Applied Pragmatism and Interaction Design

This chapter presents a translational approach to socio-technical design, as a new approach to the theorybased design of user interfaces, supported by a multi-stage process. A survey of the early work on theorybased design in HCI identifies the strengths and limitations of this approach. This new approach extends HCI with a socio-cultural perspective, and adopts creative practices from the fields of architecture and furniture design. The process consists of three stages: selection, appropriation, and translation that “map” elements from the socio-cultural domain to the HCI domain. Two interactive systems are used to illustrate the process, informed by ideas of American pragmatism. The chapter ends by discussing the strengths and limitations of the translational approach, and points out directions for further work. The “Copy Principle” accounts for the origin of all ideas.