Month: June 2019

Research Through Design Reading List

After posting the list of engineering ethics readings it occurred to me I also have a really nice collection of things to read from a course on research through design taught by Pieter Jan Stappers, which I took earlier this year. I figured some might get some use out of it and I like having it for my own reference here as well.

The backbone for this course is the chapter on research through design by Stappers and Giaccardi in the encyclopedia of human-computer interaction, which I highly recommend.

All of the readings below are referenced in that chapter. I’ve read some, quickly gutted others for meaning and the remainder is still on my to-read list. For me personally, the things on annotated portfolios and intermediate-level knowledge by Gaver and Löwgren were the most immediately useful and applicable. I’d read the Zimmerman paper earlier and although it’s pretty concrete in its prescriptions I did not really latch on to it.

  1. Brandt, Eva, and Thomas Binder. “Experimental design research: genealogy, intervention, argument.” International Association of Societies of Design Research, Hong Kong 10 (2007).
  2. Gaver, Bill, and John Bowers. “Annotated portfolios.” interactions 19.4 (2012): 40-49.
  3. Gaver, William. “What should we expect from research through design?.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2012.
  4. Löwgren, Jonas. “Annotated portfolios and other forms of intermediate-level knowledge.” Interactions 20.1 (2013): 30-34.
  5. Stappers, Pieter Jan, F. Sleeswijk Visser, and A. I. Keller. “The role of prototypes and frameworks for structuring explorations by research through design.” The Routledge Companion to Design Research (2014): 163-174.
  6. Stappers, Pieter Jan. “Meta-levels in Design Research.”
  7. Stappers, Pieter Jan. “Prototypes as central vein for knowledge development.” Prototype: Design and craft in the 21st century (2013): 85-97.
  8. Wensveen, Stephan, and Ben Matthews. “Prototypes and prototyping in design research.” The Routledge Companion to Design Research. Taylor & Francis (2015).
  9. Zimmerman, John, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson. “Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2007.

Bonus level: several items related to “muddling through”…

  1. Flach, John M., and Fred Voorhorst. “What matters?: Putting common sense to work.” (2016).
  2. Lindblom, Charles E. “Still Muddling, Not Yet Through.” Public Administration Review 39.6 (1979): 517-26.
  3. Lindblom, Charles E. “The science of muddling through.” Public Administration Review 19.2 (1959): 79-88.

Engineering Ethics Reading List

I recently followed an excellent three-day course on engineering ethics. It was offered by the TU Delft graduate school and taught by Behnam Taibi with guest lectures from several of our faculty.

I found it particularly helpful to get some suggestions for further reading that represent some of the foundational ideas in the field. I figured it would be useful to others as well to have a pointer to them.

So here they are. I’ve quickly gutted these for their meaning. The one by Van de Poel I did read entirely and can highly recommend for anyone who’s doing design of emerging technologies and wants to escape from the informed consent conundrum.

I intend to dig into the Doorn one, not just because she’s one of my promoters but also because resilience is a concept that is closely related to my own interests. I’ll also get into the Floridi one in detail but the concept of information quality and the care ethics perspective on the problem of information abundance and attention scarcity I found immediately applicable in interaction design.

  1. Stilgoe, Jack, Richard Owen, and Phil Macnaghten. “Developing a framework for responsible innovation.” Research Policy 42.9 (2013): 1568-1580.
  2. Van den Hoven, Jeroen. “Value sensitive design and responsible innovation.” Responsible innovation (2013): 75-83.
  3. Hansson, Sven Ove. “Ethical criteria of risk acceptance.” Erkenntnis 59.3 (2003): 291-309.
  4. Van de Poel, Ibo. “An ethical framework for evaluating experimental technology.” Science and engineering ethics22.3 (2016): 667-686.
  5. Hansson, Sven Ove. “Philosophical problems in cost–benefit analysis.” Economics & Philosophy 23.2 (2007): 163-183.
  6. Floridi, Luciano. “Big Data and information quality.” The philosophy of information quality. Springer, Cham, 2014. 303-315.
  7. Doorn, Neelke, Paolo Gardoni, and Colleen Murphy. “A multidisciplinary definition and evaluation of resilience: The role of social justice in defining resilience.” Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure (2018): 1-12.

We also got a draft of the intro chapter to a book on engineering and ethics that Behnam is writing. That looks very promising as well but I can’t share yet for obvious reasons.