Table of Contents

VOLUME XXV.6 November - December 2018

  • WELCOME
    • Humans wanted! Our many roles in designing for innovation, IoT, and AI

      Simone Barbosa, Gilbert Cockton

      In this issue's cover story, Chris Harrison discusses innovation in HCI, considering intellectual and real-world impact over decades. Tuck Wah Leong envisions one such innovation: In Abracadabra, he calls for HCI design that supports phenomena that are fueled by chance, coincidence, and randomness—synchronicity—while respecting our privacy. Elizabeth Churchill, Philip…

    top
  • Demo Hour
    • Demo hour

      Chang Lee, Dan Lockton, David Verweij, Dave Kirk, Kay Rogage, Abigail Durrant, Aubree Ball, Audrey Desjardins, Adam Horowitz, Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Oscar Rosello, Tomás Vega, Abhinandan Jain, Cynthia Breazeal, Pattie Maes

      1. Silent Scene The aim of this project was to tangibly study a playful experience that would occur without any direct physical or sensory interaction. Silent Scene is an unusual machine that does not offer any interactions to anyone. It is a stationary device that appears to do nothing.…

    top
  • What are you reading?
    • What are you reading? Matt Jones

      Matt Jones

      What are you reading? Matt Jones

      I love books. I have a stack by my bedside, a Kindle, and a subscription to Audible. I have the e-book and audiobook versions of some of my hard-copy books, but it is to this bedside pile and to the pleasure of the physical that I am drawn. For…

    top
  • Blog@IX
    • SketchBlog #1

      Miriam Sturdee, Makayla Lewis, Nicolai Marquardt

      SketchBlog #1

      If you've been to an HCI conference, workshop, or event recently, chances are you may have seen people sketchnoting—either as part of the main conference organization in the form of visual facilitation or simply as part of personal practice. Some of you may be wondering: What is a sketchnote?…

    top
  • How was it made?
    • Beacon

      Vygandas Šimbelis

      Beacon

      Describe what you made. As an artist who uses video and other visual media in performance, I've sometimes found it difficult to physically connect to my interface (often contained in a digital technology such as a laptop) while also engaging with my collaborators in a shared space during a…

    top
  • Columns
    • Our hidden UX design abilities

      Uday Gajendar

      Our hidden UX design abilities

      A while back I addressed a local UX meet-up in SoCal, a rather enthusiastic crowd. The talk was about UX processes and outcomes; it was well received, as it sparked good questions and ample discussion. Afterward at the happy hour, an attendee—a young-ish man exuding a hipster vibe—approached me.…

    • A book to inspire the pursuit of mystery and enchantment in HCI

      Tuck Leong

      A book to inspire the pursuit of mystery and enchantment in HCI

      A year ago, on a lazy Sunday, I found a copy of Jung's Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle [1] in a box of books that a recently retired colleague gave me. I laughed out loud. Sure, I was surprised to discover that my colleague might have been interested in…

    top
  • Day in the Lab
    • IXDS

      Annika Burgess

      How do you describe your lab to visitors? Our Berlin studio is nestled among a bunch of creative businesses in a back courtyard in the heart of Kreuzberg. Before you even enter the studio, you'll see people working away and having meetings at outdoor tables. Upon entering, you're greeted…

    top
  • Forums
    • Between empowerment and exploitation: PD ethics in the era of participation

      Per Linde, Anna Seravalli

      Between empowerment and exploitation: PD ethics in the era of participation

      When addressing societal change and civic engagement, the idea of participatory culture as a cultivator of issue formation and collaborative engagement has, for a long time, been a foundational aspect of participatory design (henceforth co-design). It has also been a vivid and dynamic topic of discussion in this Interactions…

    • Human-centered design charrettes for K-12 outreach

      Elena Agapie, Andrew Davidson

      Human-centered design charrettes for K-12 outreach

      I was taught as a young child that you lift as you climb, meaning you pull someone with you and assist them... — Layla Ibrahim, HCDE senior Insights The Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) department at the University of Washington (UW) organizes a variety of K–12 outreach…

    • Child-computer interaction, ubiquitous technologies, and big data

      Juan Hourcade, Alissa Antle, Lisa Anthony, Jerry Fails, Ole Iversen, Elisa Rubegni, Mikael Skov, Petr Slovak, Greg Walsh, Anja Zeising

      Child-computer interaction, ubiquitous technologies, and big data

      The children's technology landscape is changing quickly. The ubiquity of interactive technologies means children can access them just about anytime, anywhere. At the same time, these technologies constantly collect data from and about children, bringing them into the age of big data, voluntarily or not. These developments have the…

    • Are usability evaluations reproducible?

