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A Systematic Literature Review for Human-Computer Interaction and Design

Thinking Process Integration

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-91797-9_50

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 A Systematic Literature Review
for Human-Computer Interaction and Design
Thinking Process Integration

Hye Park(&) and Seda McKilligan

Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

{hjpark,seda}@iastate.edu

Abstract. Human-computer interaction (HCI) has been challenged in recent

years because of advanced technology requiring adoption of new applications
and investigations of connection with other disciplines, to enhance its theoretical
knowledge. Design thinking (DT), an innovative and creative problem solving
process, provides potential answers to the kind of knowledge and techniques
designers can bring into HCI. This paper reports a systematic review of com-
parison between HCI design process and DT process. A total of 72
peer-reviewed research papers were reviewed published between 1972 and 2017
towards answering the following question: How do HCI and DT processes
overlap, differ, and can learn from each other? Synthesizing the findings
revealed a description and taxonomy of the variations, success factors, and
practices between the two problem solving processes. The review highlights
shared process phases with different goals in each suggesting that the two
domains could complement each other in various ways, for applications in
academia and industry.

Keywords: Human-computer interaction
Design thinking

Systematic review

1 Introduction

Human-computer interaction (HCI) has been considered as computer-related

cross-disciplinary domain that is strongly associated with design for information,
interaction, and communication and technology [6, 16, 25, 26, 42, 51, 62]. Researchers
in HCI are frequently involved in designing research prototypes based on theories from
the cognitive and social sciences, anthropology, and sociology in addition to computer
science. They equally focus on HCI research [25] and the analytic approaches and
techniques in design practice [6, 7, 29, 60]. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding
the nature of design processes involved in this influential field and the role of design
and design thinking in HCI research and practice.
HCI education and practice have been facing many challenges triggered by the
rapid advancement of technology [17]. Fast changing interface and interaction systems
require new processes that allow for rapidly developed designs, evaluations, and
interaction strategies facilitating efficient and unique user interactions with computer
systems [65]. This emphasizes the continuous change that the HCI discipline has to go
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
A. Marcus and W. Wang (Eds.): DUXU 2018, LNCS 10918, pp. 725–740, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91797-9_50
726 H. Park and S. McKilligan

through to adopt the challenge of ‘speed’ [17, 32]. How can HCI design process be
morphed into a more flexible process allowing for creative design explorations, in a
rapid manner? One approach to address this question might be an integration with a
process valued for its effective problem-solution exploration [14, 21, 27, 52, 61]:
Design thinking.
Design thinking (DT) has gained increased interest in the past decade [12, 38, 47, 48].
According to Brown [10], DT is a “human-centered, creative, iterative, and practical
approach to finding the best ideas and ultimate solutions” with innovative activities,
proving itself as an effective strategy for organizational changes [10]. These character-
istics allow DT to be used widely in diverse contexts [44, 45, 49, 57] as well as creating
and making choices [49]. Also, DT allows involving various disciplines to address
complex problems and enhance user experience [8, 46, 69] emphasizing human
values [16].
This paper describes a systematic literature review conducted on potential DT and
HCI process integration. The objective of this review is to focus on where the varia-
tions between the two processes exist and why, with the goal of proposing how these
variations could be translated and transformed into each other. This work provides a
considerable body of literature that is of great potential importance to design research in
both HCI and other design domains. The research questions are: (1) How do HCI and
DT design processes overlap? (2) How does the HCI design process differ from DT
design process? and (3) What are the lessons HCI and DT could learn from each other’s
processes?

2 Human-Computer Interaction Process

HCI is concerned with methods and tools for the development of human-computer
interfaces, assessing the usability of computer systems [56] and with broader
human-centric issues including how people interact with computers [19]. It is based on
theories about how humans process information and interact with technology and other
people in social contexts where computers are used, placing HCI designers at the heart
of a system interaction between human and machine [31, 37]. This interaction also
brings design knowledge into the context, such as visual hierarchy, color, and
typography [71].

Fig. 1. HCI design process [19].

