ACM Interactions

Jonathan Grudin has been active in CHI and CSCW since each was founded. He has written about the history of HCI and challenges inherent in the field’s trajectory, the focus of a course given at CHI 2022. He is a member of the CHI Academy and an ACM Fellow. [email protected]

Theory weary

Posted: Fri, March 14, 2014 - 10:09:08

Theory weary, theory leery, why can't I be theory cheery? I often try out little bits wheresoever they might fit. (Affordances are very pliable, though what they add is quite deniable.) The sages call this bricolage, the promiscuous prefer menage... A savage, I, my mind's pragmatic I'll keep what's good, discard dogmatic… —Thomas Erickson, November 2000 "Theory Theory: A Designers…

Metablog: The decline of discussion

Posted: Tue, February 11, 2014 - 1:06:58

Is our changing relationship to information rendering discussion obsolete? More information of interest is online than I can consume. Pointers may be enough. Today I may need help or time to find some of it, but before long rivers of gold will stream to us; we will have to push some of it away. The cafés of Paris and Vienna,…

Engineering in reverse

Posted: Thu, January 09, 2014 - 10:34:14

As a new year starts, we may review the year past, taking note of passages and travel, selecting events that provide humorous, solemn, embarrassing, or celebratory glances back. A crafted retrospective might be accompanied by a resolution to do better. More broadly, much time is spent analyzing the past. Acclaimed successes—a project or product, a career, a discipline—we wish to…

Post-visionary

Posted: Mon, November 25, 2013 - 11:00:12

The Interactions Timelines forum, 38 contributions by 28 authors over eight years, spanned the history of human-computer interaction and related topics. The November-December column on women who pioneered human-centered design is the last. History piles up faster than it is written down. My detour from the present through the past started with half a dozen questions about how we arrived…

Finding protected places

Posted: Wed, October 30, 2013 - 10:28:39

In a memorable scene, a boy is taught to swim by being thrown into a lake. In the movie, it worked. In real life, training is desirable, whether for heart surgeons, air traffic controllers, or swimmers. Training is a protected place, where we can try things, take risks, and make mistakes without adverse consequences. What happens in training, stays in…

Artifact invention and research

Posted: Mon, September 30, 2013 - 11:33:38

I asked several talented inventors whether there is more to research than invention. It was not a new question for them, but not an easy one either. “Get back to me after the CHI deadline,” said one, immersed in writing papers on his latest inventions. “The Edison-Einstein question,” said another. Where I work, artifact invention and research is the air…

Canyonlands

Posted: Fri, August 23, 2013 - 11:37:08

The Colorado Plateau. 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers) of high desert and scattered forests in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Home to 10 National Parks, including the Grand Canyon, and 17 National Monuments. Its features include the Colorado and other rivers, towering cliffs and deep canyons, arches, domes, fins, goblins, hoodoos, natural bridges, reefs, river rapids, and slot…

Bias

Posted: Tue, August 06, 2013 - 11:35:14

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by…

When A/B testing gets an F

Posted: Tue, July 02, 2013 - 11:33:18

A relationship is like a shark, it has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark. —Woody Allen, Annie HallLike sharks in search of their next meal, living websites constantly move forward. How do they decide where to go? Many popular sites rely on A/B testing. Different versions…

A slow triangulation

Posted: Tue, June 04, 2013 - 1:47:16

In the mid-18th century: "Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream? - in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip…