New Design Techniques for New Users: An Action Research-Based Approach

Novel ICT products based on the idea of phenomenologically situated interaction, along with the demands of their new users, raise the necessity of relying on new design and evaluation methods. Action Research, based on juxtaposition of action and research, is committed to the production of new knowledge through the seeking of solutions and/or improvements to “real-life” practical problem situations, and appears to well cope with these new demands: unlike laboratory experiments, struggling to maintain relevance to the real world, the “laboratory” of Action Research is the real world itself. In this paper we report on our experience within an Action Research project aimed at conceiving a novel children-oriented data gathering technique and using it for the context-of-use analysis of the TERENCE project, which developed a Technology Enhanced Learning system for children. Not only did our experience provide solutions for the problem at hand, but it was also the opportunity for a reflection on Action Research itself in the case in which the objective of the research is the definition of a new method for solving the problem.