As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I am looking for posts that summarize the discussions and the hot trends and topics at the CHI conference this year.
I came across two posts that summarize what was being discussed at CHI 2011, in Vancouver this year.
One is by my professor at Indiana; Erik Stolterman.
CHI 2011, the field, development, grand challenge, and the need for more books
Excerpts from this post:
CHI is changing. It is not easy to really understand what the changes are when you are at the conference, but compared with just a few years ago it is easier to see that there is a difference. The conference is broader, more diverse. I had the chance to go to several sessions and it is exciting to see that not only is the diversity growing but I also found the quality in general to be better than usual.
One clear change to me is a new interest in theory. I was very pleased to see a design theory session filling two large rooms, and so did the more theoretical design methods session. I hope that this is a sign that the field is getting more eager to find ways to synthesize findings and results from all the studies, experiments, and designs projects.
The second is from a friend at college, Diya.
CHI 2011, the Social Media and musings
Excerpts from her post:
Not surprisingly, social media and the underlying theme of interconnectedness formed the crux of CHI this year. Mining social data and trying to get an insight into user behavioral patterns marked the core of several sessions, presenting some very interesting insights on user behavior on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Location Sharing applications and Social Question Answering sites. One of the questions that emerged time and again is the tradeoff between the “social” aspects and the “content” based aspects of social media. Do people view, read and contribute because they find the content of a post interesting or because it pertains to their social circle? The most interesting impact was found to be on question answering forums where answers posted by “popular” users are rated high irrespective of the quality of content.
Waiting to hear from more people on their impressions of this year’s CHI and then perhaps make an analysis of what direction the field is heading in.
