MSHCI Students’ CHI 2022 Reflections
With things getting slowly back on track, ACM’s CHI Conference was in person for 2022, in New Orleans, Louisiana!
Continuing the yearly tradition, Georgia Tech’s MS-HCI program sponsored about twelve students to attend the conference, and some students presented. We are very grateful for the program’s support and opportunities for exposure to HCI. Here is what the students had to say when recollecting their experiences at CHI 2022:
Boya Ren, Linkedin
I enjoyed this conference experience a lot as I got to hear tons of astonishing ideas emerging in the HCI field. Even though I did not intend to pursue a Ph.D. degree, I found myself in a Ph.D. mindset for those days as I gained a deeper understanding of what kind of influence HCI research could exert on people’s lives and on our shared future. It’s even better than a lot of presenters bringing the devices/artifacts that they created and thus we could have a more tangible experience with their research topics. Some projects that caught my eyes include the Hand Interfaces and Mouth Haptics. Both are innovating AR/VR experiences by detecting more user movements and offering more freedom of interaction: One is transforming users’ hands into different objects and the other is enabling the interaction with users’ mouths which is one of the most sensitive areas in human bodies. Witnessing a lot more forward-looking projects like these two, I got extremely excited about advancing the interaction between humans and technology. This experience definitely reinforced my decision to submit a paper for my master’s project to make innovative ideas heard and seen in academia. Hopefully, I can bring my paper to CHI in the near future.
Tyler Norman, LinkedIn
As someone who is interested in HCI applications to gaming, I spent most of my time attending paper presentations covering research being done in the gaming space. Some of these sessions included Games in the World, Emotions & Morality in Games, and How Technology Matters in Games. Each one of these sessions included interesting topics like problematic microtransactions, the relationship between real-life and in-game moral decisions, improvements to auditory/visual feedback in learning games, and improving movement-based games for players impacted by physical impairments. Listening to this research was particularly impactful, as it introduced me to new topics and considerations that I would like to apply to my own work in the gaming space.
In general, I feel very fortunate to have been able to attend CHI in person this year. It really helped to expand the scope of the field for me — both geographically and theoretically. I was able to listen to and connect with others from all across the world to better understand the many different ways in which HCI is researched in academia and applied in industry.
Meichen Wei, LinkedIn
Although we attended CHI only for 3 days, the experience was very inspiring. Personally, I am most interested in how the physical and digital worlds connect and augment each other, so I went to paper presentation sessions including Tangibles and Ambient Computing, Fabricating Devices and Tools, and Haptic Sensing. As a first-time CHI attendee, I learned a lot about the cutting-edge research areas in HCI as well as how to formulate and present an academic paper. Previously, I considered academic research to be abstract and theory-heavy, but attending CHI made me realize how research can be applied in creative ways to either new ideas or improve existing ideas. I also got a chance to connect with professionals that would have been hard to talk to if the conference were still done remotely, so I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend in person, and look forward to attending again!
Theresa Hsieh, LinkedIn
This was my first experience at an academic conference and much of the advice I received before the event was to “not get too lost in all of the papers.” Initially, I found this to be a bit counterintuitive, but when reflecting back on my experience at CHI, I feel like my favorite part of the experience was absolutely talking to people outside of the paper talks. While I listened to many fascinating presentations and learned a lot about a variety of topics such as how psychopathy and NPC emotions can influence players' behavior in video games, I had the most fun chatting with people after the talks. Discussing with friends what they learned, chatting with professors about presentations, and interacting with new people in line to get coffee made for a really engaging experience of interacting with the HCI community. I really appreciate how this opportunity not only allowed me to learn more about HCI research happening around the globe but also allowed me to interact with the researchers working on the projects that push the field forward.
Lukas Schmid, LinkedIn
Attending CHI was eye-opening to me: There are so many researchers and practitioners around the world who contribute to the field of HCI in incredibly diverse ways. The conference started with a rousing keynote by Dr. Kishonna Gray about racism and sexism in gaming. Besides, there were about a dozen simultaneous paper presentations on a variety of topics, so I was spoiled for choice. One of my favorite presentations was on the relationship between culture and the perceived intensity of an emoji’s emotion.
Further, the large number of researchers and practitioners provided unparalleled networking opportunities. For example, I got the chance to speak with the Director of UX Research for Material Design. I also ran into researchers from my alma mater and enjoyed catching up with them. Apart from that, I loved talking to researchers who were standing by their posters. This allowed me to ask in-depth questions and follow up, unlike in the presentations. In addition, I appreciated the recruitment activities by several companies. Some of them offered sponsored talks and enabled me to speak with recruiters and practitioners at their booths. To conclude, I am grateful for the travel grant and look forward to CHI 2023 in Hamburg!
