Aisling Kelliher
ABSTRACT
Public advice columns have provided information, satisfied reader curiosity, and ignited discussion since the late 1600s. The role of the advice columnist can be understood as a form of cultural intermediary who identifies and assesses individual problems of potential relevance to wider audiences. Online columnists are now joined in this analysis of the human condition by communities of contributors who offer supporting or alternative judgments and directives for action. We examine the potential of these online advice columns as a material resource for assisting novice designers in identifying and understanding authentic human problems from multiple perspectives. We present insights from a small pilot study where university students used this design method as a framing mechanism for proposing socio-technical interventions. We conclude with consideration of the value, optimal usage, and limitations of adopting this approach in generating design ideas and training novice designers.
- Katja Battarbee and Ilpo Koskinen. 2004. CoExperience: User Experience as Interaction. Codesign, 1, 1 (2004), 5--18.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Eric P. S. Baumer and M. Six Silberman. 2011. When the implication is not to design (technology). In Proc. CHI '11, 2271--2274. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pierre Bourdieu. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
- Nigel Cross. 1982. Designerly Ways of Knowing. Design Studies, vol 3, no 4, October 1982, 221--227.Google Scholar
- Paul Dourish. 2006. Implications for design. In Proc. CHI '06, 541--550. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Julie Annette Golia. 2010. Advising America: Advice Columns and the Modern American Newspaper, 1895--1955. Ph.D Dissertation, Columbia University, NY.Google Scholar
- Alison Green. 2016. Why did this company lead me on about salary? Retrieved February 20, 2017 from http://www.askamanager.org/2016/11/why-did-this-company-lead-me-on-about-salary.htmlGoogle Scholar
- W. Clark Hendley. 1977. Dear Abby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and the eighteenth century: The origins of the newspaper advice column. Journal of Popular Culture, 11(2), 345--352.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Susan McKay. 2008. Advice columns as cultural intermediaries. Australian Journal of Communication, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2008: 93--103.Google Scholar
- Peter Wright and John McCarthy. 2008. Empathy and experience in HCI. In Proc. CHI '08, 637--646. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Learning from Lonely Hearts: Using Advice Columns in User Centered Design Education
Recommendations
User-centered design, activity-centered design, and goal-directed design: a review of three methods for designing web applications
SIGDOC '09: Proceedings of the 27th ACM international conference on Design of communicationWhen conducting research with users in order to design web applications, the practitioner has a variety of methods from which to choose. This paper examines three such methods'User-Centered Design (UCD), Goal-Directed Design (GDD), and Activity-Centered ...
Tracing situated effects of innovative design methods: inexperienced designers' practices
DESIRE '11: Procedings of the Second Conference on Creativity and Innovation in DesignIn recent years the design research community has been active in developing new methods for user involvement and collaboration in the design process. The new methods, often called innovative design methods, correspond more to designer's genuine ways of ...
Theories and practice of design for information systems: eight design perspectives in ten short weeks
DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systemsStudents come to design education with different goals. Some seek to acquire expertise in design, others to learn specialized methods tailored to a research domain. Furthermore, students in the area of information system design confront a large ...
Comments