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Q-methodology as a research and design tool for HCI

Published: 27 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

A "discount" version of Q-methodology for HCI, called "HCI-Q", can be used in iterative design cycles to explore, from the point of view of users and other stakeholders, what makes technologies personally significant. Initially, designers critically reflect on their own assumptions about how a design may affect social and individual behavior. Then, designers use these assumptions as stimuli to elicit other people's points of view. This process of critical self-reflection and evaluation helps the designer to assess the fit between a design and its intended social context of use. To demonstrate the utility of HCI-Q for research and design, we use HCI-Q to explore stakeholders' responses to a prototype Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) application called Vid2Speech. We show that our adaptation of Q-methodology is useful for revealing the structure of consensus and conflict among stakeholder perspectives, helping to situate design within the context of relevant value tensions and norms.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2013
    3550 pages
    ISBN:9781450318990
    DOI:10.1145/2470654
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    Published: 27 April 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. design methodology
    2. personal significance
    3. psychology
    4. qualitative methods
    5. quantitative methods
    6. user studies

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    • (2024)Creating Personas of Parents of Young Children Based on Balancing PrioritiesProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655790(105-118)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Privacy-Conscious Design Requirements to Support Older Adults’ Health Information SeekingHCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust10.1007/978-3-031-61379-1_13(188-211)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
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