Output details

The logic of annotated portfolios: communicating the value of 'research through design'

Annotated Portfolios addresses a major issue in the critical reception of design research: how research oriented around the creation of artefacts can provide some form of accumulated knowledge for research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), design and digital media. A number of recent critical reflections are reviewed in the paper and the 'disciplinary anxieties', which this approach has aroused, are discussed. Drawing on arguments in the Sociology and Philosophy of Science, particularly Feyerabend's philosophical scepticism over methods and ethnographic studies of scientific work, it is suggested that design research build its own 'limited rationality' rather confront supposed norms for good research or criteria for rigour of unfamiliar provenance. Accordingly, a concept of 'annotated portfolio' is detailed as a means for capturing the family resemblances that exist in a collection of artefacts, simultaneously respecting the particularity of specific designs and engaging with broader concerns. The concept is demonstrated through annotating nine well-known pieces created by the Goldsmiths Interaction Research Studio. Treating this collection as an annotated portfolio, highlights, formulates and collates interaction design issues in a novel manner. Annotated portfolios are proposed as a viable means for communicating design thinking in a descriptive yet generative and inspirational fashion, without having recourse to standards which fit design practice uncomfortably.

Annotated Portfolios was presented at the major international conference which focuses on design-led approaches to the development of digital technologies. This led to an invitation to write a version for the leading professional magazine in the design and computing world, Interactions http://interactions.acm.org/. The article comprised the cover story of the magazine and provided its cover art, and provoked correspondence and replies in the subsequent edition. Inspired by the paper, a major international conference (DIS2014) has recently introduced a thematic track inviting the submission of annotated portfolios as an innovative form of academic publication.