Making Things Apart: De-Constructive Practices in Interaction Design Research

This thesis aims to foreground how taking things apart can be a meaningful practice in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design research. With the ongoing elaboration of Interaction Design as a form-giving practice and its turn to materials, HCI is no longer concerned with function-oriented or user-centered design alone. Aiming for designs that build on rich expressions demands the development and articulation of new methods and practices. Asserting that the act of making is crucial to design, existing approaches typically emphasize the constructive, synthesizing aspects of design as it unfolds through making new connections between materials. I aim to contrast those notions with a complementary perspective that helps to foreground how dissecting, disassembly, and taking things apart are already inherent in many design and research endeavours. Drawing upon constructionist thinking in education and design, I frame those engagements as Making things apart, emphasizing the tight coupling of both modes of making -- putting things together and taking things apart. I further propose Deconstructivist Interaction Design as an attempt to look at historical episodes of deconstructivism in neighboring disciplines to further refine our existing design repertoire. Finally, I present two cases of research projects that emphasize expression over form as practical instantiations of this particular design stance: explorations into taste as playful modality and angular momentum in ungrounded devices. In articulating Making Things Apart I aim to complement constructive material engagements in Interaction Design research with a de-constructive mindset that embraces what becomes at hand through taking things apart.