HCI

1
HCI Multidisciplinary Research-opportunities
pitfalls

• Alistair Sutcliffe
• HCI Research Group
• Manchester Business School
• University of Manchester
• Coherence, Community and Strategy in HCI panel
• HCI 07 Lancaster

2
Multidisciplinary- Strengths

• HCI is the natural multidisciplinary science
• analytic, experimental as well as constructive
  design
• HCI community includes people with skills in
  psychology, sociology, art design, computer
  science, engineering
• Success in IRCs- Inter Disciplinary Research
  Centres- notably Equator
• Critical mass this conference in UK, CHI
  community world wide
• Strong industrial base- solving multi-faceted
  design problems

3
Weaknesses

• Community too diffuse, lacks focus
• Breadth but not depth, lack of intellectual
  rigour
• Poor theory, weak on generalisable knowledge, too
  much techno- invention (i.e. craft- remember Long
  Dowell 1989, 1998 ?)
• Competing against specialist and entrenched
  disciplines
• No community lobby (BCS HCI group)

4
Opportunities

• Government research agenda oriented to
  multi-disciplinarity
• Many research areas require systems level
  multidiscipline solutions, e.g. e-science
• Academic agenda may become more flexible post RAE
• HCI community is reshaping disciplines in the
  Design/IT/CS area- especially in new Universities
• HCI should establish itself as a (mutli)
  discipline- but-
• - needs better core science in Interaction,
  Communication, and Socio Technical Systems

5
Threats

• We divide into competing camps- beware lessons
  from the Information Systems community
• We fail to establish a core science that is our
  own- Interaction, Socio Technical Systems ?-
  beware the lure of post modernism
• We dont lobby effectively against entrenched
  positions- EPSRC, AHRC, ESRC colleges, government
  committees
• We dont build street credibility with a core
  science to enable such lobbying

6
Carry Home Messages

• A broad church multi-discipline subject is
  sustainable, but it needs depth
• A mix of scientific enquiry is productive-
  contextual case studies, experiments, designing
  solutions, architecture
• Multidisciplinarity has competitive advantage but
  requires active community collaboration
• But beware of the tipping point between Science
  and the Humanities- post modernism is NOT Science