      Rolf Molich

      Are usability evaluations reproducible?

      Insights Are we all doing the same thing when we do a usability test or an evaluation? Here's how to find out. Ingredients: A state-of-the-art website that is intended for the general population, for example, a car-rental website 15 or so professional UX teams. Directions: Ask the teams to…

    • Collaborative art: A new method for landscape architecture

      Whitney Holt, Brittany Murphy

      Collaborative art: A new method for landscape architecture

      This past April, 10 students at the University of Oregon installed two land-art pieces on the Eugene campus. The installations explored the capacity of collaborative art making as a tool to be used in landscape architecture practice to foster inclusion and discern community values. In the end, they illuminated…

    • Scaling interaction—From small-scale interaction to architectural scale

      Fatemeh Moradi, Mikael Wiberg, Mikael Hansson

      Scaling interaction—From small-scale interaction to architectural scale

      Smart homes, intelligent environments, interactive architecture, and human-building interaction (HBI) [1,2] all come with the promise of interactivity at the scale of architecture. However, typical interaction design works at the level of the small scale and at the level of the individual—just think about the typical use case with…

    top
  • Community square
    • Bringing the SIGCHI community to Poland: The Lodz summer school

      Paweł Woźniak, Andrzej Romanowski

      Bringing the SIGCHI community to Poland: The Lodz summer school

      Poland's first major HCI education event took place in July 2017. The SIGCHI-sponsored Ĺódź Summer School on Methods in HCI invited students from around the globe for an exciting week full of activities. We were lucky to be the organizers of the event. Our plan was simple. We wanted…

    top
  • Features
    • Special Topic: Designing AI — Introduction

      Elizabeth Churchill, Philip van Allen, Mike Kuniavsky

      Special Topic: Designing AI — Introduction

      AI techniques have been affecting people's experiences with digital services, applications, interactions, and interfaces for a long while now, but without much engagement with or input from interaction designers and HCI researchers. Over the past two years, as part of the AAAI Symposia series (2017–2018) [1], we have organized…

    • Cybernetics and the design of the user experience of AI systems

      Nikolas Martelaro, Wendy Ju

      Cybernetics and the design of the user experience of AI systems

      Cybernetics and artificial intelligence (AI) are often considered the same thing, with cybernetics having something to do with creating intelligent cyborgs and robots. In actuality, cybernetics and AI are different ways of thinking about intelligent systems or systems that can act toward reaching a goal. AI is primarily concerned…

    • Design and fiction: Imagining civic AI

      Jason Wong

      Design and fiction: Imagining civic AI

      As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning's (ML) prominence in daily human-to-computer interaction grows, the field of interaction design must shift to understand the possibilities, limitations, and biases of AI. Currently, academia and technology corporations are leading the way in research and implementation, working in distinct fields such as…

    • Prototyping ways of prototyping AI

      Philip van Allen

      Prototyping ways of prototyping AI

      We are moving toward an era of pervasive interactions with machine intelligence. Consider that increasing numbers of autonomous vehicles are mixing with pedestrians and traditional vehicles. Home IoT devices independently sense and act on our behalf. Co-bots work side by side with people. These new types of interactions are…

    • From machine learning to machine teaching: The importance of UX

      Martin Lindvall, Jesper Molin, Jonas Löwgren

      From machine learning to machine teaching: The importance of UX

      From a human-centered perspective, one of the most important developments in the technical machine-learning (ML) domain is that learning algorithms can now improve their predictions when fed more training data. This means that processes and tools for generating training data, previously a matter mostly for one-off research projects, now…

    • Assessing and addressing algorithmic bias in practice

      Henriette Cramer, Jean Garcia-Gathright, Aaron Springer, Sravana Reddy

      Assessing and addressing algorithmic bias in practice

      Unfair algorithmic biases and unintended negative side effects of machine learning (ML) are gaining attention—and rightly so. We know that machine translation systems trained on existing historical data can make unfortunate errors that perpetuate gender stereotypes. We know that voice devices underperform for users with certain accents, since speech…

