I have long had an interest in program theory a specific approach to evaluation the mechanisms and effects of different design activities. See for instance this paper from OZCHI 2019

Together with my good friends Jeanette Falk (Aarhus University) and Gopinaath Kannabiran (IT University of Copenhagen) I was lucky enough to not only get accepted into the finest conference our field have, CHI, but also win a best paper award. While such things are of course mighty subjective, I am also quite pleased with the accolade even though the bulk of the credit must go to Jeanette and Gopinaath.

A preprint of our paper can be downloaded here and listen to Jeanette explain it all on this video.

The abstract goes a little something like this:

Hackathons are increasingly embraced across diverse sectors as a way of democratizing the design of technology. Several attempts have been made to redefine the format and desired end goal of hackathons in recent years thereby warranting closer methodological scrutiny. In this paper, we apply program theory to analyze the processes and effects of 16 hackathon case studies through published research literature. Building upon existing research on hackathons, our work offers a critical perspective examining the methodological validity of hackathons and exemplifies how specific processes for organizing hackathons are modified for different purposes. Our main contribution is a program theory analysis of hackathon formats that provides an exploration and juxtaposition of 16 case studies in terms of causal relations between the input, process and the effects of hackathons. Our cataloguing of examples can serve as an inspirational planning resource for future organizers of hackathons.

Think I do cool stuff? why not shoot over and ask me to collaborate