Observations and inventions: new approaches to the study of humancomputer interaction

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Abstract
Dissatisfaction with the traditional model of HCI research borrowed from experimental psychology has lead to a number of interesting new approaches. One is the so-called ‘hermeneutic approach’ based on field research methods. Another is to apply existing theory from cognitive psychology. This paper is mainly concerned with a third discernible approach based around a study of the artifacts or inventions built to facilitate human-computer interaction. The effectiveness of different system features is explained by reference to the user's task. The investigation of ‘observation-invention pairs’ is suggested as a way of providing generalisations about user behaviour consistent with this approach. The observation part is a statement about the behaviour of users with some specified generality. The invention serves to illustrate the observation's implications for design and provides a heuristic for further inventions. The paper relates observation-invention pairs to other analyses of artifacts and concludes that they have a place as general statements of knowledge for HCI design.

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