Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

One of the frustrating things about academic research is that, often times, it’s really only accessible to other academics. It is inaccesible to those from outside academia both because of the format it takes, as well as where it lives – which is usually behind a paywall. One of the most frustrating things about articles published in industry contexts is that generally speaking they make no reference to past work, or others who are doing similar work in the field, with each contribution sitting on its own. This leads to a pattern of re-invention and a tendency towards industry leaders claiming unique exerpertise rather than building up and sharing a collective body of knowledge. There a very valid reasons for why both of these situations exist and it is certainly no criticism of the individuals involved, but its not necessarily ideal (for more on the potentially rich but currently fraught relationship between the two domains of industry and academia see the references at the bottom of this post, of course you need access to an academic library to view most them). That is in part why the project by Interaction-Design.org to develop an Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is so impressive to me.

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Hamilton Service Jam 2012

I was disappointed to miss last years Global Service Design Jam so I’m keen to make it to my local one here in NZ this year – hosted by Wintec in Hamilton and organised by Matt Currie of divergent (@divergent_nz). The Global Service Jam, done in the same spirit as the Mozilla Design Jams,  involves a potentially random group of people coming together for 48hours to create something – in this case a prototype of a new service.

They are the kinds of meet ups and distributed global conversations / productions that are only possible thanks to social technologies – but they pick up on a general spirit of sharing, openness, fun and collaboration that are inherent to people who like to create things together, and who recognise the possibilities of starting from nothing to build – who knows what.

The Service Jam runs (roughly)  5pm 24th February to 5pm 26th February

Find your local event on the Global Service Jam site, or

Register for the Hamilton event

Follow us via Twitter @GSJHamilton
or See more info on Our Facebook Page

Developing ReachOut.com’s Future Service Strategy

[edit: the slides have been temporarily removed - back up as soon as possible! apologies]
The slides are up from our recent presentation at Ozchi in early December. “Developing ReachOut.com’s Future Strategy: A case study in user centred design methods to marry user led and public health program development approaches”. (I say “our” but Kitty and Mim did all the work pulling the pres together I think!). It presents a case study on how user-centred and participatory design methodologies helped bring young people and mental health professionals together to create the future service strategy of Inspires online youth mental health service, ReachOut.

One of the reasons I love working with Inspire is that their approach is inherently participatory and young people play an active and influential role in all aspects of the organisation from governance and hiring to service design, delivery and evaluation. Everything they do is user-led and co-designed, but it is also evidence-based. This means that all design decisions are based on extensive research, integrated with and driven by clinical and social objectives, research, theories and knowledge and the impacts of services and interventions are continually evaluated and iterated over-time. The level of rigour in this presents a lot of design challenges, but is also hugely exciting and rewarding!

Big props to Kitty Rahilly who did a really fantastic job of presenting and representing and making available this annotated slide deck.