 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 727

The first step in the HCI process, what is wanted, focuses on investigating user’s
needs and their lifestyles to provide insights on how the HCI designers can generate
interactive solutions to match the user’s needs [19, 62]. Some suggested tools for this
exploration phase are interviewing the user, recording the user’s behavior, observing
user’s world directly, and analyzing existing documents [19].
Analysis step emphasizes synthesizing the main issues coming from the first step
and provides directions to the next step, design [19]. The main goal of this phase is to
solve problems while bringing usability factors and practices into the process [19]. As
designers’ progress towards the goal of the ideal solution, they develop prototypes to
analyze the quality of their solutions using guidelines such as Shneiderman’s eight
golden rules, guidelines like heuristics, and Norman’s seven and Nielsen’s 10 design
principles. These guidelines are used to enhance the solution’s usability and interaction
with the targeted users [19]. Paper-based designs, storyboards, video presentation, and
cardboard mockup are created as early forms of prototypes [19, 62]. Next step is
integrating physical device and software where HCI researchers rely on guidelines to
assess design violations while users interact with the solutions in their own environ-
ment [19]. Prototypes are often treated as restricted presentations of a design and used
for testing the solutions effectiveness with the users [62]. This design evaluation phase
helps the HCI designers to find problems and gives them an opportunity to address it in
early steps of development [19]. Once the prototype is proven to be effective and
functional, the design is implemented and deployed to market [19].

3 Design Thinking Process

Design thinking (DT) offers a systematic, exciting direction for creative problem
solution, by integrating human, business and technical factors [11, 16, 22, 23, 58] with
a focus on building innovative solutions relying on user-centered perspective
[9, 10, 52, 65, 67]. An increasing number of companies and institutions, from industry
giants like IBM to startups like Airbnb, have adopted this user-centric innovation
method, along with accompanying mindsets and toolkits.
Design thinking originated from processes used by designers, such as user
understanding and user experience. In recent years, its application has been extended to
address wider problems – ways for companies and other groups to identify new
strategic directions, innovate new service possibilities, or implement procedural
change. DT has a non-linear process steps with iterative loops [9, 20, 35, 55, 67], and
each step includes various tools that achieve each goal [55, 67]. Although these
principles, perspectives and general outline of the process are similar across different
visual representations, because DT adopts Simon’s [63] model widely [35], specific
steps including tools might differ [9, 21, 35, 54, 68].
Design thinking rests on defining different stages of innovation - discovering and
describing problems via processes to connect with users and frame challenges. This
inspiration evolves into stages of ideation and prototyping; opportunities for solution
728 H. Park and S. McKilligan

Fig. 2. Design thinking process [55].

can then be tested and refined, to result in final implementation. Five-steps including
empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test introduced by the Hasso-Plattner Institute
of Design at Stanford (d.school) [55]. Empathy is the key principle for this process as it
builds on understanding users, their needs, motivations, emotions, and experiences
[35, 50, 55, 68], through observations and contextual inquiries [35] and interviewing
activities [50].
The aim of define step is to generate meaningful problem statements [55] based on
the information and insights gathered and built through the empathize stage, and
analyzed and framed to reflect the objective [35, 50]. The ideate step is often referred to
as the “creative” step [68] where many alternative ideas are generated [9] through
brainstorming, brainwriting, and visualization activities [35, 68].
Generated ideas (solutions) are then transferred into quick prototypes [50, 68]. This
step is an experimental phase, and to goal is to investigate what works and doesn’t
work to inform the ideate phase once again [50]. Through inexpensive or downscaled
versions of the prototypes [10, 35, 55] designers derive useful feedback [55]. Proto-
types can take various forms, such as videos, role-playing activities, post-it notes, or
storyboards to communicate the message to the user, to observe their interaction with
the proposed solutions in different ways and to refine the solutions [35, 55].
In the test step, real users evaluate the prototypes and provide feedback about why
the prototype is satisfactory and not satisfactory [50, 68]. This is another chance to
understand users and improve provided solutions [5, 55]. These feedback loops allow
designers to go back to previous steps [68]. Design thinking, in nature, is iterative,
rather than a linear process. Although these five steps are practiced; the order changes
based on the context of the problem and in many cases designers go back to collecting
additional insights or reframing their problem statements based on what they observe in
the interaction with the prototypes. In this paper, our goal is to describe specific
features practiced in the two user-centered design processes and identify the touch-
points they can interact and complement.
 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 729

