CHIMe 21 Day #2: Takeaways for Undergrads & Early Stage PhD
CHI2021 — ACM CHI Virtual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Smriti Jha, Research Associate, Dalhousie University
Kartik Joshi, Undergraduate Student, Vellore Institute of Technology
CHIMe (CHI Mentoring) Symposium is designed to bring together, a unique, talented group of underrepresented students, industry scientists, and faculty doing research in HCI to provide a welcoming environment for mentoring and collaboration.
Discussions from Day 1 are available here: Part 1. Insights from talks of Day 2 are enlisted in this post.
Day 2 began with panel talks on Publishing in SIGCHI venues and beyond, Opportunites in HCI — Undergraduate to PhD, Gender+Race+Culture studies, Health.
1. Publishing in SIGCHI venues and beyond
- Gillian Hayes, University of California, Irvine
- Alexandra To, Northeastern University
- Moderator: Denae Ford Robinson
Advice for first-time authors:
- Read a lot. It is pattern matching most of the time. Go through the past 2–3 years of publication of people. See what are the expected sections and how they position the community they are contributing to.
- If you get a “Suggest Reviewers” section, go ahead and do that. If you don’t know anyone, then suggest people you cited or someone whom you would want to know. This could help in job hunting too, wherein recruiters go through your research papers and it helps if some of the recruiters have already reviewed your work in the past. They are expected to read the applicant’s research work and if they have reviewed your work you might have an edge.
- Whenever you get reviews for your work, email it to collaborators, then take a break. Come back and jot down bullet points. See for yourself — which are the major and minor feedback. Email it to co-authors and delegate tasks.
- If say, you are submitting at CHI, then make sure that you have a few references cited from a CHI paper. It is not mandatory, but it helps — most of the times.
- If you cite a person, check what conferences they cite? What other venues do they publish?
- Reverse engineer from best papers at good venues; Suggested HCI Conference venues — COMPASS, CHI, CSCW, ASSETS, UbiComp, Automotive UI, DIS.
Common Writing mistakes: Don’t try to put down someone else’s work to make yours more compelling. Remember, you are “building”, “extending” their work. The idea is NOT to critique the other authors whose research you are addressing. HCI is a small community and it is highly likely that he/she could be reviewing your work.
You can send some junk crappy draft to your advisor early and discuss that with your advisor. More importantly, think of this as multiple rough drafts to be iterated in the coming months. So rather than spending too much time behind a particular draft, take time and write many rough drafts. Also true for grant writings and proposals.
In SIGCHI, sub-committees matter a lot. Find mentors who can explain the meaning / hidden stuff of each sub-committees.
Before submitting — ask (email) people/mentors/allies to review your paper. Ask someone who’d be happy to, otherwise you might end up with a hasty and non-thorough review. Do this specially if you’re submitting to a journal. Ask your advisor/seniors too for review requests.
Feedback is a gift, you are doing it for you, for science
Job hunting technique — ask people you want to work with to review your paper — so it is subtle and indirect — they’ll know what you work on beforehand.
While reviewing/writing papers, remember you’re “standing on the shoulder of giants” — building on past work; be humble.
1.1 How to promote your work?
- Good to post about your work — tweet, blog, videos etc. Think from the audience’s perspective: “why should I pay attention to this? ”. Share your work (publications) with your research participants.
- Reach out to the press office at your school, “Hey, can we write an article about this work?”
- Try to see if you can share your work in non-academic settings (e.g. hospitals etc.)
1.2 How to plan/do your writing?
- Read paper outside (abstract, intro first), write paper inside out (methods, findings sections first)
- Write when you’re best at writing; don’t force it.
- Write outlines, one-sentence description of each section
- Co-writing sessions: with lab mates, other department people.
1.3 Authorship
- If you’re the first author — be ready to bear the extra weight i.e. managing logistics, intellectual leadership, submission deadlines.
- Best practice of dealing with authorships: Do your research work and then the next time you have your lab meeting, discuss which venue you are publishing, what the paper would look like on a higher level. Delegate tasks, if you want to be the first author. If you don’t want to be a first author, tell others to poke you for reviewing paper content. And the best thing to negotiate the first author tag, is to distribute them with peers. If you really want to be a first author, make sure your colleague/peers are the first authors in some other future paper. This is a healthy way to collaborate — so that everyone gets an equal share.
