Historical analysis as a design tool
In “Historical Analysis: Using the Past to Design the Future“, Wyche and her colleagues shows how history can be valuable for ubiquitous computing research; namely, that it can employed to provided insight and methodologies in the same vein as anthropology or philosophy.
They point out in what respect historical analysis is relevant:
- sheds new light on recurring cultural themes embedded in domestic technology, and by extension, ‘smart homes.’ Questioning these themes has the potential to lead designers to rethink assumptions about domestic technology use. For example, rather than using “ease of use” as a guiding principle, elders described difficult, yet enjoyable aspects of housework that technology removed
- exploring the past helps us understand who we are today and where we are going. For ubiquitous computing, historical awareness can deepen designers’ understanding of the context they are designing for.
- history can spur designers’ imaginations by revealing the contingency of the present situation, rendering it less obvious and inevitable
- using history to defamiliarize the present supports designers in envisioning future domestic life less constrained by present-day cultural assumptions embedded in technology
- Like ethnography, history forces designers to become more aware of their preconceptions about a topic. Because of its ability to defamiliarize the present, history can be a powerful recourse for inspiring innovative computational devices and systems.”
They apply this approach to domestic technology use with some interesting techniques such as scrapbooking or the the use of personal histories of technology use (asking people to remember the first time they use a certain technology).
December 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
[…] Nicolas Nova points to research with this interesting […]
December 12th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I saw Susan present this paper at Ubicomp 2006 (did you? It’s where we met.) I appreciate how she situated the work in personal technology use and how it comes out of her own interests in domesticity and her background in industrial design.
My current approach involves examining the material qualities of urban infrastructural interfaces and what they manifest in terms of organizational and political decisions — which leads me to the French postal service at the time of their boom circa 1880, and to pneumatic tube systems in major cities in Europe, the US, Australia and South America from 1856 to 1953 or so. (To think there was a time that a metropolis could not imagine modernity without a tube system to quickly ferry paper from one point to another.) The whole “it’s a series of tubes” parallel is too obvious, but the insights for designers of systems that somehow have a physical point of presence are quite useful.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Thanks Molly, great to see that you stumbled across this lovely topic!
I am a strong proponent of taking into account past examples and history in design, although for me it’s more intuitive than formal.