Authors:
Jeni Paay
This is the second installment of the IX Questionnaire series, where we ask ACM SIG volunteers about their volunteer roles and contributions. Jeni Paay is vice president of SIGCHI Chapters globally and vice president of the SIGCHI Melbourne chapter.
What are you working on right now?
I am involved in many different collaborations across the university, but my favorite is research for the Australian Research Council on volumetric interaction. I'm working with people from the creative arts to observe dancers, in particular wheelchair dancers, and their sense of embodiment and awareness and their control of different parts of their bodies. I'm also teaching the final year of Bachelor of Design students, majoring in UX and interaction design, as they work with a local municipality to add digital placemaking to a community location.
What inspired you to forge a career in HCI?
I started my university studies in architecture, based on my love of science, math, and art. After working in this area for a few years, I decided to learn more about these new things called computers. After getting a graduate diploma in applied computing and a master's in computing, with a major in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, I was encouraged, by the late Professor Steve Howard at Melbourne University, to do a cross-faculty Ph.D. in interaction design. It was a really inspiring time for me, as I researched interaction design for location-based mobile computing supporting sociality in public spaces.
Have you had any pivots or career shifts?
My whole trajectory from architecture, through computer science, to HCI may look smooth and logical in retrospect, but at the time it felt like following different paths and finding my way. I was just lucky that when I found interaction design, it really did bring together my past studies. The biggest shifts in my life have been physical. Since starting my first degree I have lived and studied or worked in Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, as well as Launceston, Tasmania, and Aalborg, Denmark.
If you are involved with an ACM SIG, what is your role?
I'm currently vice president of SIGCHI Chapters, with an additional role of vice president of the SIGCHI Melbourne chapter, where I previously served as president for two years. I have been involved in SIGCHI Chapters for five years, and was a member of the group that initiated the Melbourne chapter.
What drew you to these roles?
I've been involved in the organization of OzCHI and other Australian-based conferences, and have attended several CHI conferences since 2006, when I completed my Ph.D. I have also been panel chair for CHI twice. I have an interest in being part of carving, constructing, and connecting the HCI community globally. I'm also interested in integrating and forming collaborations between academics and practitioners. SIGCHI Chapters are a great platform for this.
What are you working on right now?
As part of my new VP Chapters role in SIGCHI, I'm now looking at how to better structure chapters globally so that people living in different regions can join with other HCI academics, practitioners, leaders, and managers. The goal is to meet and share knowledge and companionship, both physically and online. Forming a local chapter is not always an option if you live in a small town or are geographically disconnected from other HCI people, so we need to find a way to welcome them into the community.
What is one thing you'd like to see happening within SIGCHI?
I would like to see the CHI conference become decentralized. It has become huge, exclusive, distant, and expensive, and we need other high-quality venues that are more accessible and sustainable. I think people are happy to travel, but maybe more local destinations and smaller conferences that connect different disciplines or research focus areas would be better. Unfortunately, "I need to publish at CHI" or "CHI is the only HCI conference worth publishing in" has become a mindset that will be hard to override. As a community, if we decided to support more specialized or regional conferences of quality, it would be a good thing.
Ten years from now, what issues do you imagine the HCI, UX, UI, and related communities may be confronting?
I think the current focus on AI and what that will do to our research, pedagogy, and practice will hopefully have stabilized. We will need to ensure that we are using AI for good—to solve some of the wicked social and environmental problems we've been facing in recent times. It is my hope that the HCI, UX, UI, and related communities will have found a way to be involved in research and practice that has real impact in making the world livable and sustainable.
What is one thing you have gotten wrong about tech?
That tech will ever get "easy to use."
Is there a vision of the future that you had as a child that still persists?
Coming from a migrant family, I have always been fascinated by holograms and how we can make people who are far away able to "be there" with us. I am hoping we're getting closer to really being able to experience the Star Wars Jedi Council scenario.
We will need to ensure that we are using AI for good—to solve some of the wicked social and environmental problems we've been facing in recent times.
Is there anything else we should have asked you?
Are researchers doing enough to improve our future? When I see some of the research that is published at CHI, my concern is that we are being distracted by making projects that are "cool" or "edgy" and will get through the review process, rather than good research that can make a difference to the world.
Author
Jeni Paay is the director of the Centre for Design Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. She has a transdisciplinary background spanning architecture, computer science, and HCI. Her research areas include interaction design for hybrid digital spaces, augmented reality and virtual reality, human-AI interaction, design for new workspaces, and UX design. [email protected]
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The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2024 ACM, Inc.
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