Jeffrey Bardzell | Indiana University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeffrey Bardzell

Interacting with Computers, 2016

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcherparticipant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements-a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment-using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers' positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcher–participant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements—a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment—using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers’ positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Research participants and researchers perform care for each other throughout the research process.

This is demonstrated through two long-term research engagements and a care ethics analysis of the relationships that developed between researchers and participants within them.

This care ethics perspective enables a more complete form of researcher self-disclosure, and is helpful when attempting to develop an understanding of empathic relationships with participants.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana …, 1999

Abstract: The early literacy challenge in Indiana is to increase the literacy skills of students ... more Abstract: The early literacy challenge in Indiana is to increase the literacy skills of students in Grades K-3 who are at risk for school failure. In 1997 the Indiana Department of Education began implementing the Early Literacy Intervention Grant Program (ELIGP)--close to half the ELIGP funding supported professional development for teachers and teacher trainers involved in Reading Recovery. The remaining schools had projects referred to in this impact study as Other Early Literacy Interventions (OELI). Examples of OELI projects funded ...

We examine the recent move from a rhetoric of “users” towards one of “makers”, “crafters”, and “h... more We examine the recent move from a rhetoric of “users” towards one of “makers”, “crafters”, and “hackers” within HCI discourse. Through our analysis, we make several contributions. First, we provide a general overview of the structure and common framings within research on makers. We discuss how these statements reconfigure themes of empowerment and progress that have been central to HCI rhetoric since the field’s inception. In the latter part of the paper, we discuss the consequences of these shifts for contemporary research problems. In particular, we explore the problem of designed obsolescence, a core issue for Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) research. We show how the framing of the maker, as an empowered subject, presents certain opportunities and limitations for this research discourse. Finally, we offer alternative framings of empowerment that can expand maker discourse and its use in contemporary research problems such as SID.

This paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that to legiti... more This paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that to legitimize and make use of research through design as research, HCI researchers need to explore and clarify how RtD objects contribute to knowledge. One way to pursue this goal is to leverage knowledge-producing tactics of the arts and humanities traditions of aesthetics, key among which is a community- wide and ongoing critical analysis of aesthetic objects. Along these lines, we argue that while the intentions of the object’s designer are important and annotations are a good mechanism to articulate them, the critical reception of objects can be equally generative of RtD’s knowledge impacts. Such a scholarly critical reception is needed because of the potential inexhaustibility of design objects’ meanings, their inability to be paraphrased adequately. Offering a multilevel analysis of the (critical) design fiction Menstruation Machine by Sputniko!, the paper explores how design objects co-produce knowledge, by working through complex design problem spaces in non-reductive ways, proposing new connections and distinctions, and embodying de- sign ideas and processes across time and minds.

This paper explores factors that lead to individuals’ adoption of the maker identity reproduced b... more This paper explores factors that lead to individuals’ adoption of the maker identity reproduced by a small-town hackerspace. This paper presents the findings of a 15-month ethnography of the hackerspace and a series of targeted interviews focused on the self-made tools of that hackerspace. These findings indicate that the formation of our subjects’ maker identities are shaped heavily by the individual’s ability to: use and extend tools; adopt an adhocist attitude toward projects and materials; and engage with the broader maker community. We also consider how a maker identity manifests itself in both making processes and visual stylizations of projects. We present and explore the formative roles of materials, the significances of imprecise tactics such as “futzing,” and the role of the hackerspace as a special place where “normal” attitudes and practices are suspended in favor of an alternative set.

Critical design is a research through design methodology that foregrounds the ethics of design pr... more Critical design is a research through design methodology that foregrounds the ethics of design practice, reveals potentially hidden agendas and values, and explores alternative design values. While it seems to be a timely fit for today's socially, aesthetically, and ethically oriented approaches to HCI, its adoption seems surprisingly limited. We argue that its central concepts and methods are unclear and difficult to adopt. Rather than merely attempting to decode the intentions of its originators, Dunne and Raby, we instead turn to traditions of critical thought in the past 150 years to explore a range of critical ideas and their practical uses. We then suggest ways that these ideas and uses can be leveraged as practical resources for HCI researchers interested in critical design. We also offer readings of two designs, which are not billed as critical designs, but which we argue are critical using a broader formulation of the concept than the one found in the current literature.

