Authors:
Naomi Yamashita, Vanessa Evers
This is the first installment of the IX Questionnaire series, where we ask ACM SIG volunteers, with a special focus on SIGs focused on aspects of design, about their volunteer roles and contributions. First up are Naomi Yamashita and Vanessa Evers, general chairs of the CHI 2025 Conference.
Tell us a little about yourselves.
We are Naomi Yamashita and Vanessa Evers, general chairs for CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan. Naomi is a distinguished researcher at NTT Research Labs as well as an adjunct professor at Kyoto University in Japan, focusing mostly on multilingual collaboration and computer-supported cooperative work. Vanessa is chair of the Human Media Interaction group and scientific director of the DesignLab at the University of Twente, as well as a visiting professor at NTU Singapore, focusing mostly on multimodal social interaction between people and intelligent systems. Our favorite pastime is eating good food.
What inspired you to forge a career in HCI? Is there a vision of the future that you had as a child that still persists?
Naomi was far from an exemplary student. She was rebellious, often ditching classes during junior high and high school, leading to regular trips to the principal's office with her parents. Persuaded by her-then boyfriend (now husband) that research jobs offered freedom and fun, she decided to pursue a research career after earning her master's degree in applied mathematics and physics. Joining NTT Research Labs, she realized the importance of a Ph.D. and pursued it under Toru Ishida, who specialized in AI and multiagent systems. However, she soon developed an interest in HCI, particularly in technologies that enhance human relationships.
The "human factors" in computing are really "tech factors" in people's lives.
Vanessa was not performing well at school in the 1980s either, and decided to study English, since it was the only subject in which she had a comfortable passing grade. However, her dad said it's important that she be able to provide for herself and mentioned this new thing: computers. She thought she would try computer science and then, once she failed miserably, would choose a field of study that she really liked. Somehow she made it through, and even did an exchange program at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, where Donald Day was her supervisor and gave her a project on cultural differences in HCI. After that, she was hooked on making sure technology was easy to use and helpful to people with very different backgrounds.
We met each other through the cross-cultural HCI community and through Pam Hinds, who put us together on the topic of bridging cultural and linguistic barriers in human-computer collaboration and computer-supported collaborative work.
Why did you take on the challenge of being general chairs for CHI 2025?
VE: Naomi asked me and, trusting her instincts completely, I thought, This will probably be all right. I had also worked with Mor Naaman before as a co-chair on CSCW and learned a lot from him on how to organize things, so I felt I might be able to contribute.
NY: CHI '21 was supposed to have taken place in Japan with Yoshifumi Kitamura and Aaron Quigley as the general chairs. They made extensive preparations, but it was canceled that year due to Covid, so it's good to have CHI in Japan for 2025. Yoshifumi has been great in keeping the passion for CHI in Japan going. However, new chairs were needed, and someone had to step up. I decided to take on the role when my friend and life coach, Kumiyo Nakakoji, emphasized the significance of having a female researcher from the Japanese community in this position.
What do you see as the central role of the general chairs?
We see our job as keeping things simple and doable for others. We have a great organizing committee with super-capable people, all of whom have an excellent vision for what can be done within their CHI track. So we try to create an environment in which the organizing committee can carry out their work comfortably. The org committee are all volunteers; they have "real" jobs and other real-world responsibilities, so we want to make sure we use the time they so generously give us for the CHI conference in an efficient and effective way. It is our job to remove hurdles and make sure they are appreciated for the incredible job they are doing.
What is your vision for the conference?
We are very determined to make CHI welcoming—that is, as inclusive and environmentally sustainable as possible. We also hope to explore new ways to partner with industry, NGOs, and other societal partners for CHI 2025, beyond booths and sponsorships.
What is one thing you'd like to see happening in/for the SIGCHI community in the year leading up to CHI 2025?
We, the populations of the Earth, are facing many challenges, including climate change, changing demographics, global conflicts, and growing inequality and scarcity. It's enough to make any person feel that it's too much to take on, and even to give up a little. However, the CHI community is uniquely situated to ensure that any technological contribution toward tackling these societal problems is successful—that it is effective, used, accepted, ethical by design, and collaborative at its core. We hope the community feels energized and eager to take on that role and for us to do our part in turning things around toward a better future.
Ten years from now, what issues do you imagine the SIGCHI community will be confronting?
Over the past 10 years, the major developments to impact us were advancements in deep learning and natural language processing that posed interesting HCI design and development issues. Also, the extended application of e-technology and AI in healthcare, as well as in electric and autonomous vehicles, led to a surge of research in those application areas. HCI wasn't so affected, we think, by developments in quantum and 5G but developments in blockchain, crypto, AR/VR, and IoT did influence the work of our community a lot. The next 10 years should be steeped in countering the effects of climate change and the knock-on effect that has on shifting demographics, inequality, conflict, and scarcity. Any technological development that hopes to contribute toward solving these problems stands or falls by a deep understanding of its users and the ability to change people's behaviors through effective design.
As we think about the future of tech, what is one thing you think we have, as the HCI community, gotten wrong about tech?
What a difficult question! We're not sure if it is up to us to tell the community what they may have gotten wrong. When we look back on our own careers and collaborations, we feel that maybe we didn't quite get something wrong about tech, but we got something wrong about people. This is not something new to tell the CHI community, but often we look to technological solutions to solve a problem: people-less factories, fully autonomous decision making, and so on. However, almost always there is a better solution through optimally supporting the people that work or live in any setting or supporting people's decision making. The "human factors" in computing are really "tech factors" in people's lives.
Authors
Naomi Yamashita is a distinguished researcher at NTT Communication Science Laboratories and an adjunct professor at Kyoto University. Her research focuses on CSCW and HCI, aiming to design communication technologies for better well-being, diversity, and inclusion. She will co-chair CHI 2025 in Yokohama with Vanessa Evers. [email protected]
Vanessa Evers is a full professor and chair of the Human Media Interaction group in computer science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and visiting professor in computer science in NTU, Singapore. Her research concerns human interaction with socially intelligent systems, human-robot interaction, and responsible AI for vulnerable users. She will co-chair CHI 2025 in Yokohama with Naomi Yamashita. [email protected]
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