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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Explanatory frameworks for interaction design

subject

description

Explanatory design means the practice by which design solutions are evidence-based. This practice has been the norm in engineering design, relying as it does on the laws of science, but much less attention has been paid to the necessity of abandoning intuitive practices in designing for the human element within technological systems. One reason for this may have been the variety of explanatory bases within psychology. There is no single psychological framework for explaining human behaviour; instead different types of problems must be solved by using very different types of explanatory frameworks and theory language. Cognitive capacity, emotions and mental contents may serve as examples of very different explanatory frameworks. Developing a theory of explanatory interaction design needs to be based on an improved understanding of the differences between explanatory frameworks.