Proceedings of the 27th international conference on …, Jan 1, 2009

As HCI becomes more self-consciously implicated in culture, theories from cultural studies, in pa... more As HCI becomes more self-consciously implicated in culture, theories from cultural studies, in particular aesthetics and critical theory, are increasingly working their way into the field. However, the use of aesthetics and critical theory in HCI remains both marginal and uneven in quality. This paper explores the state of the art of aesthetics and critical theory in the field, before going on to explore the role of these cultural theories in the analysis and deployment of the twin anchors of interaction: the user and the artifact. In concludes with a proposed mapping of aesthetics and critical theory into interaction design, both as a practice and as a discipline.

In this paper, we look at the prominent World of Warcraft machinima community as an expert amateu... more In this paper, we look at the prominent World of Warcraft machinima community as an expert amateur online community and present a multi-part study of a canon of the most successful works (i.e., machinima videos) produced by this community. By focusing our study on its roughly 300 most successful examples, the determination of which we explain in the paper, we are able to highlight the evolving visual practices, tools, and aesthetic sensibilities of the community. Chiefly, our study identifies how creativity support tools and visual practices are inextricably linked and mutually support the in-kind development of the other. For WoW machinima and its producers, the affordance of creativity tools and the cultivation of visual skill synced at key moments and in powerful ways to support the rapid growth, experimentation, and refinement of amateur expertise at the individual and community levels.

In recent years, HCI has shown a rising interest in the creative practices associated with massiv... more In recent years, HCI has shown a rising interest in the creative practices associated with massive online communities, including crafters, hackers, DIY, and other expert amateurs. One strategy for researching creativity at this scale is through an analysis of a community's outputs, including its creative works, custom created tools, and emergent practices. In this paper, we offer one such case study, a historical account of World of Warcraft (WoW) machinima (i.e., videos produced inside of video games), which shows how the aesthetic needs and requirements of video making community coevolved with the community-made creativity support tools in use at the time. We view this process as inhabiting different layers and practices of appropriation, and through an analysis of them, we trace the ways that support for emerging stylistic conventions become built into creativity support tools over time.

With the rise of massive scale, globally distributed creative communities, such as Deviant Art, E... more With the rise of massive scale, globally distributed creative communities, such as Deviant Art, Etsy, and Minecraft, the role of creative leadership in sociotechnical systems is worth investigating. This paper presents a case study of one strategy Etsy, one such online creative community, uses to articulate the creative dispositions of the community's exemplar members: Featured Seller interviews. For this study, we report on a combined content analysis and close reading of Featured Seller interviews on Etsy.com, followed up with member check interviews. Our analysis highlights the demographics of featured sellers, the ways in they express their identities and creative processes, and how they position themselves within the broader Etsy community. Our findings demonstrate that Etsy's administrators provide both a platform and scaffolding for community leaders to co-articulate with them the creative ideals they believe will strengthen the bonds of the Etsy community.

In the past decade, HCI has become increasingly preoccupied with the deeply subjective qualities ... more In the past decade, HCI has become increasingly preoccupied with the deeply subjective qualities of interaction: experience, embodiment, pleasure, intimacy, and so on, an agenda sometimes grouped under the heading of "thirdwave HCI." Analytically understanding and designing for such qualities has been an ongoing challenge to the field, in part because its established theories and methodologies are comparatively weak at understanding and being responsive to human subjectivity. In this paper, we present a case study of a group of designers who have, in the past few years, revolutionized their domain-sex toys-by combining embodied pleasure, intimate experience, health and wellness, emerging technologies, high-quality design processes, and social activism. We consider the implications this case could have for researchers innovating on especially thirdwave HCI design theories, methodologies, and processes.

With substantial efforts in ubiquitous computing, ICT4D, and sustainable interaction design, amon... more With substantial efforts in ubiquitous computing, ICT4D, and sustainable interaction design, among others, HCI is increasingly engaging with matters of social change that go beyond the immediate qualities of interaction. In doing so, HCI takes on scientific and moral concerns. This paper explores the potential for feminist social science to contribute to and potentially benefit from HCI's rising interest in social change. It describes how feminist contributions to debates in the philosophy of science have helped clarify relationships among objectivity, values, data collection and interpretation, and social consequences. Feminists have proposed and implemented strategies to pursue scientific and moral agendas together and with equal rigor. In this paper, we assess the epistemologies, methodologies, and methods of feminist social science relative to prior and ongoing research efforts in HCI. We conclude by proposing an outline of a feminist HCI methodology.

