Living in Two Worlds: A Critical Ethnography of Academic and Proto-Professional Interactions in a Human-Computer Interaction Design Studio

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2014Studio pedagogy has been used broadly in traditional design disciplines for over a century, functioning as a signature pedagogy. This pedagogical approach is increasingly being adopted in non-traditional design disciplines, often without an understanding of why this pedagogy is effective from an instructional design perspective, or how its theoretical structures may function in disciplines outside of the design tradition. In this dissertation, I investigated a Master's program at a large Midwestern university in human-computer interaction (HCI), one of these emergent design disciplines, capturing the occurrence and underlying structures of communication as they emerged in informal dimensions of the pedagogy as experienced and enacted by students. To produce a critical ethnography of this site, I collected data as a participant observer for two academic semesters, compiling over 450 contact hours, thousands of photographs, hundreds of hours of audio, and 30 critical interviews that were semi-structured, focused on specific topic domains. Almost two-thirds of the contact hours were located in a non-classroom studio space, where I interacted with students as they worked and socialized. The remaining contact hours were spent in classroom observations during the second semester of data collection, in order to compare and enrich my understanding of the student experience of the formal pedagogy. Through an analysis of the structures of informal communication between students, I identified system relations that allowed for the constitution of student-led interactions in the studio space and encouraged reproduction of these interactions. Beneath these system relations, I discovered that students worked within two different fields of action: one oriented towards the academic community and related typifications of classroom and professor behavior; and a second oriented towards the professional community. The structure-system relations led by students took place within the proto-professional field, indicating a relationship with the professional community, even while the pedagogy placed students in the student role. Implications of this relationship between students and the professional and academic communities are explored through the lenses of studio education in HCI and instructional design, indicating a need for more research on adaptation of the studio model in new disciplines, and the evolving identity of students in relation to the professional practice of design

The Design Discourse of Professional Instructional Designers

The design discourse of professional instructional designers (IDs) exposes the inner workings of instructional design because collaboration is integral to instructional design practice. Despite the importance of collaboration, there has been little examination of the collaboration in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT). To examine IDs’ collaboration, I examined the design discourse of IDs in design meetings with clients through a content analysis of their discourse. Analysis revealed areas of design expertise that frequented those discussions. I collected audio recordings of five discussions between one or more IDs and a client. Overall, six IDs and five clients participated in this study. A codebook of 16 codes provided ten codes of design discourse that appeared in the data and six subsequent codes that emerged as discourse management strategies. Among IDs, the most prominent type of design discourse was problem solving. When aggregating design discourse types, discussions surrounding problems, users, and tools were the three most frequent types and accounted for almost three-fourths of the design discourse of these designers in these discussions. Further analysis of the design discourse types revealed that precedent and user experience were the most complex areas of design discourse, suggesting that expressing precedent and user experience are advanced design skills. An analysis by gender revealed that male and female IDs focused on different areas of design discourse in practice. Female IDs focused on user experience and problem solving while male IDs concentrated on problem solving and tools. These findings have implications for how learners in IDT are trained, how design expertise is recognized, and how the design process is understood

Knowledge Production and Social Roles in an Online Community of Emerging Occupation: A Study of User Experience Practitioners on Reddit

New occupations are emerging that have high job demand in the market, but lack a coherent body of disciplinary knowledge. For example, user experience (UX) design is an emerging occupation that has not been adequately supported by the traditional educational system. For learners beginning their undergraduate education, there is no concrete path to follow to become a UX professional, due to few UX-focused undergraduate academic programs. Online communities of practices have been recognized as important learning venues, even while institutions of formal education often lag behind in structuring knowledge production and distribution. However, little is known about how knowledge is generated and diffused in online communities in the context of emerging occupations with volatile knowledge boundaries. In this paper, we analyze knowledge production in relation to social roles in an online UX community. We show that knowledge production is highly distributed, involving the participation of community members of varied levels of experience. We discuss how online communities support the development of the UX occupation

Everyday routines and material practices in the design studio: why informal pedagogy matters

