What is the meaning of life? The most famous "sense-seeker" Viktor Frankl inspired our scientists of the AIT Center for Technology Experience to the paper "What is Meaningful Human-Computer-Interaction? Understanding Freedom, Responsibility and Noos in HCI Based on Viktor Frankl´s Existential Philosophy". Authors of the paper are Julia Himmelsbach, Quynh Nguyen, Olivia Zechner and Manfred Tscheligi from the AIT Center of Technology Experience and Diothima Berthel, Researcher at SYNYO.
We are proud to anounce that this paper received a "Honorable Mention" at the Online Conference DIS2022 (Designing Interactive Systems Conference). Stefan Greuter, Professor of Interaction Design of Deakin University, and Florian "Floyd" Mueller from the RMIT University in Melbourne (both were conference chairs of DISS 2022) anounced the paper awards last week at the conference. Only 16 papers got the "Honorable Mention". The preselection was also a challenge: Only 101 of 469 papers were accepted to the conference.
While buzzwords such as "meaningful interaction" are increasingly gaining prominence, there has been a lack of well-founded reflections on what finding and creating meaning in dealing with technology actually means. "With our theoretical concept, we close this gap by taking up and further developing the ideas of the founder of logotherapy and existential analysis, Viktor Frankl. To make the concept of "meaning" more tangible, we refer to what Frankl calls the three existentials of life: freedom, responsibility and noos," explains Julia Himmelsbach.
Four dimensions of these existentials were elaborated: the existentials as a result of technology use, their embedding in technology, their role in interaction and their role in (non-)use. Furthermore, the interconnectedness of the three existentials and their possible implications for HCI research were analysed. "With this, we want to contribute to a deeper understanding of meaning for HCI, from a scientific theoretical to a methodological perspective, in order to enable meaning-centred design," says Quynh Nguyen.
Congratulations on the successful publication and presentation at the DIS2022!
Watch the presentation of the paper here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijYwG437Wk
Find here the paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532106.3533484