Somewhere between Micro and Macro: A comment on the “Practice Turn” of HCI

“The Turn to Practice in HCI: Towards a Research Agenda” [1]⁠ is a CHI 2014 paper by Kuutti and Bannon. It presents a critical view on the (assumedly still) prevailing focus of HCI research on “interaction” and argues for the emancipation of an alternative paradigm which shifts the perspective to “practice”. The authors argue that the traditional “interaction” paradigm rather deals with momentary HCI situations in form of short-term studies in a controlled lab-setting – whereas the “practice” paradigm constitutes a holistic approach which also takes the context of the research subject into account. In this way the latter would be more suitable for qualitative long-term studies of overall activities “involving people, artifacts, organizational routines and daily practices” [1:3543–3544]⁠ The authors emphasise that they don’t seek to replace “interaction” by “practice” but rather summon to acknowledge the two views as valid alternatives.

Kuutti and Bannon’s main argumentation is based on the so-called “practice turn” in the social sciences, which is a legitimate measure for HCI as a multidisciplinary domain. This turn refers to a significant re-orientation in how the object of study is conceived. Instead of directly dealing with the individual needs of homo economicus or the social norms of homo sociologicus research based on practice theories expanded the view on human actions becoming meaningful in their respective cultural context. Consequently, such practices are studied as wholes in close-up situations. A similar turn from a well-defined but limited micro-level view (eg. controlled lab experiments) to a more realistic but complex macro-perspective (eg. research in the wild) can be observed in the evolution of HCI. In fact, Kuutti and Bannon point out practice-focussed approaches in IS, PD and CSCW. However, the different initiatives resulted in a rather loose eclectic mix of theoretical statements and personal standpoints. The authors criticise that practice-oriented research programs lack a common conceptual foundation which could make them “more systematic, comprehensive and reflexively conscious” [1:3550]⁠.

HCI is a relatively young and rather applied science which is still in a phase of theoretical self-discovery. Just as digital technology and human life have changed massively over the last decades, also HCI needs to adjust to new devices and application domains as well as to the spatial and social IT pervasiveness. This ongoing transformation requires researchers to constantly reflect on their focus and investigation techniques. Therefore, it is a constructive approach to offer such an alternative focus for refining the conceptual positioning of HCI work. In fact, Kuutti and Bannon’s appeal for an alternative research program has already met support by Entwistle et al. [2]⁠ who proposed the “Contextual Wheel of Practice” (cf. figure 1) as an exploratory and explanatory framework for sustainable HCI projects. However, “interaction” and “practice” are only one possible set of paradigms and these primarily focus on how research subjects are approached. They build on existing theories which suit individual projects, but they don’t necessarily provide an overall answer for HCI’s search for its own position in the academic world somewhere between theory and (design-)practice, between soft and hard sciences or even between micro- and the macro-approaches of research.

The Contextual Wheel of Practice [2]
The Contextual Wheel of Practice [2]

References

1. Kuutti, K. and Bannon, L.The turn to practice in HCI: towards a research agenda. Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems – CHI ’14, (2014), 3543–3552.

2. Entwistle, J.M., Rasmussen, M.K., Verdezoto, N., Brewer, R.S., and Andersen, M.S.Beyond the Individual: The Contextual Wheel of Practice as a Research Framework for Sustainable HCI. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’15, (2015), 1125–1134.

A paper that exemplifies HCI to me

Kuznetsov, S., Davis, G., Paulos, E., Gross, M., and Cheung, J.C. Red Balloon, Green Balloon, Sensors in the Sky. Proc. of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp’11), (2011), 237–246.
Link: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2030112.2030145&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE

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