4 Research Methodology

The role of systematic review is to investigate, evaluate, and interpret all potential
researches related to specific research questions, interests, or themes [40]. Our approach
for a systematic review in HCI and DT processes was informed by the three stages
suggested by Kitchenham [40]: (1) planning, (2) execution and (3) results analysis.
This review was conducted by a researcher with a background in visual design and
HCI, with input from a design thinking researcher.

4.1 Planning
As stated previously, the review focused on the how the human-computer interaction
design process was practiced compared to the design thinking process. Only studies
focusing on these two topics were included. In the initial ‘planning’ phase, we
reviewed 14 articles that focused on systematic literature review of concepts close to
HCI and DT, including engineering design, design education, and interaction design.
Our goal with this phase was to identify the selection and exclusion criteria commonly
that would be most suitable for our purposes of a comparative review analysis. Table 1
shows the synthesis of this review process, each paper’s extraction criteria, keywords
used for inclusion, number of papers reviewed, and process of finding the papers.

Table 1. Reviewed papers.

Author(s) Discipline(s) Keywords used to identify papers Number Process of finding the papers
reviewed for review of
papers
reviewed
Agrawal et al. HCI and IS HCI, computer-mediated 32 EBSCO and publisher databases
[2] communication, and literature were used with keyword search to
review identify appropriate papers
Akoumianakis HCI and universal Namely, guidelines, user interface N/A N/A
and design development frameworks and
Stephanidis [3] architectures, user interface
software technologies, and support
actions
Aryana and HCI and science Culture, mobile HCI, design, and 40 Concept-matrix, which make
Øritsland [4] review category with presented concepts
of papers was used
Baines et al. Lean, product Lean, new product development, 24 Keywords and phrases search
[5] design, review, and design were used, and then reviewed
engineering, and every article
development
Carter et al. HCI and HCI, game studies, and paradigms 178 Open and axial coding processes
[13] player-computer were used to examine number of
interaction (PCI) papers with PCI domain. Then,
focused on discovered papers’
methodological and conceptual
approaches introduced at CHI
conference
(continued)
730 H. Park and S. McKilligan

Table 1. (continued)
Author(s) Discipline(s) Keywords used to identify papers Number Process of finding the papers
reviewed for review of
papers
reviewed
de Almeida Sustainability and Sustainability, systematic review, 51 Systematic review was applied to
Neris et al. HCI and HCI discover relative papers of a
[18] research question
Eng et al. [24] Engineering design Hypermedia, graph, diagram, N/A Qualitative perspective with
complexity, design flow, and mixed methods like observation
visual literacy and interview was considered to
gather relative papers
Hayes and Computer Video games, learning, thinking, N/A N/A
Games [30] software, computer game design, and software
games, education,
and design
thinking
Insfran and Usability Usability evaluation methods, web 51 Systematic review was applied to
Fernandez [34] evaluation development, and systematic discover relative papers of a
review research question
Johansson‐ Design thinking Design thinking, design, and 168 Keyword search was used to
Sköldberg thinking collect papers. Then, organized
et al. [38] papers with list: academic and
practitioner journal articles,
refereed conference papers
associated with DT. Frequently
mentioned papers were also
considered
Kjeldskov and HCI and Research methods, research 55 The literature survey method was
Paay [41] interaction design purpose literature survey, adopted
introductory and survey, design,
and human factors
Li [43] HCI Affective state assessment, user N/A N/A
modeling, intelligent assistance,
and HCI
Rosli et al. [59] HCI and Interaction design, design issues, 32 Coding process including content
interaction design and HCI analysis process, words, concepts,
themes, phrases, characters or
sentences were applied
Ugras et al. Usability and Usability, user experience, 199 Systematic review was applied to
[70] website website, systematic review, discover relative papers of a
research trends, and web design research question. keyword
search was used to collect papers

