How Can We Balance Research, Participation and Innovation as HCI Researchers?

This paper reflects upon the growing expectation for HCI research projects to collaborate closely with partners in industry and civil society. Specifically, we suggest that this type of engagement is often prefigured around the agendas, needs and capacity of diverse research partners, which researchers must then carefully negotiate. We explore this by describing a case of a recent large UK research project called Creative Informatics, where our research and co-design activities are heavily influenced by the UK’s Industrial Strategy. As researchers just beginning to work on this project, we call attention to its initial challenges. By doing so, we invite future-oriented discussion about how existing and new research approaches - ranging from participatory design approaches to reflective frameworks - might evolve to meet the challenges of projects where industrial and social impact is equally important to research impact.