Refocusing the contextual turn: the forgotten construction of meaning at the interface

Authors:
Mikkel Jensen;Mads Søgaard
Affiliations:
University of Århus, Denmark;University of Århus, Denmark
Venue:
Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction
Year:
2004

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Abstract

This paper describes the gap between contextual understanding and design at the interface-level. It traces what can be termed the 'Contextual Turn of HCI', a turn from researching the-thing-in-itself, as epitomised by the cognitivist approach, to the thing-in-context, as observed in especially the Nordic HCI tradition. We argue that we have come to an excessive focus on context in preference to concrete phenomena of interaction, and we suggest that the reason may be the lack of a theoretical framework covering the concrete while complimenting the contextual focus. We propose Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics as disciplines where such a theoretical framework may be found.