Interrelating Materials, Artifacts, Interaction Designers, and Users

The aim of this PhD thesis is to study relationships between central entities in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design in order to contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between them. Within my work, I specifically address users and designers as human actors, physical and digital design materials, as well as the interactive artifacts which are constituted of these materials, as non-human actors. Thereby, specific attention is paid to the scientific discourse on materiality, i.e., a quality of an interaction with an interactive artifact or material, which emerges only through this particular interaction. Additional to discussing in detail what materiality is constituted of, my theoretical contributions provide a framing for interactions between users and artifacts, including relations that reveal influences of technology on human actors even in case of non-use. Actor-Network Theory and media theory are the basis for this framing, as both allow to emphasize not only humans’ activity, but also those of materials or technological artifacts. In terms of methodological contributions, I illustrate a materiality-centered approach to data analysis, which alternately studies networks from the perspective of material and human actors to subsequently relate them with each other. The empirical investigations, which nurture the theoretical and methodological reflections, are situated in two distinct fields (i.e., older adults using technology, as well as operators interacting with factory equipment in a production environment), resulting in different perspectives on a variety of interactions. The consequences for the design of interactive systems, which were derived from these studies, may finally be considered the applied contributions of this thesis. All of these research contributions aim to support the scientific discourse on materiality in Interaction Design, HCI, and beyond.