Adopting Diffractive Reading to Advance HCI Research: A Case Study on Technology for Aging

Researchers in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) have long developed technologies for older adults. Recently, researchers are engaging in critical reflections of these approaches. IoT for aging in place is one area around which these conflicting discourses have converged, likely in part driven by government and industry interest. This article introduces diffractive analysis as an approach that examines difference to yield new empirical understandings about our methods and the topics we study. We constructed three analyses of a dataset collected at an IoT design workshop and then conducted a diffractive analysis. We present themes from this analysis regarding the ways that participants are inscribed in our research, considerations related to transferability and novelty between work centered on older adults and other work, and insights about methodologies. Our discussion contributes implications for researchers to form teams and account for their roles in research, as well as recommendations how diffractive analysis can support other research agendas.