The Turn to Practice in HCI: Towards a Research Agenda

The paper labels Interaction paradigm and Practice paradigm as the two distinct HCI paradigms that are required to be understood.  Interaction Paradigm focuses on momentary and ahistorical HCI situations that are not crucially connected to a particular time and space. On the other hand, Practice paradigm examines historical processes and performances, and longer-term actions which persist over time, and are not situated in time and space, depending on many features of the surrounding material and cultural environment.

One of the most significant developments in the social sciences is the turn to practice that provides a conceptual frame to organise a variety of issues emerging in more recent HCI research. Because what is meant by the concept of practice is debated, the authors use different  references to clarify it, and they also note that despite the diversity of the practice theory perspectives, they all share a number of ontological and epistemological commitments about practices as objects of study. Furthermore, the paper points that Information Systems has a long connection with practice-oriented theorising, as well as embracing with the field of computer supported compressive works. Moreover, the paper briefly presents a number of topics that have begun to explored by HCI researchers, all which they believe link to the turn to practice.

Finally, the authors conclude that the new emerging paradigm is concerned with the concept of computer-supported practices, and the interaction paradigm is still has value for answering certain HCI questions but from a practical point of view. Developing a set of methodological tools and guidelines as to how they should be utilised in the next step in order to provide an alternative, complementary theoretical lens which may illuminate the present confusion among both researchers and practitioners as to the direction of HCI.

Note: The paper entitled “Working with Teenagers within HCI Research: Understanding Teen-Computer Interaction” was selected from the ACM Digital Library.