Reflective design documentation

Peter Dalsgaard, Kim Halskov
2012 Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference on - DIS '12  
Interaction design researchers doing research through design face not only the wicked problems in the practice of doing interaction design, but also the wicked problems that exist in the practice of doing research. In this paper we discuss the use of a tool developed for the specific purpose of documenting design projects and prompting reflection about design events as part of doing research through design. Based on cases lasting from nine to thirteen months we address specific benefits and
more » ... lenges that we have encountered while employing the tool. Challenges concern roles and responsibilities, lack of routines, determining what to document, and finding the right level of detail. Benefits include support of shared reflection and discussion in on-going projects, the development, refining, and reflection upon research questions, scaffolding longitudinal and cross-project studies. Moreover, the benefits derived from entering design materials and other kinds of artefacts into a tool may not be achieved until must later, for instance when writing research publications. • Newcastle, UK Shipman and McCall [15] have identified three principal perspectives on design rationales. The argumentation perspective focuses on the reasons and considerations behind decisions made by individual designers or groups of designers. Its purpose is to identify flaws in the arguments for the design, with the goal of improving the quality of design decisions. The documentation perspective focuses on the design decision itself, together with information about who made the decisions, and when. The communication perspective focuses on documenting the communication throughout the process, by archiving e-mail messages, design documents, notes from telephone conversations, and so on. Across these three perspectives, Burge and Brown [3] mention eight aspects in which design rationales may be useful: design verification, design evaluation, design maintenance, design reuse, design teaching, design communication, design assistance, and design documentation. In all cases, a design rationale approach is supported by some kind of software tool, but the strategy for constructing the design rationale varies in several respects [11 p78]. One DIS
doi:10.1145/2317956.2318020 dblp:conf/ACMdis/DalsgardH12 fatcat:jonsjbcrpvdgvplqe5scpits7m