The authors of this volume argue that design research needs more than mathematics: it needs many other vocabularies as well, including art, cultural studies, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and communication. This argument will not likely be news to readers of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, or to attendees at International Professional Communication Conferences, or to university teachers of technical communication, or to those who work in documentation and user support. But the book is of great interest in its treatment of the evolution of design research from the lab to the field to the showroom. It is particularly well-written, with excellent case studies, and it includes a chapter on building academic research programs that incorporate these ideas. It would be a profitable read for graduate students, faculty, designers of documentation and educational environments, and engineers who sometimes need a shake-up in their philosophy of designing for others.
As computers are increasingly woven into the fabric of everyday life, interaction design may have to change -from creating only fast and efficient tools to be used during a limited time in specific situations, to creating technology that surrounds us and therefore is a part of our activities for long periods of time. We present slow technology: a design agenda for technology aimed at reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance. The aim of this paper is to develop a design philosophy for slow technology, to discuss general design principles and to revisit some basic issues in interaction design from a more philosophical point of view. We discuss examples of soniture and informative art as instances of slow technology and as examples of how the design principles can be applied in practice.
Computational composite is introduced as a new type of composite material. Arguing that this is not just a metaphorical maneuver, we provide an analysis of computational technology as material in design, which shows how computers share important characteristics with other materials used in design and architecture. We argue that the notion of computational composites provides a precise understanding of the computer as material, and of how computations need to be combined with other materials to come to expression as material. Besides working as an analysis of computers from a designer's point of view, the notion of computational composites may also provide a link for computer science and human-computer interaction to an increasingly rapid development and use of new materials in design and architecture.
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