Even with today being the second time meeting for Experience Design, there was sure a lot to be covered.

We read and discussed Susanne Bodker’s When Second Wave HCI meets Third Wave Challenges, and we held a short history lesson:

First Wave HCI Characteristics

The time period of this wave roughly corresponds to the 1980s

Typical concepts discussed at this time were: productivity, ergonomics, and efficiency

HCI work was typically done in the lab at this time

The context definition at this time is at the workstation, which usually was a mainframe

The user in this wave is just an individual (most likely a Computer or Cognitive Scientist), and designers focus on the cognition of this individual and create mental models of this one person. There was no talk about the environment, socialness, or the context in which the individual performed the work.

Second Wave HCI Characteristics

The time period roughly corresponded to the 1990s

Typical concepts were: Distributed Cognition, Monolithic Mediators, Rationality and Purpose of User, Context, Mobility, Boundaries, Contextual Inquiry, Groups, Work, Designers work with users and designs replace a whole system,

Context in this wave is established as a physical place

The typical technology was the birth and spreading of the PC

The user in this wave is the worker who is at work, and designers want to make work more understood and better able to fit in with the worker’s lifestyle.

Third Wave HCI Characteristics

The time period of this wave roughly corresponds to the 2000s

Context now incorporates culture, the human being, home, arts, and leisure

Technology has grown, and now has mass computing, like the iPhone

Typical concepts of this wave are: home, aesthetics, anti-work, aulture, “take it or leave it HCI”, cultural probes, Web of Technology, experience, emotion, not problem/need based, “multiple mediation”

The user in this wave is people who aren’t at work (e.g. the “human in culture” (quoth Prof. Bardzell), or the everyman).

Other points to take away

1) You can’t do design without theory. Period.
2) During the design process, whether one knows it or not, one is always taking a theoretical position.
3) The second wave of HCI has left some unfinished problems, and maybe the third wave is trying to go after new problems without tackling the unfinished ones of the second wave.
4) It is hard to know what a mediator is without a “true” definition (we discussed that it could mean language, physical artefact, or interface)
5) Bodker is a second wave HCI person, who potentially might be taken aback at what the third wave is trying to “do”
6) People don’t use tools in linear order in microtasks

Here’s some other notions we always have to keep in mind. Whenever we say the word “user”, it will always mean something different to the people we are talking to, no matter if they are designers or not. We have to operationalize this definition whenever we are using it, as it is extremely important to do so (maybe even write it in italics or draw a pony (I recommend a Clydesdale) !

In addition, we learned a little bit about the writing process. People write papers, not some omnipotent presence. We, as designers, should take whatever is written with a grain of salt until it is proven to our satisfaction. We must also find what the main claim of every paper is, as well, which is usually taken extra time to be written out by the better writers. Also, whenever one writes, the reader can find out a lot about the author from what is written.

Lastly, we need to go clubbing with the only one in our class who speaks Danish. We all know who that is.