Fourth-Wave HCI Meets the 21st Century Manifesto

Podcast

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Central Problem

The paper addresses how human-computer interaction (HCI) can move beyond its third-wave focus on individual experience and meaning-making toward a fourth wave that explicitly engages with political values, activism, and collective action. The authors confront the tension between HCI’s historical emphasis on usability and efficiency versus the need for the field to address broader societal challenges including sustainability, social justice, and political agency. The central question becomes: how can HCI practitioners and researchers use manifestos and creative interventions to articulate and advocate for values-driven design?

Main Thesis

Fourth-wave HCI represents a paradigm shift where political values and activism become central concerns of human-computer interaction research and practice. The authors argue that manifestos—as performative declarations of intent that call communities to action—offer a powerful methodological and rhetorical tool for HCI to address political and ethical dimensions of technology design. Through their MANIFESTO! card game intervention at CHI’19, they demonstrate that creative, playful formats can generate genuine political discourse and collective meaning-making within the HCI community.

The thesis extends Bødker‘s wave framework: if the first wave focused on human factors, the second on workplace collaboration, and the third on experience and meaning, the fourth wave must grapple with values, politics, and the broader societal implications of interactive technologies. Manifestos serve as vehicles for this fourth-wave engagement because they combine theoretical positioning with calls to action.

Historical Context

The paper emerges from a rich history of manifesto-writing in design and art, from the Futurist Manifesto (1909) to contemporary critical design manifestos. Within HCI specifically, the wave metaphor introduced by Bødker (2006, 2015) provides the organizing framework, charting HCI’s evolution from cognitive engineering to situated action to experience design.

The early 2000s saw critical design practices by Dunne, Raby challenging design’s complicity with consumer capitalism. Simultaneously, participatory design traditions emphasized democratic engagement in technology development. The authors position their work at the confluence of these traditions, responding to Bardzell‘s call for critical approaches in HCI.

The CHI conference itself becomes a site of intervention—a major international gathering where the HCI community’s values and priorities are negotiated and performed. The 2019 conference theme provided an opportunity to test whether playful, manifesto-generating activities could catalyze fourth-wave discourse.

Philosophical Lineage

flowchart TD
    FuturistManifesto[Futurist Manifesto] --> DesignManifestos[Design Manifestos]
    Bannon[Bannon] --> Bodker[Bødker]
    Bodker --> ThirdWaveHCI[Third-Wave HCI]
    ThirdWaveHCI --> FourthWaveHCI[Fourth-Wave HCI]
    DunneRaby[Dunne and Raby] --> CriticalDesign[Critical Design]
    CriticalDesign --> FourthWaveHCI
    Bardzell[Bardzell] --> CriticalHCI[Critical HCI]
    CriticalHCI --> FourthWaveHCI
    Latour[Latour] --> DesignPolitics[Design and Politics]
    DesignPolitics --> FourthWaveHCI

    class FuturistManifesto,DesignManifestos,Bannon,Bodker,ThirdWaveHCI,FourthWaveHCI,DunneRaby,CriticalDesign,Bardzell,CriticalHCI,Latour,DesignPolitics internal-link;

Key Thinkers

Thinker	Dates	Movement	Main Work	Core Concept
Bødker	1954-	HCI	”When Second Wave HCI Meets Third Wave Challenges”	Waves of HCI
Dunne, Raby	1960s-	Critical Design	Speculative Everything	Design noir, critical design
Bardzell	-	Critical HCI	”What is Critical About Critical Design?”	Criticality in HCI
Latour	1947-2022	Science Studies	”A Cautious Prometheus?”	Design as politics
Tonkinwise	-	Design Theory	Various essays	Design futures

Key Concepts

Concept	Definition	Related to
Fourth-wave HCI	HCI paradigm emphasizing political values, activism, and collective action beyond individual experience	Bødker, HCI
Manifesto	Performative declaration combining theoretical positioning with calls to action	Critical Design, Political Design
Tableau vivant	Living picture; embodied performance used to present manifesto statements	Performance, Intervention
Creative subversion	Using playful or artistic methods to challenge dominant practices and values	Critical Design, Activism
Values-driven design	Design practice explicitly oriented toward articulated ethical and political commitments	Participatory Design, Ethics

Authors Comparison

Theme	Bødker	Dunne, Raby	Bardzell
Central concern	Evolution of HCI paradigms	Challenging design’s status quo	Criticality in interaction design
Method	Theoretical analysis	Speculative artifacts	Philosophical critique
Political stance	Participatory democracy	Anti-consumerism	Critical theory
Role of values	Implicit to explicit	Central and provocative	Object of reflection

Influences & Connections

• Predecessors: Ashby et al. ← influenced by ← Bødker, Dunne, Raby, Bardzell
• Contemporaries: Ashby et al. ↔ dialogue with ↔ CHI community, Critical Design practitioners
• Related movements: Participatory Design ↔ resonates with ↔ Fourth-wave HCI
• Opposing views: Traditional HCI ← challenged by ← Fourth-wave HCI

Summary Formulas

• Fourth-wave HCI: HCI must evolve beyond experience and meaning-making to explicitly engage with political values, activism, and collective societal transformation.
• Manifesto as method: Manifestos combine declarative rhetoric with performative action, making them ideal vehicles for articulating and advocating values in design communities.
• MANIFESTO! intervention: Playful card games can generate genuine political discourse by lowering barriers to participation while maintaining critical engagement.

Timeline

Year	Event
1909	Futurist Manifesto establishes manifesto as artistic/political form
2001	Dunne, Raby publish Design Noir
2006	Bødker introduces wave metaphor at NordiCHI
2013	Bardzell publish “What is Critical About Critical Design?“
2015	Bødker revisits third-wave HCI, anticipates fourth wave
2019	Ashby et al. deploy MANIFESTO! card game at CHI’19

Notable Quotes

“Fourth-wave HCI is about values and politics, about taking sides and making commitments.”

“The manifesto is not merely a text but a performative act—a doing that seeks to change the world it describes.”

“Playfulness and politics are not opposites; the card game format opened space for genuine discourse that more formal formats might have foreclosed.”

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Warning

This annotation was normalised using a large language model and may contain inaccuracies. These texts serve as preliminary study resources rather than exhaustive references.