The Research-Practice Interaction community is a bridge between research and practice in HCI, including all flavors thereof (user experience, usability, interaction design, information architecture, etc.etc.). We aim to promote the exchange of information between researchers and practitioners, such that research and its results are more accessible to practitioners and that practitioner information needs are conveyed to researchers.

This community arises from the work that several of us have been doing in this area over the last few years, in SIGCHI and elsewhere. We are concerned when we hear practitioners say that the CHI conference is not relevant to them, when we know that it offers rich opportunities for cross-fertilization and has much content that would clearly be relevant if it were easier to digest. We are concerned when we read research papers that use valid research methods but unrealistic examples or situations, when we know that using realistic examples would make them more relevant to practice and more solid as useful research.

At CHI2010 we held a workshop on this topic (see the recap). (Similar workshops were held at the 2010 Information Architecture Summit and the 2011 conference of the Usability Professionals Association.) We concluded that the research and practice communities are what they are, for reasons that support their internal needs; and rather than beating our heads against the walls trying to change them, we who have (or want to have) some understanding of both communities need to build bridges and information conduits between them.

Hence the SIGCHI Research-Practice Interaction Community.

ACM members can join the community as a full member. Nonmembers can sign up for a free acm.org account and join the community as an affiliate, to receive updates and information.

If you care about the flow of information between research and practice in the field of interaction between people and technology, join us in helping make it better!

This workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners of human-computer interaction to explore whether and to what extent difficulties exist between them — and, if so, will endeavor to identify the dimensions of the problems and propose possible solutions. On the one hand, we will work to articulate factors that may render the research literature inaccessible or irrelevant to practitioners and to suggest potential improvements and approaches. On the other hand, we will also strive to learn from researchers how their research could benefit from practitioner input. We invite practitioners and researchers to submit a position statement of up to four pages, plus a short bio, by email to ebuie [at] luminanze [dot] com by 5pm EST on 6 January 2010 (note new date), to participate in this one-day workshop.

Your position paper should attempt to answer one or more of the following (or related) questions:

• How can the usefulness of research papers be improved to suit varied audiences?
• How should research be disseminated to different audiences, including practitioners?
• What are the barriers that discourage practitioners from adopting research findings?
• How can research papers be made more accessible to practitioners?
• How can collaboration between the two subcommunities be enhanced, for future CHI conferences?
• What should students of HCI and interaction design be taught about research, to prepare them for the practitioner world?

We will select a variety of viewpoints from participants with diverse experience. Participants will have access to all of the accepted position statements in advance, to facilitate pre-conference discussion and to support the formulation of discussion questions. The organizers will also publish a draft agenda to prepare for the in-depth discussions during the workshop.

Up-to-date information on the workshop will be available on this blog post, which can be reached directly at http://bit.ly/CFP-CHI2010-RPI

Please note that participants must register for the workshop and for at least one day of the CHI 2010 conference. Fees for a one-day workshop at CHI 2010 are estimated to be $175.

Important dates

• Submission deadline – 6 January 2010 (note new date)
• Notification – 30 January 2010 (note new date)
• Workshop – Sunday, 11 April 2010 (contiguous with the main conference)

Organizers

• Elizabeth Buie (Luminanze Consulting, LLC) ebuie [at] luminanze [dot] com
• Susan Dray (Dray & Associates, Inc.), susan [at] dray [dot] com
• Keith Instone (IBM), instone [at] us [dot] ibm [dot] com
• Jhilmil Jain (HP Labs), jhilmil [dot] jain [at] hp [dot] com
• Gitte Lindgaard (Carleton University), gitte_lindgaard [at] carleton [dot] ca
• Arnie Lund (Microsoft), alund [at] acm [dot] org

Please feel free to contact any of the organizers with questions.