CHI 2003: The Value of Theorising to HCI?

The main thing to report from the CHI 2003 panel on "Post-cognitivist HCI: Second-wave Theories" was the disappointment that accompanied it. People working in the business might greet the thought of academic HCI moving beyond its cognitivist roots as an exciting development and so did much of the large audience. The talks this year were, of course, given just when attention has been turning to user 'experience', not just what people need to do to produce functionality, and immersive and ubiquitous computing. In fact, Don Norman was there to talk about emotion (still to be reported on UN, but watch this space). However, this panel had its roots in the radical interpretations of HCI of the early 1990s and these seemed not to have progressed to embrace the new digital environment.

The stated aim of the panel was to contrast work in the mainstream HCI community by exploring the language/action theory, activity theory, and distributed cognition and to articulate similarities and differences between these alternatives, which all take a broader cultural view of human activity.

The only speaker to win fans with this approach was Stanford University's Terry Winograd, who spoke last and defended much of the thinking that had gone before by saying 'theories without precise outcomes lead to changes in thinking, you think differently after reading them', and suggesting that their value can be assessed by looking at the questions they lead you to ask while designing. He said that these theories were already having influence on methodology but could be having considerably more.

The panel were asked how their theories differed from descriptions and challenged to give an example of something that their theory explained. This produced few satisfactory answers for the increasingly demanding audience, again with the exception of Winograd who explained how language/action theory could be used to ensure the completion of workflow.

Audient Ben Shneiderman was vocal in calling the panel to account and eventually Winograd told him that it was a strong demand on any theory that it be both rigorous and inspirational. But Shneiderman continued to push.

However, though some seasoned hands may have enjoyed the chance to debate the differences between theorising based upon Soviet social psychology, philosophy and sociology and the old more empirical ways of approaching HCI research, less experienced audients were looking for enlightenment and support. They were left wondering whether more culturally based ways of approaching HCI had any concrete guidance to offer.

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