Table of Contents

VOLUME XXVI.1 January - February 2019

  • WELCOME
    • Valorize this! Making HCI even more worthwhile

      Gilbert Cockton, Simone Barbosa

      Design is meant to make things better, and much HCI research and practice is aimed at making interaction design (IxD) better. What better means has greatly expanded as HCI has matured. Positions on what is better reflect values, which unite the content across this issue. We should expect design…

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  • Demo Hour
    • Demo hour

      Seungwoo Je, Hyelip Lee, Myung Kim, Minkyeong Lee, Yoonji Kim, Youngkyung Choi, Andrea Bianchi, Brian Chiang, Ai-Hsuan Chou, Dominik Fink, Jannick Lenz, Paul Raschke, Mario Rieker

      1. Wind-Blaster In this issue's Demo Hour we bring technology and nature closer together. Fog, rain, wind—each of these projects have their own way of integrating "the weather." These designs use weather elements as an interaction medium (Receipt of Memory), as sensory input (sWeather and RainSeason), and even as…

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  • What are you reading?
    • What are you reading? Dan Lockton

      Dan Lockton

      What are you reading? Dan Lockton

      I'm overwhelmed with books, which exist largely as a messy physicalized mental model distributed around the office. As has been observed before in this section, many academics' reading tends to happen in liminal spaces and times—summers, airports and aircraft. My choices here all somehow fit with these in-between situations.…

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  • Blog@IX
    • What people see versus what people do: Some thoughts on the cover story on visualizations

      Nikiforos Karamanis

      What people see versus what people do: Some thoughts on the cover story on visualizations

      I read the cover story of the July—August 2018 issue of Interactions on data visualizations by Danielle Albers Szafir with great interest, particularly since I recently gave an introductory webinar on this topic for the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) (see [1:[R1]). The article focuses on "understanding what people see…

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  • How was it made?
    • How was it made? Wind-blaster

      Seungwoo Je, Hyelip Lee, Myung Kim, Minkyeong Lee, Yoonji Kim, Youngkyung Choi, Andrea Bianchi

      How was it made? Wind-blaster

      Describe what you made. We built two wrist-mounted propellers to create a wearable force-feedback device for immersion in virtual reality (VR). The orientation of each propeller can be sensed with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and controlled actively with the stepper motor component. To demonstrate the different forms of…

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  • Columns
    • Deep digitality—Fate, fiat, and foundry

      Alan Dix

      Deep digitality—Fate, fiat, and foundry

      The wand lies on time-darkened wood, strange-colored stains telling of past experiments. I touch it gently, magic tingling beneath my fingertips, but leave it for now among retorts, dried frog skin, and tools of alchemy. Instead I take a simple spyglass and look north toward the hills. Between Swansea…

    • Fair fares and the digital divide

      Jonathan Bean

      Fair fares and the digital divide

      As middle-class life becomes increasingly saturated with information technology, our collective expectations of what constitutes a normal existence continue to shift. Five years ago, only sports fans, crazy people, and those with strong political beliefs yelled at their radios. Now many homes have smart speakers—exactly how many, we do…

    • Designing recommendations

      Elizabeth Churchill

      Designing recommendations

      Books, products, movies, music—every day, our digital lives are strewn with suggestions and recommendations that invite us to direct our attention to specific content and spend our money on specific products. Driving and transportation routes are suggested to us based on past traffic patterns and current traffic load. Search-query…

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  • Day in the Lab
    • Critical media lab basel

      Shintaro Miyazaki, Claudia Mareis

      How do you describe your lab to visitors? The Critical Media Lab Basel is an integral part of the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Switzerland. We develop new paths of critical thinking for design, media practices, and…

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  • Forums
    • Between purpose and profit: Breaking the spell of false trade-offs

      Tim Frick

      Between purpose and profit: Breaking the spell of false trade-offs

      Design agencies are in a unique position to bring about positive societal change at scale, but a common misperception often stands in the way of such aspirations: that purpose and profit are antithetical. To create large-scale change, agencies need tools, principles, and standards that help us collectively create a…

    • Toward responsible AI for the next billion users

      Nithya Sambasivan, Jess Holbrook

      Toward responsible AI for the next billion users

      Recent advances in computing power, increases in the quantity and quality of data, and algorithmic breakthroughs have led to a rise in machine intelligence, creating opportunities that simply did not exist a few decades ago. From stock trading to detecting disease-vector progression to personalized music recommendations, AI is starting…

    • Lessons from working with researchers and practitioners in healthcare

      Ann Blandford

      Lessons from working with researchers and practitioners in healthcare

      Conducting HCI research in healthcare is exciting, worthwhile, and essential: Medicine and healthcare are becoming increasingly reliant on interactive health technologies and data analytics. HCI researchers and practitioners have a key role in ensuring that healthcare systems are fit for purpose (safe, effective, engaging, etc.) and in discovering new…