The 14 reviewed papers demonstrated that HCI and DT have been adopted in
various disciplines particularly in designing games, products, systems and other user
experiences. Additionally, the articles guided us in exploring strategies to find and
analyze relevant papers in literature; the reviewed articles used similar processes where
majority of them adopted “keywords search” to search for papers and applied sys-
tematic review method for analysis articles. Therefore, our search strategy and article
selection process replicated the 14 publications we reviewed, following a “keywords
search” methodology [2, 5, 13, 38, 70].
 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 731

4.2 Execution
Literature was initially gathered through searches of major design, engineering, and
computer science databases (e.g., ACM Digital Library, Technology Research Data-
base) conducted between September 5, 2017 and December 5, 2017. Search terms are
presented are presented below. Table 1 shows the eligibility assessment of the chosen
articles against four inclusion criteria.
• HCI/ Human-Computer Interaction and Design thinking;
• HCI/ Human-Computer Interaction and Design thinking review;
• HCI/ Human-Computer Interaction review;
• Design thinking review;
• HCI/ Human-Computer Interaction design process;
• Design thinking process;
• Design process;
• Comparison of HCI/ Human-Computer Interaction and Design thinking process.

Table 2. Inclusion criteria.

No. Criteria
1 Article must be published in English
2 If a conference paper, article must be published in 10 years
3 Article must report original research
4 Article must focus on HCI, DT, engineering design, interaction design, design
approaches, or user-centered design
5 Article must either focus on processes of HCI, or DT, or both

Articles included in the review are denoted with * in the reference list at the end of
the paper. Key characteristics of the articles are summarized below:
• The oldest article was published in 1972, and the newest in 2017. Seventy-eight
percent of the reviewed articles were published in the last 10 years.
• The rate of HCI related papers were 46% and DT related articles were 51% for this
study.
• Half of HCI papers (61%) were focused on design research and practice, and
Majority of DT articles (92%) reporting the design thinking process and its impact
and value were published in the last 30 years.
• Only 5.5% of studies focused on both HCI and DT in the last 10 years.
• Eighteen percent of the articles reported studies on process either HCI or DT.
In total, 72 papers published between 1972 and 2017 were considered in this study.
Our major journal resources included Design Studies, Design Issues, and Computers in
Human Behavior. We also included HCII and CHI papers, which are well-known
international conferences in the HCI domain. In this study, 22 published journals, 26
peer-reviewed conference papers, 15 books, 3 magazine articles, 5 articles from design
and HCI research organizations, and 1 technical report were involved. In results
analysis phase, 72 studies were reviewed again and categorized based on their major
themes or issues.
732 H. Park and S. McKilligan

4.3 Results Analysis

Collectively, articles were found to reflect on design viewpoints on the nature of design
processes taking place in the two domains: engineering, design, education, healthcare,
etc.
Understanding of HCI design process is critical as it is becoming core aspect of
system development process to improve and enhance systems and to satisfy users’
needs and necessities. Having a clarity about this process will likely allow the stake-
holders to be on the same page regarding the criteria to follow and the setting the
expected outcomes from the HCI design team. Table 3 presents HCI process steps and
the keywords used to define each phase, from the paper reviewed in this study. A de-
scription and taxonomy of the variations, success factors, and practices were reported.
Some process models are focused on engineering design [14, 64] whereas others’
emphasis is more on interaction design [62], and user-centered design process.

Table 3. A comparison of HCI design process models.

