When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges

Podcast

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Central Problem

The paper addresses how second-generation HCI theory can meet the challenges posed by the emerging third wave. As technology spreads from the workplace into homes, leisure, and all aspects of everyday life, HCI faces new questions about context, multiplicity, experience, and participation. The central tension lies between second-wave methods developed for work settings and third-wave concerns with non-work, non-purposeful, emotional, and cultural dimensions of interaction.

Main Thesis

Second-wave HCI should not be abandoned but rather transcended and integrated with third-wave insights. Bødker argues that the second wave’s emphasis on context, multiplicity, experience, and participation remains valuable but must be extended beyond workplace settings to embrace “people’s whole lives.” The thesis challenges the dichotomy between work/rationality (second wave) and leisure/emotion (third wave), proposing that HCI must address how technologies cross these boundaries.

The paper develops several key themes: multiplicity of interaction (users engage with configurations of mediators, not single devices); context and changing use contexts (mobile technology requires rethinking place-based assumptions); experience and reflexivity (drawing on McCarthy, Wright‘s pragmatist approach); and participation revisited (extending participatory design beyond workplace into everyday life).

Historical Context

The paper emerges as a keynote address at NordiCHI 2006, marking a moment of reflection on HCI’s trajectory. The first wave (1980s) drew on cognitive science and human factors, treating users as subjects for systematic testing. The second wave (1990s) shifted focus to groups, workplaces, and situated practice, drawing on activity theory, distributed cognition, and ethnomethodology.

By 2006, the third wave was emerging through work on domestic technologies, ubiquitous computing, and experience design. Researchers like Dunne, Raby challenged HCI’s instrumental focus, while McCarthy, Wright developed experience-centered frameworks. The proliferation of mobile devices, home computing, and internet technologies made clear that HCI could no longer focus solely on workplace interaction.

The Scandinavian tradition of participatory design, which Bødker helped develop, provides important background—its democratic commitments and user involvement methods needed updating for consumer technology contexts.

Philosophical Lineage

flowchart TD
    Bannon[Bannon] --> SecondWave[Second-Wave HCI]
    ActivityTheory[Activity Theory] --> SecondWave
    DistributedCognition[Distributed Cognition] --> SecondWave
    SecondWave --> Bodker[Bødker]
    ScandinavianPD[Scandinavian PD] --> Bodker
    McCarthy[McCarthy and Wright] --> ThirdWave[Third-Wave HCI]
    DunneRaby[Dunne and Raby] --> ThirdWave
    Bodker --> BridgingWaves[Bridging Second and Third Waves]
    Star[Star] --> BoundaryObjects[Boundary Objects]
    BoundaryObjects --> BridgingWaves

    class Bannon,SecondWave,ActivityTheory,DistributedCognition,Bodker,ScandinavianPD,McCarthy,ThirdWave,DunneRaby,BridgingWaves,Star,BoundaryObjects internal-link;

Key Thinkers

Thinker	Dates	Movement	Main Work	Core Concept
Bødker	1954-	HCI, Participatory Design	“When Second Wave HCI Meets Third Wave Challenges”	HCI waves framework
Bannon	-	HCI	”From Human Factors to Human Actors”	Human actors paradigm
McCarthy, Wright	-	HCI	Technology as Experience	Felt experience, pragmatist HCI
Star	1954-2010	CSCW, STS	Boundary objects concept	Boundary objects
Dunne, Raby	1960s-	Critical Design	Design Noir	Design provocation

Key Concepts

Concept	Definition	Related to
Second-wave HCI	HCI paradigm focused on workplace groups, situated action, and participatory design	Bannon, Activity Theory
Third-wave HCI	HCI paradigm focused on everyday life, experience, emotion, and meaning	McCarthy, Wright, Experience Design
Multiplicity of interaction	Users engage with configurations of multiple mediators, not single isolated devices	Bødker, Activity Theory
Webs-of-technology	Networks of technological artifacts that must be understood relationally	Bødker, Ubicomp
Boundary resources	Elements that exist at boundaries between contexts and enable crossing them	Star, CSCW

Authors Comparison

Theme	First Wave	Second Wave	Third Wave
Time period	1980s	1990s	2000s
Focus	Individual cognition	Workplace groups	Everyday life
Theory	Cognitive science	Activity theory, ethnomethodology	Experience, aesthetics
Method	Controlled testing	Participatory design, ethnography	Cultural probes, design research
Values	Efficiency	Collaboration, democracy	Experience, meaning

Influences & Connections

• Predecessors: Bødker ← influenced by ← Bannon, Engeström, Scandinavian PD tradition
• Contemporaries: Bødker ↔ dialogue with ↔ McCarthy, Wright, Dunne, Raby, Star
• Followers: Bødker → influenced → third-wave HCI researchers, experience design practitioners
• Opposing views: First-wave cognitivism ← challenged by ← second and third-wave approaches

Summary Formulas

• Wave framework: HCI evolves through waves—from human factors (first) to workplace collaboration (second) to everyday experience (third)—but each wave incorporates rather than replaces earlier insights.
• Multiplicity: Users never interact with single devices but with configurations of mediators that must be designed together.
• Context transcended: Context is not a fixed container but dynamic, and technologies increasingly cross boundaries between work, home, and leisure.
• Experience and reflexivity: Third-wave attention to experience must include reflection and learning, not just immediate sensation.
• Participation extended: Participatory design must move beyond factory gates into consumer technology and everyday life.

Timeline

Year	Event
1986	Bannon publishes “From Human Factors to Human Actors”
1991	Bødker publishes Through the Interface
1994	Star introduces boundary objects concept
2001	Dunne, Raby publish Design Noir
2004	McCarthy, Wright publish Technology as Experience
2006	Bødker delivers NordiCHI keynote on HCI waves

Notable Quotes

“The second and the third wave seem to be stuck on either side of the divide between work on the one hand and leisure, arts, and home on the other; between rationality on the one hand and emotion on the other.”

“I don’t believe that we get there until we embrace people’s whole lives and transcend the dichotomies between work, rationality, etc. and their negations.”

“We are still stuck with the idea that new design should replace existing mediators, rather than exist together with them.”

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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.