Re: [IxDA Discuss] Semantics: Design Research and User Research
[cross-post, cross reply] :) In my experience in educational research, design research is generally the practice of designing a curriculum or another type of designed intervention and seeing how this new practice or artifact changes the environment and the practices that people engage in. In academic educational research, design research is sometimes frowned upon by both ethnographic oriented researchers and experimental oriented researchers because the ethnographic researchers see the intervention as disrupting the existing nature of the studied environment and experimental researchers have problems with the fact that the design is often iterated during the research process, leading to all sorts of confounds in the findings. Additionally, some design research is focused towards creating a particular product/curriculum/intervention, which is different than designing artifacts to answer more fundamental question about human psychology/sociology/development. This is a point of tension, in that the validity of findings for a particular product can be highly contextual and short lived compared to the answer to more fundamental questions that ideally have applicability across a number of contexts and time spans. Outside of the academic research environment, I see design research to be quite an exciting practice of integrating understanding people and environments with understanding the role of new designs in people's lives. It does seem much more pragmatic in application, which is why in the educational research context, teachers are often quite excited by design research practices. The findings are relatively immediate and actionable, if still methodologically questionable. In my world of definitions, I'm not sure if one category really is bigger than the other with regards to comparing Design Research and User Research. Sort of like saying apples include oranges, but oranges don't include apples. Design research is generally conducted within some sort of applied context. User research may be too, but user research can also include need finding, shadowing, observation, usability testing, etc. That be my 2 cents. ;) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] New Interaction Design Institute in Brazil
I´m proud to present the first brazilian Interaction Design Institute
called Faber-Ludens.
http://www.faberludens.com.br/?q=en
Faber Ludens Institute is a non-profit organization to promote Design
and Technology in Brazil by integrating Market and Academy. Faber
Ludens focuses on communication technologies, a prominent field for
research and education with high demands in our country.
Our Goals:
- To consolidate Interaction Design field in Brazil by
- Qualifying Interaction Design professionals and
- Becoming an international reference in Interaction Design
At this moment, we´re working with the local OpenOffice.org community,
researching social network appropriation, translating to portuguese
fundamental texts about interaction design, and offering a
Specialization Course on Interaction Design (brazilian Post-graduate
educational level).
We are open to collaborate with other research programmes, companies
and individuals.
--
.
.{ Frederick van Amstel }. Curitiba ´´ PR
¶ ...''|| www.usabilidoido.com.br
Instituto www.faberludens.com.br
.
MSN e Gtalk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\\...
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Semantics: Design Research and User Research
On Mar 29, 2008, at 1:13 PM, Rob Tannen wrote: So according to my definitions, User Research is really a type of Design Research, and not all Design Research is User Research. Is there any consensus on this (loaded question)? This is how I've always used the terms, although in academic circles design research can mean research about design. Sigh. User research is a huge part of design research, but there are methods that designers users to do research that have nothing to do with users. Competitive analysis, literature reviews, general environment/ content inquiries, etc. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] IxDA Thread Digests
Over the past few years our traffic has grown quite a bit, from around 50 posts a week in 2004 to as many as 50 posts a day in 2008. More than a few of you are grappling with how to cope with the rising tide of e-mail. That's why the website and the RSS feeds exist, but I know that some of you prefer to stay in contact via your inbox. So here's a new touchpoint. Thread digests are halfway between the full e-mail subscription and traditional daily digests. The daily digests that we were using before were pretty basic. They were a non- threaded collection of the day's posts and with fifty messages each they were getting hard to read. Here's the new digest design: http://www.ixda.org/sampledigest.html Instead of a digest for the entire discussion list, these are digests for individual threads. One e-mail per thread. Subscribers receive a limited number of digests three times a day (morning, afternoon and evening) for threads that have been active that day. This way subscribers can be notified of conversations while they're hot without being overwhelmed by the full torrent of e-mail. Digest Overview: - One e-mail digest per discussion thread - Limited to threads with five or more participants - No more than five e-mails per mailing (generally fewer) - Follow thread updates on an opt-in basis I've been testing it out for the past few weeks and things seem to be working well. If you'd like to give it a shot, head to your profile page on the IxDA site, go to your subscription options and choose thread digests. You can switch them on or off or switch back to full e-mail whenever you want. http://www.ixda.org/profile.php The thread digests are still in beta, so if you have questions or ideas for improvement, please get in touch: feedback at ixda dot org. // jeff Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
