FDM3001 Interdisciplinary Perspectives in HCI 7.5 credits

Students and senior researchers meet to discuss the books in seminars. Each book is discussed by each student, who must present things they liked about the book, things they disliked, and ask a question to the group.

HCI is an interdisciplinary field with contributions from diverse disciplines including interaction design, computer science, and social sciences such as anthropology and sociology. Researchers from different disciplines can work together but often speak different languages and have different aims. There is value in coming together and creating common intellectual ground.

This course aims at exposing HCI researchers to different methods and epistemologies and critically engage with them from different disciplines. We will read books that cover topics as diverse as phenomenology, materiality, ethnography, and artificial intelligence. Often the books will already be interdisciplinary themselves, e.g. an ethnography of computer scientists.

Together, the books cover a wide range of modes of methods for understanding social phenomena and individual experiences related to technology, particularly Internet of Things and AI. The content is chosen to engage critically with the readers, providing different points of view related to practices of making and living with technology.

• Discuss critically and engage with concepts and academic writing outside of one’s home disciplinary ground
• Discuss interdisciplinary methods such as ethnographies, material perspectives and critical methods
• Formulate interdisciplinary research questions and be able to identify collaborations areas between different disciplines

Not retquired

Mack Hagood (2019) Hush: Media and Sonic Self Control  

Christoph Becker (2024) Insolvent: How to reorient computing for just sustainability 

Meredith Broussard (2023) More than a glitch: Confronting race, gender and ability bias in tech 

Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry (2024) Data Grab: The new colonialism of big tech and how to fight back 

Lucy Suchman (2006) Plans and Situated Actions: The problem of Human Machine Communication 

Neta Atanasoki and Kalindi Vora (2019) Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures 

Alan Blackwell (2024) Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI 

Michelle Drouin (2023) Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine by  https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545990/out-of-touch/

If the course is discontinued, students may request to be examined during the following two academic years.

• EXA1 - Examination, 7.5 credits, grading scale: P, F

Based on recommendation from KTH’s coordinator for disabilities, the examiner will decide how to adapt an examination for students with documented disability.

The examiner may apply another examination format when re-examining individual students.

To complete the course, students must have read 5 books and attended actively 5 seminars.

The grade is Pass/Fail.

To complete the course, students must have read 5 books and attended actively 5 seminars. In addition, one of these two criteria need to be fulfilled:

• Writing a paper on their research, submitted to some conference or journal, where relevant literature presented in this course is used to substantiate the research
• Writing a short essay with their views on interdisciplinary ways of knowing and of representing social and individual phenomena, and how it relates to their work

Madeline Balaam

• All members of a group are responsible for the group's work.
• In any assessment, every student shall honestly disclose any help received and sources used.
• In an oral assessment, every student shall be able to present and answer questions about the entire assignment and solution.