Abstract In spite of decades of research on virtual worlds, our understanding of one popular form... more Abstract In spite of decades of research on virtual worlds, our understanding of one popular form of virtual world behavior-raiding-remains limited. Raiding is important because it entails intense, high-risk, and complex collaborative behaviors in computer-mediated environments. This paper contributes to CSCW literature by offering a longitudinal analysis of raiding behavior using system data manually collected from the game world itself, comparing two raiding teams as they worked through the same content.

Proceedings of the 28th international …, Jan 1, 2010

In this paper we present a critical analysis of player accounts of intimacy and intimate experien... more In this paper we present a critical analysis of player accounts of intimacy and intimate experiences in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). Our analysis explores four characteristics that players articulated about their virtual intimate experiences: the permeability of intimacy across virtual and real worlds, the mundane as the origin of intimacy, the significance of reciprocity and exchange, and the formative role of temporality in shaping understandings and recollections of intimate experiences. We also consider the manifest ways that WoW's software features support and encourage these characteristics.

CHI'08 extended abstracts on Human …, Jan 1, 2008

Though interaction designers critique interfaces as a regular part of their research and practice... more Though interaction designers critique interfaces as a regular part of their research and practice, the field of HCI lacks a proper discipline of interaction criticism. By interaction criticism we mean rigorous, evidence-based interpretive analysis that explicates relationships among elements of an interface and the meanings, affects, moods, and intuitions they produce in the people that interact with them; the immediate goal of this analysis is the generation of innovative design insights. We summarize existing work offering promising directions in interaction criticism to build a case for a proper discipline. We then propose a framework for the discipline, relating each of its parts to recent HCI research.

Abstract This paper aims to enrich the design research community's notions of quality by turning ... more Abstract This paper aims to enrich the design research community's notions of quality by turning to the techniques and values of master craftspeople. We describe and analyze interviews conducted with elite craft practitioners in the US and Taiwan to consider how they perceive and produce quality. The crafters articulate a consensus view of interaction with integrity.

In this paper we propose SKIN as an interdisciplinary design approach for sophisticated interacti... more In this paper we propose SKIN as an interdisciplinary design approach for sophisticated interactive surfaces, with an emphasis on their meanings and aesthetic qualities. SKIN: Surface Kinetics INterface, aims at integrating conceptdriven design process and exploratory critical engagement with forms and materials into current user-centered design approaches in HCI research. The procedures of developing three design concepts and prototyping one of them-an interactive lampshade-are described in detail to illustrate the proposed approach. The narrative of the design process is followed by a pilot study and designer reflection, suggesting the broader epistemological and methodological implications of this kind of approach.

Interacting with Computers, 2016

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcher–participant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements—a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment—using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers’ positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Research participants and researchers perform care for each other throughout the research process.

This is demonstrated through two long-term research engagements and a care ethics analysis of the relationships that developed between researchers and participants within them.

This care ethics perspective enables a more complete form of researcher self-disclosure, and is helpful when attempting to develop an understanding of empathic relationships with participants.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana …, 1999

Proceedings of the 27th international conference on …, Jan 1, 2009

Proceedings of the 28th international …, Jan 1, 2010

CHI'08 extended abstracts on Human …, Jan 1, 2008

We present a qualitative study based on interviews with makers engaging in a variety of critical ... more We present a qualitative study based on interviews with
makers engaging in a variety of critical making activities.
As part of our attempt to understand what critical making is
and can be, we are investigating what motivates makers,
that is, seeking to understand the sorts of qualities that
make making sufficiently attractive or valuable to warrant
their participation. Whether making for themselves or to
share with others, for fun or functionality, we found that
empowerment, often defined in opposition to passive consumerism,
was a recurrent theme in our interviews. We
discuss the seemingly cyclical motivational and reward
functions of maker empowerment in guiding and encouraging
making activities, and consider the impact of a refined
understanding of “critical making” as it can be leveraged
and supported for future HCI research and design practice.