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Yes, CHI is quite broad as a field. It started out primarily as computer scientists and psychologists, grew to include design, and has since then expanded to in
by jasonhong 5y ago
Yes, CHI is quite broad as a field. It started out primarily as computer scientists and psychologists, grew to include design, and has since then expanded to include elements of anthropology, art, material sciences, ICT4D (tech for developing countries), and more.
One thing I've never quite figured out, though, is that other fields in CS tend to splinter into new conferences when the main one gets too big (or perhaps its just systems conferences). In contrast, CHI seems to just get bigger and broader every year.
- bawolff 5y agoIts just fascinating that one conference includes all of these: Coupling Simulation and Hardware for Interactive Circuit Debugging Designing Menstrual Technologies with Adolescents Increasing Electrical Muscle Stimulation's Dexterity by means of Back of the Hand Actuation
- toomim 5y agoTrue. Whereas most Computer Science communities gather to solve a particular problem (like comprehending natural language), HCI contributions tend to be the problem definitions themselves. A common CHI paper would read "we studied a set of users X and Y and found that they tend to run into problems Z. We designed a solution W to address Z, and suggest some other work that could be done to address Z better." The conference thus contains many papers proposing radically different ways of seeing the issues that users face in computing along with radically different ways of addressing them. If these new-found problem definitions happen to gather enough attention for a sustained period of time, then it warrants a new conference of researchers ready to address those problems. But I don't think this happens often enough in CHI for it to break into sub-conferences very often. (Also, hi Jason!)