Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
55 results found in HCI.
- Infrastructural Inversion
- A methodological move, articulated by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, that foregrounds the usually invisible infrastructure underpinning everyday action — categories, standards, procedures, sile…
- Infrastructuring
- A theoretical lens from HCI, CSCW, and participatory design (developed from the work of Susan Leigh Star, Karen Ruhleder, Volkmar Pipek, and Volker Wulf) that treats infrastructure not as a finished a…
- Interaction Analysis
- A qualitative research method for studying knowledge and action in interaction with people, objects, and environments — typically through close observation of video or screen recordings, annotating vi…
- Interactional Synchrony
- The coordinated, often unconscious alignment of conversational partners' body postures, gestures, gaze, vocal rhythm, and facial expressions during social interaction. Research in social psychology an…
- Multimodal Sensing (Multi-Modal Sensing)
- The simultaneous capture of data through multiple sensor channels - for example, combining physiological signals (heart rate, galvanic skin response, skin temperature) with behavioural signals (motion…
- Multisensory Interaction (Multisensory HCI)
- Multisensory interaction is an HCI research area concerned with designing and studying systems that engage two or more human senses - sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, proprioception - simultaneous…
- Narrative-Flip Method (Narrative flip)
- A qualitative HCI research method in which participants first encounter a technology or artifact without knowing its origins or intent, reflect on it, and only afterwards are told its disability-led, …
- Non-Use (Technology Non-Use, Technology Refusal)
- A research tradition in HCI that takes seriously the choice not to use a technology — treating refusal, abandonment, and selective engagement as meaningful, reasoned behaviour rather than as failure. …
- Nudge (Nudging)
- A small change in the presentation, default, or framing of a choice that systematically influences decisions without removing options or significantly altering incentives. Introduced to behavioural ec…
- Perpetual Contact
- Perpetual contact is a sociological term coined by James Katz and Mark Aakhus to describe the state, enabled by mobile phones and later by ubiquitous internet messaging, in which people maintain const…
- Persona Design (Design Personas, User Personas)
- A user-centered design technique in which designers create fictional but grounded profiles of representative users — demographics, goals, context, pain points — to guide design decisions when direct u…
- Point of Infrastructuring (PoI)
- A concept from Pipek and Wulf's infrastructuring theory naming the moment at which users become aware of the technology they depend on - typically when it breaks, behaves unexpectedly, or no longer su…
- Positive Computing (Positive Technology)
- A design approach articulated by Rafael Calvo and Dorian Peters (2014) and extended by Riva, Gaggioli and colleagues that intentionally orients information and communication technology toward supporti…
- Posthumanism (Posthumanist Design, More-than-Human Design)
- A theoretical orientation in design and HCI that decenters the human as the sole agent of value and instead considers nonhuman animals, plants, ecosystems, and even technological artifacts as particip…
- Practice-based Learning (Iterative Practice)
- An approach to learning that organises instruction around short, repeatable cycles of attempting a task, receiving feedback, and refining performance, rather than around passive content consumption. P…
- Provocation (HCI) (Design provocation, Provotype)
- In human-computer interaction, a designed artifact whose purpose is to unsettle assumptions, provoke debate, or surface hidden values rather than to solve a defined problem. Provocations draw on tradi…
- Queer Theory in HCI (Queering HCI, Queer Design)
- The application of queer theory to human-computer interaction research and design, challenging heteronormative and binary assumptions embedded in technology. Queer theory in HCI questions how technolo…
- Relational Accessibility (Relational Access)
- An approach to accessibility that treats access as something co-constructed between people in everyday life, rather than a property of an individual user, tool, or environment. Relational accessibilit…
- Research Probe (Design Research Probe, Technology Probe)
- A purpose-built, partially functional artefact — often a software prototype, sensor, or interactive installation — deployed in a study not primarily to deliver a finished product but to provoke reflec…
- Research-through-Design (RtD)
- A research methodology, articulated by Zimmerman, Forlizzi, and Evenson (2007), in which the act of designing artefacts is itself the mode of inquiry. Knowledge is produced through iterative cycles of…