A Workshop on "Making" Interdisciplinary Ubicomp Research

A workshop on Hybrid Design Practices will take place at the upcoming Ubicomp conference. The focus is close to the interplay of methods I applied in my thesis, mixing design science research methods with qualitative and quantitative inquiries:

The focus of this workshop is on hybrid design practices, approaches that draw on techniques from various fields to create novel methods of inquiry. The aims of this workshop are, first, to bring together a multi-disciplinary group of practitioners and researchers to learn from one another’s expertise in choosing and evaluating methods of design practice, and, second, to discuss implications of the underlying methodologies and epistemologies upon which these techniques are built.

The goals of this workshop, then, are twofold; first, to open up a space for reflection on current approaches towards interdisciplinary research and design in Ubicomp, and second, to develop a new vocabulary, both practically and theoretically, for “making” interdisciplinary Ubicomp research, thus, marking the study of hybrid design practice as an area of community-wide inquiry.

Relation to my thesis: My thesis has an unsual aspect characterized by some sort of hybrid design practices that led to the production of “factual” knowledge (such as the urban flows shown in some of the papers) and “design” knowledge (such as the strategies for improving interaction). My thesis also contains methodological novelties when approaching human interactions with ubiquitous geoinformation, such as models and concepts related to implicit and explicit interactions. I believe this diversity that provides complementary sources of evidence, strengthen the support to the results presented
in the thesis (i.e. strengthening the approach through the diversity). This is rather non-standard, but it is hopefully a recognized attempt for for “making” interdisciplinary Ubicomp research.