This study aims to improve understanding of the design studio as a setting where formal and informal pedagogies intersect. We argue that the informal dimension of learning has an essential but under-acknowledged role in contributing to the development of design students. Our research focuses on students' everyday routines and their associated material practices in both a proximate studio setting (physical), – such as making tea, speaking to peers, doing work – and in a distance (online) setting. We frame these activities as informal pedagogy that supports design learning and the development of designerly identities. While this study focuses on students' accounts of their everyday use of the physical studio (pre-pandemic), it is augmented with students' accounts of distance design education (during the pandemic). The disruption to studio practices, and the subsequent use of alternative environments to learn design, provided an opportunity to reconsider everyday routines and material practices at both proximate and distance settings. Supported by the infrastructure of the physical studio, we identify five 'functions' of informal pedagogy and use this to observe how these functions operated in distance settings. To understand the intersection between formal and informal pedagogy, we argue that binary terms are unhelpful and instead argue for an axis that runs from formal to structured informal to unstructured informal to social

Higher order thinking in design reviews

In this study we have grappled with how higher order thinking emerges in early stage design reviews, using an undergraduate dyadic review and a graduate review in a small group setting. Narratives, gambits and justifications emerged through a content analysis as forms of higher order thinking common in the reviews. We then mapped these reviews onto common frames of reference employed by teachers and students. Results depicted stark differences in the linguistic routines of the two teachers and two different sets of students. Each focused their higher order thinking from a primarily different frame of reference. Conclusions relate to opportunistic teaching strategies and the instructional tensions that the design review poses as a method for teaching the linguistic routines of the design review to early stage designers

Two Sides to Every Story: Investigating changes in cultural attitudes using discourse analysis in computer-mediated infidelity discussions

Despite overt cultural consensus on the reprehensible nature of infidelity, prevalence rates of infidelity behavior remain elevated— highlighting a substantial discrepancy between widely-accepted infidelity practices and actual behavior. To understand this incongruence and elucidate the cultural meaning of infidelity, communication surrounding infidelity warrants extensive scrutiny. The study employs methods of discourse analysis to investigate three Reddit threads from 2017, 2019, and 2021, that address infidelity. I make a case that recent changes in the discourse surrounding infidelity reflect changes in broader societal attitudes and accepted practices concerning infidelity. Using empirical methods of discourse analysis, I conducted three analytical procedures to describe the computer-mediated communication surrounding infidelity on Reddit. These descriptions focus on the structural descriptive statistics and modified speech act analysis of the user discourse. Findings indicate that the changes in the user discourse structure over the past five years signify cultural advancements toward more supportive perspectives of infidelity. The analyses evidence stronger convictions surrounding infidelity, yet they also reveal increased uncertainty regarding the criteria for infidelity. Overall, the Reddit discourse signals a potential cultural shift toward higher rates of self-disclosure and prosocial support for those who have participated in or been affected by acts of infidelity

Critique’s Role in the Development of Design Literacy in Beginning Design Education

This study examines the development of design literacy for first year architecture students in their beginning design education phase. It focuses on the contribution of design critique in the formation of repertoires for design thinking and doing for first year students. The inquiry is based on the findings of a qualitative case study involving 26 first year design students and six design studio tutors in a Bachelor of Architecture degree programme. Data was collected through focus groups, in-depth interviews, and studio observations, and was analysed using content analysis technique. Research findings indicate that design critiques initiate a transformation process in first year design students in which they begin to grasp how designers think and act. The collaborative effort of the tutor and students, sharing their ideas and re-constructing design knowledge, is realized through the development of new communication methods in design critique sessions. We suggest that when the development of interactive and critical communication skills is embedded in the formation of a community of learners during their first year in a design studio setting, 'learning to criticize' becomes a component of design literacy.This study examines the development of design literacy for first year architecture students in their beginning design education phase. It focuses on the contribution of design critique in the formation of repertoires for design thinking and doing for first year students. The inquiry is based on the findings of a qualitative case study involving 26 first year design students and six design studio tutors in a Bachelor of Architecture degree programme. Data was collected through focus groups, in-depth interviews, and studio observations, and was analysed using content analysis technique. Research findings indicate that design critiques initiate a transformation process in first year design students in which they begin to grasp how designers think and act. The collaborative effort of the tutor and students, sharing their ideas and re-constructing design knowledge, is realized through the development of new communication methods in design critique sessions. We suggest that when the development of interactive and critical communication skills is embedded in the formation of a community of learners during their first year in a design studio setting, 'learning to criticize' becomes a component of design literacy

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge