Hierarchy-in-flux: Co-evolving a distributed user interface for orbiting robots

摘要

The role of context has been an important focus for Human-Computer Interaction research sinceudthe beginning of the Second Wave of HCI. While different theoretical frameworks within the HCIudcommunity have different approaches to analysing context, they do so always with the object ofudunderstanding its effects on human-machine interaction, often with the larger goal of generatingudinsights into future designs. The forces that shape context itself are typically ignored in theseudanalyses because they are not considered relevant to the interaction itself, which is the focus of HCI.udYet if these forces were to create different contexts for interaction those changes would be relevantudto HCI research. This suggests that HCI might benefit from techniques that analyse and design forudthe creation of the institutional structures that constrain human-machine interactions. We presentudthe notions of multi-scale analysis and multi-scale design as terms which describe approaches thatudseek to engage the different disciplinary proficiencies that create the context for interaction. Inuddoing so we make the case for a new kind of design education that strives to create multidisciplinaryuddesigners capable of harnessing the dynamics of systems at different levels ofudabstraction to achieve outcomes that exceed what we might expect from HCI alone.