Thrown from Normative Ground: Exploring the Potential of Disorientation as a Critical Methodological Strategy in HCI

We introduce the concept of disorientation as an emerging critical methodological strategy for design research in HCI. Disorientation is a phenomenological concept developed by queer feminist theorist Sarah Ahmed that acknowledges the spatio-embodied ‘orientations’ of societal and cultural norms and the queering potential of ‘disorientations’. We use humanistic close reading to analyze three examples from queer, feminist, and more-than-human work in HCI. Our interpretation focuses on how HCI researchers utilize disorientation as a methodological strategy for questioning norms of technologies as well as generatively, toward alternatives. We discuss the tenets of disorientation and several tactics we saw emerge in practice for other practitioners to build upon. Finally, we reflect on implications for the field, as disorientation requires vulnerability and willingness to undergo change, acknowledges embodied knowledge that emerges before interpretation, and suggests the possibility of generative and alternative orientations stemming from those epistemological commitments.