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Politics at the interface: a Foucauldian power analysis

Published: 16 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

At the birth of participatory design, there was a strong political consciousness surrounding the design of new technology, the design process in particular, establishing a rich set of methods and tools for user-centered design. Today, the term design has extended its scope of concern beyond the process of design and into how users interact with the designed product on a day-to-day basis.
This paper is an attempt to call to attention the need for a new set of methods, attitudes and approaches, along with the existing, to discuss, analyze and reflect upon the politics at the interface. By presenting a critical analysis of two design cases, we elicit the importance of such an agenda and the implications for design in doing so. We use the Foucauldian notion of power to analyze the power relationships in these two cases and to articulate the politics at the interface. We conclude by emphasizing the need for furthering this agenda and outlining future work.

References

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Bannon, L. J., Bødker, S. Beyond the interface: encountering artifacts in use. Designing interaction: psychology at the human-computer interface. Cambridge University Press, 1991. p. 227--253.
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Bardzell, J., Bardzell S. Intimate interactions: online representation and software of the self. Interactions, Vol. 15, Issue 5. ACM Press, 2008. p. 11--15.
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Bødker, S. When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges. Proc. of the 4th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: changing roles. ACM Press, 2006. p. 1--8.
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Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 An Introduction. Pantheon, 1978.
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Foucault, M. Truth and Power. Power/Knowledge. Harvester, 1980.
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Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Penguin, 1991.
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Friedman, B., Nissenbaum, H. Bias in computer systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), Vol. 14, Issue 3. ACM Press, 1996. p. 330--347.
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Mills, S. Michel Foucault. Routledge, 2003.
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Rith, C., Dubberly, H. Why Horst W. J. Rittel Matters. Design Issues, Vol. 23, No. 1. MIT Press, 2007. p. 72--91.
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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    NordiCHI '10: Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries
    October 2010
    889 pages
    ISBN:9781605589343
    DOI:10.1145/1868914
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    • University of Iceland

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    Published: 16 October 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. critical analysis
    2. foucault
    3. gender
    4. interface design
    5. politics
    6. power
    7. transgender

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    • (2023)Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design StrategyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581433(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)How Shortening or Lengthening Design Processes Configure Decision MakingNordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3546155.3547726(1-11)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
    • (2022)Empowering Participation Within Structures of DependencyProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022 - Volume 110.1145/3536169.3537781(75-86)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2022
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    • (2020)Voices of the Social SectorACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/336836827:2(1-26)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2020
    • (2019)Public Outcomes of Publicly Funded Socio-Technical ProjectsProceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 201910.1145/3363384.3363480(1-3)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2019
    • (2018)Gender Recognition or Gender Reductionism?Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173582(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
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