Design Research - Reflection

This week’s theme was by far the most interesting one, and I really get the feeling that the whole course slowly moves towards the end. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an area that constantly evolves and demands more and more attention. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to attend a seminar or lecture this week since I was abroad, in New York City. To be able to make a proper reflection from this subject did I both discuss the literature with a classmate, who also visited New York and talk about HCI-questions with students from Long Island University and New York University I met during my trip.

It was really interesting to see how other students from other universities discussed this questions, and from what I understood did we not only have similarities, but also some differences. It felt like the American students had their main focus on design rather than functionality. They could get in to a deep heated argument for hours about which color was ultimate for a “home”-bottom on an idea similar to what Réhman, Sun, Liu and Li presented. But when questions regarding functionality were discussed, did not they have much to add and mostly sat quiet and listened. Of course can this be a pure coincidence, but when talking about how their universities taught compared to KTH was it clear that the teaching was not exactly the same.

After literature discussions with my traveling friend from class was it the paper from Fernaeus and Jacobsson that got stuck in our minds mostly, but that might be because she is not interested in football at all. Fernaeus and Jacobsson talk about physical programming, and how they made it much easier to program, using pictures and figures. That is in my opinion an excellent idea, programming should not be associated with nerdy asocial men, but with innovation and creativity. The authors even made a type of programming available for kids, where children could customize their toys and make commands that the toys acted on. That is exactly what I believe HCI is all about – how to make highly advanced prototypes usable for everyone, even young kids and/or old adults.

There are many things I feel like I have learned from this week’s topic, firstly that we can perceive a subject differently depending on personal characteristics, nationalities and education. And secondly that programming doesn’t necessarily have to be as “dull” as I sometimes perceive it to be. I hope that my knowledge in HCI has grown after this week, since I think it is an extremely important issue, and that I now possess the ability to think in a HIC-mindset.