Models Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6
Cross [15] Exploration Generation Evaluation Communication
Dix et al. What is wanted Analysis Design Prototype Implement &
[19] (requirements) • The result of • Rules • Evaluate design deploy
• Find out what is observation and • Guidelines • Writing code
currently happening interview • Design • Making hardware
• Interviewing • Scenarios principles • Writing
• Videotaping • Rich stories of • Modeling and documentation
• Looking at interaction describing and manuals
documents, interaction
objects that they
work with
• Observing directly
ISO Identifying the need Observe & analysis Design Prototype User feedback
9241-210 • System must • Understand and • Specify the • Produce design • Evaluate designs
[36] encompass the specify the user user solutions to against
specified: functional, context requirements meet user requirements
organizational, requirements
and user
requirements
Sharp Identifying needs & Developing alternative Building Evaluating what
et al. [62] establishing designs that meet those interactive is being built
requirements requirements versions of the throughout the
for the UX designs so that process and the
they can be user experience it
communicated offers
and assessed
Tayal [64] Understand the need Imagine Select a design Plan Create Improve
• Detecting problem • Brainstorming • Selecting the • Planning for how • Building a • Revision
• Understanding • Being creative most promising to evaluate, prototype and • Iteration
project requirements • Investigating existing idea analysis, and test test
• Detecting limitations technologies and • Analyzing and
• Understanding users methods to use finding what
• Establishing goal • Exploring, comparing, could be
• Gathering and analyzing possible improved
information solutions
and conducting
research
• Involving people
from different
backgrounds
 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 733

There were notable findings from the six models in Table 1. The models suggested
to understand requirements, generate designs that reach the requirements, and evaluate
selected design. These commonalities among the models emphasizes designing com-
puter systems that support people so that they can carry out their activities productively
and safely, and understanding and creating software and other technology that people
will want to use, will be able to use, and will find effective when used [37]. In other
words, HCI process supports users in terms of achieving their goals successfully [37].
Although the process titles across the models vary, when looked at the descriptions and
key purposes, the objective to achieve in each step were alike.

Table 4. A comparison of design thinking process models.

Models Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5
Adams Empathize & define Ideate Prototype
and • Understanding users • Brainstorming • Building and testing
Nash [1]
Brown Inspiration Ideate Implementation
[10] • Problem framing • Sketches • Spread across the world
• Contextual observations • Scenarios
• Involves diverse disciplines • Involving customers
• Prototype
• Test
Culén Empathy/context Define Ideate Prototype Evaluate
[17]
Dam and Empathize Define Ideate Prototype Test
Siang • Empathic • Defining the • Brainstorming • Adopting a • Developing a
[35] understanding of problem • Brainwriting hands-on approach prototype/solution to
the problem • Synthesizing in prototyping the problem
• Observing observations
Gibbons Understand (empathize & define) Explore (ideate & prototype) Materialize (test & implement)
[50] • Developing knowledge • Brainstorming • Transform an aspect of the end user’s life
• Talking with users • Creative ideas
• Observing users
IDEO (n. Gather inspiration Generate ideas Make ideas Share the story
d.) [33] • Discovering what people really need • Push past obvious solutions tangible • Craft a human story
• Build rough to inspire others
prototypes toward action
Pandey Problem Problem & Synthesis Ideation Prototype
[53] identification context discovery • Affinity mapping (grouping data) • Sketching • Storyboarding
• Ecosystem • Rapid prototyping
mapping
• Design
ethnography
Plattner Empathize Define Ideate Prototype Test
[55] • Observing • Provide focus and • Generate the broadest range of • Build to think and • Refine prototypes and
• Engaging frames the problem possibilities test to learn solutions
• Watching and • Inspire team • Step beyond obvious solutions and • To ideate and • Refine point-of-view
listening • Inform criteria for thus increase the innovation potential problem-solve
evaluating of solution set • Communicate
competing ideas • Uncover unexpected areas of and conversation
exploration • Fail quickly and
cheaply

Table 4 shows the eight models commonly referred to in the literature when DT
process was applied or described. Some models grouped several steps [1, 10, 50]
instead of listing all phases, but the basic purposes and concept of steps were the same.
The eight models demonstrated that DT not only focuses on user-centeredness through
understanding users with empathy but also pursues possible solutions with creative and
734 H. Park and S. McKilligan

innovative approaches. Creative design activities like abstraction laddering, mapping

techniques including journey mapping and concept mapping, low-fidelity prototyping
and various visualization and communication techniques were suggested to generate
and explore solutions. Although only three models [10, 33, 50] described Implement
phase, they highlighted the importance of translating ideas (solutions) into the user’s
world, successfully (Fig. 1), (Table 2).

