“I’ve had it!” Group therapy for interdisciplinary researchers

Abstract

In this workshop, we reflect on and share the fun and frustrations of working in interdisciplinary research. We ask participants to openly reflect on their experiences of interdisciplinarity. What approaches have worked and what have failed? In addition to identifying phenomena, we aim to sketch out the next decade of interdisciplinary research in computing, especially in HCI. The third paradigm of Human-Computer Interaction focuses on the qualitative aspects of use experience and the situatedness of technologies. This new orientation has drawn in researchers from various other research and arts backgrounds and traditions, including the social sciences, architecture and industrial design among others. Therefore, we consider this third paradigm to be inherently interdisciplinary. Through workshop participants' reflection of their own experiences, we strive to identify the common problems and pitfalls of interdisciplinary research, and to celebrate successes, as well as share best practices.

An introduction to IPR as a participatory design research method

“…Many teams have reported on experiencing personal growth and change as they work together with particating communities [12], and some unpack the moments in which power is deliberately left with or given back to the participants as part of the process [19]. We discuss this aspect of power in relation to the Person-Centred Approach more fully in [15] and [17], but the IPR method foregrounds it unmistakably, because although as design researchers we have started to hand the technologies for reflection to our users, for the most part it feels unnatural to us to also relinquish the task of interpretation and analysis.…”

“…Reflection is needed not only to enable a healthy researcherparticipant relationship, but to support individual researchers as they are challenged by the process [12], [22]; we need to reflect both on the user experience of participatory design, and on the design team experience.…”

Reflections on the heuristic experiences of a multidisciplinary team trying to bring the PCA to participatory design (with emphasis on the IPR method)

“…The Person-Centred Approach would support this attitude to inclusivity and non-directiveness, although it challenges the more normal scientific approaches to selecting research respondents. The process has also highlighted implications for supporting research teams, suggesting we need to recognise them as individuals as much as our research participants, who are likely to be impacted emotionally by their work [8], [16], [27].…”

“…Reflection is needed not only to enable a healthy researcherparticipant relationship, but to support individual researchers as they are challenged by the process [8], [16]; we need to reflect both on the user experience of participatory design, and on the design team experience. This paper accompanies two others also presented at UbiComp2015 on our use of Carl Rogers' Person-Centred Approach as a guiding framework for the research [10], [20] and an outline of the IPR method [9].…”