    • Feeling SketCHI? The lasting appeal of the drawn image in HCI

      Miriam Sturdee, Makayla Lewis, Nicolai Marquardt

      Feeling SketCHI? The lasting appeal of the drawn image in HCI

      A roomful of 28 researchers in various stages of their careers sits nervously in a brightly lit room, the tables in front of them strewn with assorted pens, paper, and Post-it notes. They are all here to see how they might improve their drawing skills and subsequently apply these…

    top
  • Cover story
    • The HCI innovator’s dilemma

      Chris Harrison

      The HCI innovator’s dilemma

      Generating ideas and solutions, evaluating and refining them, and hopefully putting them into practice is the essence of an HCI professional's life, whether it be in software or hardware. It is why we're always armed with Post-it notes and dry erase markers—brainstorming, affinity diagramming, and sketching our way to…

    top
  • Special topic: Designing AI
    • Special Topic: Designing AI — Introduction

      Elizabeth Churchill, Philip van Allen, Mike Kuniavsky

      Special Topic: Designing AI — Introduction

      AI techniques have been affecting people's experiences with digital services, applications, interactions, and interfaces for a long while now, but without much engagement with or input from interaction designers and HCI researchers. Over the past two years, as part of the AAAI Symposia series (2017–2018) [1], we have organized…

    • Cybernetics and the design of the user experience of AI systems

      Nikolas Martelaro, Wendy Ju

      Cybernetics and the design of the user experience of AI systems

      Cybernetics and artificial intelligence (AI) are often considered the same thing, with cybernetics having something to do with creating intelligent cyborgs and robots. In actuality, cybernetics and AI are different ways of thinking about intelligent systems or systems that can act toward reaching a goal. AI is primarily concerned…

    • Design and fiction: Imagining civic AI

      Jason Wong

      Design and fiction: Imagining civic AI

      As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning's (ML) prominence in daily human-to-computer interaction grows, the field of interaction design must shift to understand the possibilities, limitations, and biases of AI. Currently, academia and technology corporations are leading the way in research and implementation, working in distinct fields such as…

    • Prototyping ways of prototyping AI

      Philip van Allen

      Prototyping ways of prototyping AI

      We are moving toward an era of pervasive interactions with machine intelligence. Consider that increasing numbers of autonomous vehicles are mixing with pedestrians and traditional vehicles. Home IoT devices independently sense and act on our behalf. Co-bots work side by side with people. These new types of interactions are…

    • From machine learning to machine teaching: The importance of UX

      Martin Lindvall, Jesper Molin, Jonas Löwgren

      From machine learning to machine teaching: The importance of UX

      From a human-centered perspective, one of the most important developments in the technical machine-learning (ML) domain is that learning algorithms can now improve their predictions when fed more training data. This means that processes and tools for generating training data, previously a matter mostly for one-off research projects, now…

    • Assessing and addressing algorithmic bias in practice

      Henriette Cramer, Jean Garcia-Gathright, Aaron Springer, Sravana Reddy

      Assessing and addressing algorithmic bias in practice

      Unfair algorithmic biases and unintended negative side effects of machine learning (ML) are gaining attention—and rightly so. We know that machine translation systems trained on existing historical data can make unfortunate errors that perpetuate gender stereotypes. We know that voice devices underperform for users with certain accents, since speech…

    top
  • Calendar
    • Calendar

      INTR Staff

      Calendar

      November CSCW '18: Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Jersey City, USA) Conference Dates: November 3–7, 2018 https://cscw.acm.org/2018/ ISS '18: International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (Tokyo, Japan) Conference Dates: November 25–28, 2018 http://iss.acm.org/2018/ MUM '18: 17th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (Cairo, Egypt)…

    top
  • Exit
    • Techniques of the (semi-naked) body

      Nicolas Nova

      Techniques of the (semi-naked) body

      Contributor: Nicolas Nova Curator/Editor: Anne Spaa Genre: Ethnography Will the ever-increasing use of technological devices reconfigure our bodies? Will it affect our posture even in the most banal situations? Do these selfies taken by two people who don't know each other give us a glimpse of the future? …

    top