5 Commonalities, Differences, and Lessons Between HCI

and DT Processes

We detailed the results of the systematic review analysis regarding our three research
questions, as follows. The notable findings from the result were reported in Table 5.
Overall, the two processes showed similarities to discover and solve the problem
with iterative process. Particularly, prototype phase presented the same purpose to
change idea (solution) into interactive systems. Although there are commonalities, the
two domains illustrated dissimilarities that HCI and DT processes pursued different
perspectives to approach their goals in each phase excepting prototype. Commonalities
and differences of two processes showed potential possibilities to integrate and support
each other (Fig. 2).

Table 5. Commonalities, differences, and lessons between HCI and DT processes.

HCI DT
Commonalities • Similar concepts and principles in each step: understanding users with
observing and interviewing techniques, defining issues from analysis,
designing/generating ideas (solutions), prototyping, and testing
• Iterative process
• Purpose of prototype
Differences • Understanding users as • Understanding users with empathy
requirements • Define for interpretation of insights
• Analysis for further interpretation gathered from users
• Design with rules, guidelines, design • Ideation with creative design
principles activities
• Implementation for ‘real’ system • Implementation (testing) for
translating the solution into user’s
life
Lessons • Potential to learn DT’s empathy • Potential to learn HCI’s systematic
• Potential to learn DT’s design ideation steps through rules,
ethnography and mapping guidelines, and principles
technology to detect issues and
context
• Potential to learn DT’s design
activities to generate creative
solutions
• Potential to learn DT’s holistic
approach
 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 735

5.1 How Do HCI and DT Design Processes Overlap?

HCI design and DT processes shared similar goals and steps in their processes:
understanding and observing users to determine problems, ideation, and prototyping
and testing as well as pursuing iteration process for refining ideas [16, 72]. Figure 3
presents a visualized diagram of the steps that are involved in overlapped HCI and DT
processes. Although HCI and DT’s concepts of the first step were different, recom-
mended techniques were rather close to each other: observing users directly and
indirectly, conducting field studies, interviewing, video-recording to understand users,
discovering user’s needs, developing relevant knowledge, and detecting problems
[10, 19, 33, 35, 50, 55].

Fig. 3. Overlapped HCI and DT processes.

Particularly, the prototype step targeted the same objective for both HCI and DT:
transferring ideas or concept solutions into tangible forms [33]. The major goal of
prototype is to discover the best ideas that can be a solution of problem and respond to
the users’ needs through evaluating a design [19, 35]. Early prototyping is achieved
through inexpensive and simple materials to communicate the concept [10, 19, 35, 55]
then, software version was considered if it is necessary [19].

5.2 How Does the HCI Design Process Differ from DT Design Process?
Although overall processes of HCI and DT showed similarities, each step described
different principles. The first phase in HCI process is often referred to as the process to
understand users as requirements [19, 62]. However, DT process stressed building
empathy with the users, rather than using the knowledge built to create requirements to
inform the rest of the process [1, 17, 35, 50, 55]. The second step of HCI is analysis
[19, 62] while this phase is often referred to as define in DT process [1, 17, 35, 50, 55].
Although first phases function alike, analysis is described as detailed examination of
the elements as a basis for further interpretation, whereas define phase includes problem
framing-structuring-iterating activities in order to interpret the insights gathered from
the user.
736 H. Park and S. McKilligan

