Taming the situationist beast

The interplay between arts and HCI has become increasingly commonplace in the past years, offering new opportunities for approaching interaction, but also raising challenges in integrating methods and insights from across a great disciplinary divide. In this paper, we examine the ways Situationist art practice has been used as an inspiration for HCI design. We argue that methods from Situationist art practice have often been picked up without regard for their underlying sensibility: reflection and improvisation in an activist socio-political context. We describe an experiment in incorporating Situationist sensibility in design and use it to elucidate the challenges that face HCI in truly integrating the arts. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m. Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous; K.4.2. Computers and Society: Miscellaneous. General Terms Human Factors. Keywords Situationism, art, reflective HCI, methodology.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ACMDIS
• Authors: Lucian Leahu, Jennifer Thom-Santelli, Claudia Pederson, Phoebe Sengers
• Keywords: ACMDIS 2008, HCI Design, Human Computer Interaction, Situationist Art Practice, Ways Situationist Art