FACT Foundations and current trends in Design Research and Interaction Design

PhD course

Place
IT University of Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7; DK-2300 Copehagen S

Dates
Spring 2010

Time
Five full day seminars during the spring 2010

Course Webpage:

Organizers
Dag Svanæs, Lone Malmborg and Tomas Sokoler (InC group)

Lectures
Dag Svanæs, Lone Malmborg, Tomas Sokoler and invited guests


Course description
The course gives the participants an overview of theoretical foundations and current trendsin design research for interactive media. The course is organised as five full-day seminars.Each seminar will be devoted to a central topic of the course, and one or more externallecturers will be invited to give their perspective(s) on the selected topic. The core of thecourse is a collection of papers/texts that work as a common ground for participants and lecturers.

Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites concerning background, except that the course is intended forPhD candidates doing their thesis in the area of design research/interaction design.

Program
There will be five full-day seminars on the following topics:

1. The design tradition and design research: From Bauhaus to current trends indesign research.
2. Interaction design: The big picture. How does interaction design relate to Computer Science, Participatory design, HCI, CSCW, the social sciences, mediastudies, cognitive psychology, ergonomics, philosophy, and other design fields?
3. Theoretical foundations of interaction design and design research. Can weidentify a coherent core of theory for the field? Candidate foundations will be discussed, including phenomenology, semiotics, activity theory and ethnomethodology.
4. Doing research on design: quality criteria for a PhD thesis. What characterises good research on design? What are the evaluation criteria in different research traditions: computer science, the social sciences, design, and engineering.
Whatis the role of artefacts in PhDs.
5. Examples of research on design. Some exemplary PhD theses in the field will be discussed in detail. The authors will be invited to present their work and discussits relevance to the topics of the course.

The program might change slightly based on the preferences of the actual participants, andrelevance for their thesis work

Credits
7½ ECTS - by completing the course, and the grading will be pass/fail.

Amount of hours the student is expected to use on the course
Participation: 5 full days in the seminars. (1,25 ECTS)
Preparation: Each hour in the seminar requires twice as much preparation (2,5 ECTS)
Essay: The participants should spend approx. half the time of the course on their individualessay (3,75 ECTS)

Participants
Relevant for a number of PhD students in the INC and DOIT groups. The course will be arranged with external lecturers from other academic institutions (e.g. DKDS, SDU), and anumber of PhD students from these institutions are potential participants.