Annotated portfolios and other forms of intermediate-level knowledge. Interactions 20 (2013), 30-34.

[4] Bødker, S. When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges. Proc. NordiCHI. ACM Press, New York, USA, 2006, 1-8.