Categories: IxD, experience design, graduate school, randomness, readings

In my Experience Design course, we discussed the three HCI waves in a paper by Susanne Bødker.

In summary, the paper addresses how HCI is shifting from interfaces (buttons, things, and menus) to experiences. The challenge is how can the second wave theories and conceptions be positioned to make a contribution as we mature to the third wave. Each wave has their own unique characteristics:

1st wave ~1980’s

• rigid, guidelines, cognitive emphasis, (ie. Don Norman)
• assumption “all documents belong to you”
• unity of everything on desktop
• human factors
• “user” mutually defined with the system
• methods: usability testing, experimental psychology (conducting controlled experiments)
• weakness: too narrow

2nd wave ~ 1990’s

• Work focused
• groups working with collection of apps
• work settings & interactions
• distributed cognition
• “human” - understanding user
• activity theory
• methods: ethnomethodology, design-as-science
• weakness: too focus on work, rationality focus

3rd wave ~ 2000’s

• Context / application broadened and intermixed
• new elements: culture, emotion, experiences
• focus on: home, arts, leisure
• “life world”
• methods: design-as-art, cultural studies, non-rational, non-goal oriented, ethnography
• weakness: “too artsy-fartsy”

When I glance over again the characteristics of the 3rd wave, I recall the Yahoo! Life article I read on TechCrunch last week. The Yahoo! Life product appears to encompass many of the 3rd wave characteristics.

As a graduate student, I think its important to be informed of these shifts in the design field, especially as we transition from academia into the industry. As we approach closer to the next decade or the 4th wave, I’m very curious to see how the 4th wave will play out. Is it a hybrid of the 2nd and 3rd wave or something completely different? Only time will tell…