    • Beyond the visible: Sensing with thermal imaging

      Yomna Abdelrahman, Albrecht Schmidt

      Beyond the visible: Sensing with thermal imaging

      Human visual perception is the ability to see, process, and understand stimuli in an environment. Despite its capabilities, this system is limited by the visible luminance range that it can detect. In fact, the perceivable spectrum of the human eye comprises less than 1 percent of the electromagnetic spectrum.…

    • Maximize business impact with JTBD

      James Kalbach

      Maximize business impact with JTBD

      Why isn't Intuit dead? After all, the average lifespan of companies on the S&P 500 is half what it was a generation ago—now under 20 years. Yet as competitors die out, the tax software giant continues to deliver double-digit growth after 25 years of existence. Insights There are…

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  • Community square
    • The new SIGCHI EC’s values and strategic initiatives

      Helena Mentis, Cliff Lampe, Regina Bernhaupt, Anirudha Joshi, Susan Fussell, Susan Dray, Dan Olsen, Aaron Quigley, Julie Williamson, Eunice Sari, Loren Terveen, Allison Druin, Philippe Palanque

      The new SIGCHI EC’s values and strategic initiatives

      With the start of any new SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC), it is healthy to assess the state of the organization and lay out a plan to move forward for the new term. Thus, at the start of the July 2018 meeting of the new SIGCHI EC, the new president,…

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  • Features
    • Beyond generalization: Research for the very particular

      Olav Bertelsen, Susanne Bødker, Eva Eriksson, Eve Hoggan, Jo Vermeulen

      Beyond generalization: Research for the very particular

      In this article, we discuss HCI research that does not aim for universal or generic solutions, but rather focuses on addressing the particular challenges of particular people in particular situations or activities. We clarify what we mean by design and research for the very particular with examples from industry…

    • Toward classroom experiences inclusive of students with disabilities

      Oussama Metatla, Anja Thieme, Emeline Brulé, Cynthia Bennett, Marcos Serrano, Christophe Jouffrais

      Toward classroom experiences inclusive of students with disabilities

      More than ever, digital content and tools are being introduced and accepted in diverse educational contexts, offering opportunities for innovation and for making learning processes more encompassing, engaging, and collaborative. Multimodal tools fostering tactile, auditory, and spatial learning promise increased access for students with vision impairments (VI). Yet many…

    • ‘This is not what we wanted’: Designing for conversation with voice interfaces

      Stuart Reeves, Martin Porcheron, Joel Fischer

      ‘This is not what we wanted’: Designing for conversation with voice interfaces

      Design is increasingly said to be about constructing conversations with end users [1]. Advances in underlying voice-related [2] technologies, coupled with the spread of voice-driven agents and dedicated devices such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and HomePod, lend weight to the notion of so-called conversational interfaces. In spite…

    • Planning for the things you can’t plan for: Lessons learned from deployments in the home

      Helena Tendedez, Kelly Widdicks, Mike Hazas

      Planning for the things you can’t plan for: Lessons learned from deployments in the home

      Understanding how people interact with technology in their homes has long been a topic of interest for researchers. Across HCI, researchers in digital health, sustainability, education, family, and privacy are fascinated by the human routines and everyday interactions that involve technology. As these researchers have found, deploying technology (e.g.,…

    • The human infrastructure of El Paquete, Cuba’s offline internet

      Michaelanne Dye, David Nemer, Josiah Mangiameli, Amy Bruckman, Neha Kumar

      The human infrastructure of El Paquete, Cuba’s offline internet

      In a small, bottom-floor apartment in the center of Havana, Cuba, a grandmother browses through rows of DVDs looking for educational content for her young granddaughter. At the restaurant next door, a flat-screen TV plays Cuban reggaeton videos as patrons sway their hips and tap their feet to the…

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  • Cover story
    • Reimagining participatory design

      Liam Bannon, Jeffrey Bardzell, Susanne Bødker

      Reimagining participatory design

      We recently edited a special issue of the ACM ToCHI journal on "Reimagining Participatory Design" [1]. As a result of this process and the earlier work leading up to it, we have had many interesting discussions concerning participatory design (PD) and where it stands today. We refer the reader…

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  • Calendar
    • Calendar

      Calendar

      January ICTD X: 10th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Ahmedabad, India) Conference Dates: January 4–7, 2019 https://www.ictdx.org/ ICDCN '19: 20th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking (Bangalore, India) Conference Dates: January 4–7, 2019 https://events.csa.iisc.ac.in/icdcn2019/ ICSLT '19: 5th International Conference on e-Society, e-Learning and e-Technologies…

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  • Exit
    • Smartphone pouch

      Nicolas Nova

      Smartphone pouch

      Contributor: Nicolas Nova Curator/Editor: Anne Spaa Genre: Ethnography Some questions to ask every designer: How would you anticipate that people will repurpose urban infrastructure for their own digital needs? To what end will people rearrange everyday objects for their own needs and purposes? Wrapping one's phone in a plastic…

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