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September 21, 2005
The case for case studies (and DUX 2005)
The importance of case studies to user experience practitioners has received increased emphasis in recent years. For example, Dennis Wixon, ACM SIGCHI's Vice President for Conferences, argued in the July+August 2003 issue of interactions that the research literature largely fails the practitioner:
"If our discipline is serious about public discussion of methods as they are applied in industry, we will move to ... a broad-based case study approach, examining outcomes that are relevant to both practice and business. Our relevance as a discipline and our career success as practitioners depend on such a change."
AIGA's Experience Design community of practice was an early advocate of case studies, spearheading the development of a freely accessible, online case study archive, and teaming with SIGCHI for a 2002 case-study-oriented 2-day forum.
The current editors of interactions, both instrumental in making the case for case studies in recent years, say more in the July+August 2005 issue:
"Case studies are important; they're readable, they're engaging, they reflect on the same issues you do, and sometimes they present an approach that is so gloriously and confoundedly obvious you'll wonder why you didn't think of that. They also emphasize best practices. But don't take our word for it. Nancy Frishberg, one of the DUX 2005 program chairs said recently about case studies:'The case study format encourages more interplay between the images and words, because of the extended length (compared with some other conferences including CHI). It also helps remind practitioners that learnings from projects are worth recording and sharing whether they count those projects as unvarnished successes or not.'...The good news is there is an excellent conference where practitioners share best practices: DUX 2005 (www.dux2005.org). We encourage all practitioners to consider attending DUX 2005 at Fort Mason in San Francisco this November. The program consists of Design Case Studies, Design Practice Studies (less focus on evidence, more on process), Design Research Studies (evidence through research that provide guidance or prediction of results), and Sketches (work in progress)."
As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, DUX 2005 will feature approximately 60 agency, industry and academic case studies, research studies, practice studies, sketches and posters, from diverse cultural geographies, spanning a broad range of design exploration. So, if you are a user experience practitioner, give serious thought to spending your 3-5 November 2005 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. (And register soon.)
Posted by richard.anderson at September 21, 2005 01:37 PM