A Successful Failure or a Failed Success?

Abstract

We reflect back on a previous paper writing process, where we initially set out to share experiences of forest walks and discuss how these were part of a design process for an application around sustainable grocery shopping. We describe our inability in finding a working way of articulating the experiences and the design process led us into route of unintended rationalization and systematization. Instead of strengthening our arguments and articulation of the value in our forest walks, we step by step rationalized our design decisions by tying them to discrete occurrences in the forest, shaping a paper that fitted the traditional form of HCI research. In this paper we reflect on this process and how our original intentions could be reached. Finally, we reason around the value of these forms of purposeless experiences in relation to design, and how there could be space for these types of contributions in HCI.