The epistemology & evaluation of experience-focused hci

The topic of study of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is constantly changing as people develop new uses for new technologies. In this thesis I present three contributions to the field of HCI that address these ongoing changes. These contributions are around the themes of epistemology, experience, and evaluation. I Begin by importing from the field of Science & Technology Studies (STS) the notions of epistemology – the study of how we know what we know – and comparative epistemology – the comparison of different ways of knowing. STS researchers work from an intellectual position outside their field of study: I propose ‘epistemological reflection’ as a way for HCI researchers to engage with questions or knowledge and validation while remaining within the field. I argue that epistemological orientations have impact throughout the research process, and that HCI currently lacks the vocabulary to discuss intellectual clashes on an epistemological level. My second contribution is a study of the term ‘experience’ in HCI, a discussion of its meanings in the field, and the identification of an emerging sub-field I call experience-focused HCI. Experience-focused HCI aims to design for the multiple, complex and situated experiences people have with technologies. This is not simply a shift from researching ‘tasks’ to researching ‘experiences’. Rather, it treats experiences as situated interactions formed in the course of a specific interaction, and recognizes any representation of an experience is inherently incomplete. Experience-focused HCI also implies engagement with themes of affect, aesthetics, the body, human practices, and the role of the artifact in knowledge production throughout an open-ended research process. My third contribution is a set of methods for the evaluation of experience-focused HCI, based on a discussion of the epistemological foundations of evaluation: successful evaluation not only validates the technology in question but also the topic of study and methods used to study it. Due to the open-ended nature of experiences, evaluation must shift from defining a priori metrics which can then be tested in laboratory situations to developing situated metrics through user experiences ‘on the ground.’