Paper Reading #8: Interaction Design in the University: Designing Disciplinary Interactions

Comments
Aaron Kirkes
Luke Roberts 


Reference Information
Title: Interaction Design in the University: Designing Disciplinary Interactions
Authors: Gale Moore, Danielle Lottridge
When/Where: CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
This article discussed the field of interaction design and explored the implications of doing research that incorporates multiple disciplinary boundaries. The authors discuss the "third paradigm", called "phenomenological matrix", which is described to be the newest wave of HCI research, drawing on the fields of humanities and social sciences. The problem with this paradigm is that it does not fit well within disciplinary and departmental boundaries.

Different disciplinary terms are defined, such as interdisciplinary (activities in which individuals from two or more disciplines participate), multidisciplinary (research that involves more than one discipline, in which each one makes a separate contribution), and transdisciplinary (where the focus is the potential of interactions from different disciplines working together in the context of a specific problem/application). Each of these creates problems when concerning university processes of tenure and promotion, since it is difficult to evaluate contributions between departments.

Discussion
I found this article to be rather difficult to get through and understand. It was mostly just definitions of multiple similar areas, making it fairly confusing. I do like the fact that this paper was encouraging multiple disciplines to work together. In a university setting, many times the departments tend to be separate and not want to mingle, but by working together, more kinds of research and contributions can occur. Also, the authors suggested changing tenure/promotion guidelines to take this kind of departmental interaction into account, which seems like it could be very helpful to promoting multiple disciplines to work together.

A diagram of the contributions of multiple disciplines working together for a single cause. In this case, nanotechnology.
Source: x-journals.com