Joyce Wu, LinkedIn
CHI 2022 was the first academic conference I have ever attended. There was a variety of topics for attendees with different interests to choose from. Since I am more curious and drawn toward the psychology and social justice side of HCI, I picked sessions focusing on topics such as emotions, communities, justice & equity, and mental health and wellbeing of young people to attend. One of my favorite paper presentation sessions was Care Infrastructures for Digital Security in Intimate Partner Violence. The paper described the development of a new protocol to support survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the presenter was empathetic to the victims suffering from IPV as well as articulated the current challenges. On top of having the opportunity to interact with the presenters face-to-face, being able to attend the conference in person also allowed me to meet and learn about other attendees’ research interests and the current projects they were working on. The overall experience had been fruitful and I learned a lot to prepare me for school and the industry. Therefore, I am grateful for this opportunity and would recommend others to attend CHI in the future.
Kshitij Gupta, LinkedIn
CHI 2022 was the first in-person conference I have attended and it has been quite a unique experience for me. The conference dates intersected with our college’s final week, which meant a few of us had to spend evenings catching up on deadlines — but I’m so glad to have taken this opportunity along with my batchmates. We spent our time in New Orleans attending exciting talks, networking with HCI researchers, and exploring the city together. Shortlisting 2–3 areas that I was strongly interested in exploring allowed me to narrow down my focus during the conference and helped me better plan my days. I also went to the conference keeping my Master's project in mind — listening to the different talks was a great way for me to brainstorm the different directions that I could move forward in.
The talks in the Tangible User Interfaces session introduced me to researchers in an area I hadn’t explored before. One of my favorite papers was presented during this session where they talked about establishing a language for collaboration between human and autonomous interfaces. A lot of their proposed methodologies could be extended to the space I was looking at for my Master's project. I was glad to be able to get their thoughts on my ideas after the session as well as their contact details to continue our discussion!
Apart from networking with presenters, there were opportunities to talk to plenty of prominent professors and industry professionals who were attending the conference. Unlike traditional career fairs, Google, Bloomberg, Yahoo, and Tableau had a 3-day stall setup from morning to evening. The people present in these stalls ranged from recruiters to senior researchers who didn’t hesitate from having long and insightful conversations with attendees.
Contrary to what I was expecting, being in rooms packed with people having deep knowledge about the field was inspiring rather than intimidating. In retrospect, reading some of the papers beforehand would’ve given me the confidence to ask some of my questions in such an environment. This was a great learning experience for me, and I look forward to playing a more active part in conversations at future conferences.
Abhinav Thukral, LinkedIn
CHI 2022 was my second in-person HCI-related conference but my first time at CHI. I had previously presented as well as participated as a student volunteer at UIST ’19 and had anticipated CHI to be much bigger in scale.
As much as I loved my time at UIST, CHI definitely matched my expectations in terms of the scale and diversity of paper presentations. We started off with a moving opening keynote on reimagining the future of gaming by Dr. Kishanna Gray, where she led light on the often unnoticed racial and sexist ideas propagated through games. Personally, I was intrigued by the problems presented in the keynote and it made me realize research questions I hadn’t considered before. With that feeling in mind, I scheduled my time at the conference making sure that I attended several presentations outside my research focus such as haptic sensing, fabrication, gaming, and immersion. I’m glad that I was able to explore these different sessions as the talks were highly inspiring and sparked great ideas and conversations with some of the presenters at CHI.
Beyond the paper presentations, I had a great time networking with fellow Masters's and Ph.D. students, as well as industry professionals during receptions and breaks. The poster presentations were a great way to chat, and ask questions and the interactivity session was truly mind-blowing with live demos such as bio-based materials, the use of haptics for breathing, and invisible tags using infrared. It was also interesting to observe the hybrid nature of the conference with people joining remotely from all across the globe.
Finally, I also had a great time exploring the booths of companies like Google and Bloomberg. I spoke to UX leads and team members at these companies and learned a lot about their work, research problems in the industry, and their roles at the conference.
Overall, it was an amazing learning experience and I really appreciated the opportunity to attend CHI in person. I look forward to CHI 2023 in Hamburg!
And finally, MSHCI Students whose work was presented at CHI 2022:
Kaely Hall, LinkedIn
Wenrui Zhang, LinkedIn
Supporting the Contact Tracing Process with WiFi Location Data: Opportunities and Challenges
Authors: Kaely Hall, Wenrui Zhang, Vedant Das Swain, Munmun De Choudhury, John Stasko, Dong Whi Yoo, Mehrab Bin Morshed, Gregory D Abowd, Alex Endert, Jennifer G Kim
The video of the presentation can be found here:
