Reviewing Process

The first round will involve reviewing papers and notes. Within a few days after 28 September, I will send each of you a few titles and ask you to tell me which ones you’d like to review. (You will receive titles targeted to the interests you’ve already communicated to me, to the extent that they match the titles I am asked to manage.) I need to get at least three reviews per paper, so if there are gaps or excessive overlaps in reviewers’ choices, we may have a wee bit of negotiating to do.

Once we have agreed which papers you’ll review, I’ll enter your choices into the CHI reviewer data base, which will take care of sending you the links to download submissions and enter your reviews. (It will also nag you about getting your reviews in.

Reviews of papers and notes will be due to me by 5pm EDT on 25 October.

The CHI review process is described at http://www.chi2010.org/authors/chi-review-process.html.

Criteria

You’ll review submissions according to the guidelines provided by SIGCHI for the authors of submissions. The various types of papers and notes, and the criteria for each one, are described at http://www.chi2010.org/authors/selecting-contribution-type.html. (Although as of this writing I have not yet seen the papers I’ll be curating, I am confident that they do not include any theory papers. )

The most important criterion for CHI papers and notes is that they contribute new knowledge, techniques, or approaches to the field. For practitioner submissions, this often means using established techniques in new ways or in new contexts, or interpreting findings in new ways. It may mean devising a new way of making usability methods more effective or efficient.

Note: The criteria for other submission types are less focused on breaking new ground than are those for papers and notes.

Next Steps

After papers and notes, we will be reviewing submissions for panels and case studies. These are due on October 9, so I expect to have my assignments by about 20 October, which would make your reviews due to me by about 17 November. (I’m just guessing here, as I don’t yet know the exact dates.)

After that, we have alt.chi, SIGs, and works-in-progress. Those submissions are due on 4 January, so I’ll probably be farming them out starting about the 15th and expecting your reviews by about 10 February. Again, just a guess.

User Experience Community Chairs

• Elizabeth Buie (Luminanze Consulting, LLC)
• Susan Dray (Dray & Associates, Inc.)
• Keith Instone (IBM)
• Jhilmil Jain (HP Labs)
• Gitte Lindgaard (Carleton University)

If you have signed up to review — or even if you are just thinking about it — please feel free to contact me with questions. You may email me at ebuie [at] luminanze [dot] com or use my Contact Us form.

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.