• The experience of taking part
• Themes and genres of participatory experience
• Understanding the other
• Building personal relationships
• Belonging in community
• Participating in publics
• Dissensus, design, and participative experience.

In Taking [A]part, John McCarthy and Peter Wright consider a series of boundary-pushing research projects in human-computer interaction (HCI) in which the design of digital technology is used to inquire into participative experience. McCarthy and Wright view all of these projects -- which range from the public and performative to the private and interpersonal -- through the critical lens of participation. Taking participation, in all its variety, as the generative and critical concept allows them to examine the projects as a part of a coherent, responsive movement, allied with other emerging movements in DIY culture and participatory art. Their investigation leads them to rethink such traditional HCI categories as designer and user, maker and developer, researcher and participant, characterizing these relationships instead as mutually responsive and dialogical.McCarthy and Wright explore four genres of participation -- understanding the other, building relationships, belonging in community, and participating in publics -- and they examine participatory projects that exemplify each genre. These include the Humanaquarium, a participatory musical performance; the Personhood project, in which a researcher and a couple explored the experience of living with dementia; the Prayer Companion project, which developed a technology to inform the prayer life of cloistered nuns; and the development of social media to support participatory publics in settings that range from reality game show fans to on-line deliberative democracies.

• Preface; Acknowledgments; 1 Living with Technology; 2 Going on from Practice; 3 A Pragmatist Approach to Technology as Experience; 4 The Threads of Experience; 5 Making Sense of Experience; 6 An Online Shopping Experience; 7 A Pilot's Experiences with Procedures; 8 Experiences of Ambulance Control; 9 Technology as Experience; References; Index.

This book shows how to understand our interactions with technology: considering the emotional, intellectual, and sensual aspects of the user experience.In "Technology as Experience", John McCarthy and Peter Wright argue that any account of what is often called the user experience must take into consideration the emotional, intellectual, and sensual aspects of our interactions with technology. We don't just use technology, they point out; we live with it. They offer a new approach to understanding human-computer interaction through examining the felt experience of technology. Drawing on the pragmatism of such philosophers as John Dewey and Mikhail Bakhtin, they provide a framework for a clearer analysis of technology as experience.Just as Dewey, in "Art as Experience", argued that art is part of everyday lived experience and not isolated in a museum, McCarthy and Wright show how technology is deeply embedded in everyday life. The "zestful integration" or transcendent nature of the aesthetic experience, they say, is a model of what human experience with technology might become.McCarthy and Wright illustrate their theoretical framework with real-world examples that range from online shopping to ambulance dispatch. Their approach to understanding human-computer interaction - seeing it as creative, open, and relational, part of felt experience - is a measure of the fullness of technology's potential to be more than merely functional.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)