1. for Situationally Appropriate Interactions
DESIGN RESEARCH
for Situationally Appropriate Interactions
Jodi Forlizzi
HCII and School of Design
September, 2001

2. What I’ll talk about today...
What is design research?
My history of interest in Situationally Appropriate Interactions
Lessons learned from research in kinetic typography
What’s next?

3. What is design research?
A new field
More than doing research related to a specific product or conceptual outcome
Three types – case-by-case – applied – theoretical

4. Case-by-case research
Solution of individual problems
Study of individual cases
Outcome is generalization that makes a contribution to the field of design – for example, case studies or products

5. Case-by-case research

6. Applied research Investigation of a group of problems or phenomena
Discover rules of thumb, principles, or processes that can be shared across a range of cases
Outcomes: academic papers, demonstration products, design principles

7. Applied research

8. Theoretical research
Investigation of principles and causes related to a particular problem
Involves development of theory or speculation related to the making of products, investigating the practice and consequences of design
Outcomes: papers and contributions to design theory

9. Theoretical research

10. Characterizing approaches
Two basic flavors —
Make a bunch of stuff to learn new design theories or principles
Observe a human need and try to develop something to address it
Today’s example is a case of the former
Are there advantages and drawbacks in approaches?

11. A history of interest in SIA
Overarching research questions:
What dynamic visual and auditory events affect human perception?
Can we design such events systematically to evoke intended responses?

12. Kinetic typography
Research done as master’s student in with Suguru Ishizaki and Shannon Ford
First three months very free-form
Largely unspecified research plan
“Five-minute” writing task each day

14. Kinetic typography: lessons learned
We need two levels of investigation: applied and theoretical research
Applied research to address perceptual and aesthetic issues – applications for elements besides textual ones
Theoretical research to address response, context, appropriateness, and replicability

15. What’s next? Look at a body of examples in the world
Make more examples from other domains
Still limited to largely conceptual stuff

16. What’s next? Abstraction of issues
New insights made more robust by input from other disciplines
Current interest: human visual perception

17. DISCUSSION