September - October 2023 | ACM Interactions

VOLUME XXX.5 September - October 2023

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WELCOME
- So, There’s an AI Revolution? and Other Stories
  
  Elizabeth Churchill, Mikael Wiberg
  
  Welcome to the September–October issue of Interactions! This issue brings together a number of topics, from reflections on artificial intelligence to considerations of how delightful app experiences can fall foul of product acquisitions and the decisions made around them. As everyone has noticed, over the past few months the…
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What are you reading?
- What Are You Reading? Daniel M. Russell
  
  Daniel M. Russell
  
  Everything Everywhere All at Once isn't just a movie title; it's also a spot-on description of what's happening in the human-centered AI (HAI) literature. HAI as a field is evolving rapidly. Systems are being built and launched at a record pace with Internet-circulated, breathless posts summarizing the very latest…
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Blog@IX
- Privacy and Ethics Concerns Using UX Research Platforms
  
  Michal Luria
  
  Remote user experience (UX) research is not a new phenomenon [1], but the pandemic has accelerated it, necessitating the adaptation of traditionally face-to-face methods to work remotely [2]. The past few years marked a growth of online platforms, such as dscout, Lookback, Metricwire, and UserTesting, to name just a…
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Columns
- Notes on Nothing
  
  Gopinaath Kannabiran
  
  Nothing, perhaps, has fascinated humans more than notions of nothing. This seemingly simple yet endlessly generative abstraction has intrigued theologians, philosophers, artists, scientists, innovators, and social revolutionaries across cultures for millennia. Here are five instances that demonstrate the importance of nothingness in Western knowledge traditions: Greek philosopher Parmenides of…
- Our Liaison Shall Remain Imperfect and Complicated
  
  Daria Loi
  
  You have to know the past to understand the present. — Carl Sagan Occasionally, I find myself down the wondrous rabbit hole of Greek mythology—mesmerized by its myths and stories that so frequently represent and beautifully encapsulate most, if not all, human behaviors and trends. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, for…
- Visualizing Historical Whaling Voyages over Time
  
  Leilani Battle, Ameya Patil, Trevor A. Branch, Zoe Rand
  
  When we talk about fighting climate change, we rarely mention whales. In computing, we can understand low-power hardware and resource-efficient software, but where do whales fit in? As it turns out, large whales might be carbon-sequestration superstars [1]. They eat krill, zooplankton, and other organisms that feed on algae…
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Forums
- The Future of Conferences Is Unconferences: Exploring a Decentralized Network of Regional Meetups
  
  Soya Park, Eun-Jeong Kang, Karen Joy, Rosanna Bellini, Jérémie Lumbroso, Danaë Metaxa, Andrés Monroy-Hernández
  
  Academic conferences allow researchers to showcase their work and network with peers. However, such events also have substantial limitations, such as one-sided communication, high costs, environmental impact, and time away from other obligations [1]. The Covid-19 pandemic forced conferences to move online, lowering costs, increasing access, and showing that…
- Designing Black Children in Video Games
  
  Yuki Chen, Jonaya Kemper, Erik Harpstead, Ross Higashi, Judith Uchidiuno
  
  A large number of video gamers in the U.S. identify as people of color. However, there is very limited avatar diversity in mainstream video games, and providing tools that allow players to create their idealized avatars is often overlooked by video game creators [1]. Without these tools, players who…
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Community square
- SIGCHI’s FY24 Budget: Expanding Initiatives
  
  Luigi De Russis, Neha Kumar
  
  As one of ACM's largest special interest groups, with among the most members (nearing 5,000) and conferences (26 and counting), we are also among the best funded. Representing the SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC), we share here the details of the 2023–24 fiscal year budget for SIGCHI. Our aim is…
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Space
- The Material Aesthetics Lab: Creating Interactive Experiences with Matter
  
  Amy Winters, Bahar Barati, Anke van Oosterhout, Miguel Bruns
  
  Imagine a world where the very materials and objects we interact with possess the ability to adapt and transform themselves, akin to being alive. Here, sensing, actuation, computation, and communication become increasingly interwoven into the novel ecologies of materials, artifacts, humans, and nonhumans that we live with, wear, and…
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Features
- Requiem for an Interface
  
  Steve Harrison, Deborah Tatar
  
  On January 1, 2023, the weather app Dark Sky ceased working. Many apps provide weather information and forecasts, but Dark Sky showed what thoughtful information design can do. Insights → We lament the loss of Dark Sky's deceptively simple interface that delightfully delivered hyperlocal weather information. → Focusing…
- Advancing Explainability Through AI Literacy and Design Resources
  
  Patrick Gage Kelley, Allison Woodruff
  
  Britni expertly navigates her kayak down the narrow channel, creating a new route to share online (Figure 1). Navigator, her boating app, lets her post routes and gives her a percentage of the advertising revenue. As Britni rounds a bend, a notification comes in from Navigator: "Your route 'Marshy…
- Creating Standards: Our Secret Job as Researchers
  
  Danny Spitzberg
  
  Designing and developing software involves making claims about what users want. In the early years of personal computing, central claims about user goals, desires, and everyday life came from psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who collaborated with technologists in innovation centers like Xerox PARC [1]. In the past…
- The Purpose of a System Is How We Shape It
  
  Oliver Cox
  
  Why are our information systems places where ideas go to die? Why do so few of us, and fewer organizations, gain any level of mastery over our documents, ideas, and data? Insights → Our computers and their software are not currently ideisomorphic: They do not make it natural…
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Cover story
- Is AI Going to Replace Creative Professionals?
  
  Bhautik Joshi
  
  To understand AI and creativity, we need to first examine the relationship between technology and art. Creativity is vast, however, so this article will focus on film and touch on the very related impacts on design. Technology and art have traveled hand in hand for as long as we've…
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Calendar
- Calendar
  
  INTR Staff
  
  September MuC: Mensch und Computer '23 (Zurichsee, Switzerland) September 3–6, 2023 https://muc2023.mensch-und-computer.de/en/ RecSys '23: 17th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (Singapore, Singapore) September 18–22, 2023 https://recsys.acm.org/recsys23/ CHItaly '23: Crossing HCI and AI (Turin, Italy) September 20–22, 2023 https://chitaly2023.it/ MobileHCI '23: Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (Athens, Greece) September 26–29, 2023 https://mobilehci.acm.org/2023/…
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Exit
- Before There Was a Hill There Was a Hole
  
  Hope Wang
  
  Contributor: Hope Wang, [email protected] Curator/Editor: Nia Easley Textile artist Hope Wang often documents the unintentionally whimsical "scars" people leave on the architectural landscape. Even in absence of the figurative body, everything in Wang's digital weavings depict what has been shaped by and for the body. Her process often involves…
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Conversations in Sketch
- Rage Against the AI Machine: A Sketch in Time
  
  Miriam Sturdee
  
  I am sitting at my desk (wearing my SIGCHI volunteers' t-shirt from CHI 2023!) and sketching out the bones of this comic when Elizabeth appears at the door. She is dressed for late summer, wearing a turquoise top and loose pink trousers. "Miriam, what are you working on?" she…
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