HCI used term design as the third step, which can be considered as a main stage to
move from what is wanted to how to do it [19]. To build interactive design, HCI as a
profession requires to follow rules and guidelines, including Shneiderman’s eight
golden rules, Norman’s seven and Nielsen’s 10 design principles, and heuristics [19].
On the other hand, DT uses the term ideate [1, 10, 35, 50, 53] which facilitates design
iterations encouraging to search for possible solutions through creative design thinking
tools to explore the solution space in full capacity [1, 10, 35, 50, 53, 55]. Prototype step
did not show any differences between the two domains.
The last step, implementation, in HCI calls for preparing code, hardware, and
relevant documents and manuals that’d go into a ‘real’ system [19]. DT refers to this
phase as testing for transforming the design solution to user’s life (human) [50] through
marketplace [10]. In summary, although the process steps are very much alike between
the two domains, the emphasis for HCI process is on analyzing, evaluating and testing
the solutions, DT process relies heavily on users’ perceptions of the artefact through
deep observation and inquiries [10] with holistic view and innovative approaches
[16, 52, 65, 72].

5.3 What Are the Lessons HCI and DT Could Learn from Each Other’s
Process?
HCI and DT’s similar and different process (see Fig. 3) perspectives allow to integrate
and support each other. As an initial step of what is wanted, empathize, and define from
HCI and DT process share the similar techniques such as interviewing and observing
[19, 35, 50, 55] to understand their target users and current problems. However, they
have different concepts to study their users. This gap can provide opportunity to
support each other. HCI can learn from DT as it places the user in the center and
heavily relies on building empathy. Since empathy can bring creative ideas and input
various experiences into different user groups, it would support HCI design, which
focuses on collecting data as requirement [39] to have creative approach.
Analysis step of HCI would be interrelated with define step as well. The role of
analysis in HCI and define in DT is to analyze the result of user observations and
interviews and other contextual data gathered to define and discover insights and the
issues [19, 35, 53, 55] to understand user group. Analysis in HCI can learn from DT’s
focus on design ethnography and mapping technology [53] discovering problems and
context, method of encouraging and inspiring teams, and building criteria for selecting
best ideas to evaluate [55].
Design phase of HCI and ideate stage of DT could easily be morphed into each
other. Design phase in HCI requires following the principles and guidelines that are
standardized for HCI process across diverse practitioners [19]. Whereas ideate phase in
DT doesn’t follow guidelines; however, it focuses on exploring the solution space in
depth while generating many alternatives as potential solutions to the problem at hand,
without evaluating [55]. In this scenario, the design phase in HCI could practice similar
creative approaches with the goal of generating diverse solutions instead of heavily
relying on principles and standards, and DT could practice systematic ideation steps
and potentially explore principles to follow for certain design cases, through adopting
guidelines and standards.
 A Systematic Literature Review for HCI and DT Process Integration 737

For the overall design process, HCI and DT considered different aspects to solve
problems. DT’s non-linear process allows to refine diverse set of concepts [72] while
promoting innovativeness [16]. In addition, the holistic approach of DT offers possi-
bilities to generate several potential solutions with broad perspectives in different ways,
whereas non-holistic aspect of HCI is restricted to generate solutions in various
viewpoints [65, 66]. These different perspectives can encourage HCI to learn DT’s
innovative non-linear process-oriented method with holistic approach [9, 10, 20, 35,
52, 55, 65, 67] to enhance entire HCI design process.

6 Conclusion

Human-computer interaction, as a discipline, addresses human-centeredness and col-

laboration of cross-disciplinary fields [6, 16, 25, 26, 42, 51, 62] to understand users and
contextual use of solutions [16, 62]. However, rapidly changing technology generates
challenges to HCI practice such as fail to introduce updated design for new product
[16, 17, 28]. Design Thinking process has been widely used as an innovative and
user-oriented approach [9, 10, 67] to solve wicked problems with many diverse
applications [11, 12, 16, 38, 58]. Overall, HCI and DT shared similar steps with
iterative process: understanding and observing users to determine problems,
designing/ideation, prototyping and testing. However, each step has specific principles,
determining the tools to use, and the goals to achieve. HCI requires understanding users
to build requirements, applying design rules and principles for design, and focuses
largely on designing software. On the contrary, DT highlights building empathy to
understand users, design activities to generate ideas/solutions, and encourages the
solutions to be translated into user’s life. This study suggests that although the two
disciplines follows alike procedures, there are lessons each can take and apply from the
other.

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