Tools for Writing: Grammarly, Overleaf.
2. Opportunities in HCI: Undergraduate — PhD
- De’Aira Bryant, Georgia Tech
- Amy Ko, University of Washington
- Molly Nicholas, University of California, Berkeley
- Moderator: Martez E. Mott
2.1 When writing a fellowship proposal:
- Have the objective / Question, on a sticky note on your monitor — to avoid detours from what is asked
- Know your audience — who will be reading my proposal
- Be a storyteller — when applying to funds, grants — Ask yourself and try to address ‘What impact would society with your research?’
- First two-three sentences are super-critical in a proposal — reader should feel “This project has an impact to change the world”
- Get your papers/proposal read by non-experts.
- Go to the writing centre on campus for getting feedback. Be ready to reach out. Most often people are willing to help.
Build relationships — (mentorships)
Writing retreat (yearly) for research ideas — from Amy Ko’s blog
De’Aira on fellowship application planning:
- Early summer — start working on the draft
- By end of summer — have a (non-specific) draft in hand
- In the fall, tailor the general draft to specific application requirements
- If you want ‘great’ feedback, give Profs/people time
Sources for securing internships: Twitter, advisor (their network), job postings of companies you want to work in, career fairs.
The initial stage of PhD: Do anything at industry — gives perspective.
Late-stage PhD: You would want to be more specific with your interests.
Summers:
- Keep Interning at some company if you want an industry job, might delay your PhD but you will grow your network and the industry would embrace your work and be more likely to welcome you.
- If you want to get into academia, you should probably be working at the university in the summers, doing your PhD work and finishing it timely.
- You would not collaborate with industries every summer, that’s toxic for your PhD trajectory.
Present your paper/poster — you never know who can walk up to you with an opportunity. Audience is key here.
Opportunities are very network-based (both in industry & academia). Invest time in building your network.
Be proactive. GHC, TAPIA, CHI — all have career fairs.
Be yourself. Be aware (thoroughly) of what you’re interested in — this comes across as being authentic to others.
Incorporate your personal ties/reasons to your research interests, if any.
Try to answer the recruiter “Why should you invest your money in me and my ideas?”
3. Gender + Race + Culture Studies
This was an informal discussion between students & researchers working on Gender, Race, Cultural Studies.
Racism is a US-centric construct. It unfolds in many ways in other settings. For example in India, there is Caste-based discrimination.
Gender Guidelines for research
Resources related to Decolonization
Expressing our positionality becomes very important: Being a male, wanting to do Feminist HCI; Being from the US, wanting to study Global South; Being “able” — wanting to study disability.
Your ’n’ would be small since you would be working with minority communities. But the whole point is to be inclusive. Focus on “Why are they important to study?” — People think that technology is for everyone. But have we included everyone while designing it? So, it is okay to have a small ‘n’ value. A lot of focus is on “Why ‘n’ is a smaller value”? And why it should be more in future.
We become better designers by working with minorities. We get a fresh perspective. And those design decisions inform the industry.
Ignore the dichotomy — global north, global south. Acknowledge that identities evolve and our preference as a designer is to be more inclusive of the multiple identities.
Other helpful resources:
https://www.christinaharrington.me/ (qualitative researcher)
https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~keith/pubs/chi2017-intersectional.pdf
4. Health
These pointers were taken from an informal discussion between students & researchers working on Health.
How to ensure the confidentiality of participants’ data in your study?
- Password-protected files, run all protocols through the security office on campus before submitting to IRB.
- NIH gives something like a ‘certificate of confidentiality’ — Show it to your participants —to emphasize that “Your data is safe”.
- For online surveys/studies allow participants to use alias emails — remove emails eventually from focus group data.
Discuss with your advisors — when facing a roadblock or feeling overwhelmed by sensitive data
Microsoft Research internship experience — having someone know that you’ve applied helps keep an eye on your application (both industry/academia)
Useful resources for HCI related Conferences:
https://www.nsf.gov/od/ogc/panelist_coi.jsp
If you have suggestions to improve this post, feel free to reach out to the authors at: smritijha0301@gmail.com and nckd.joshi@gmail.com.
If you are interested to contribute to the HCI4SouthAsia space then write an email at <hci4southasia@gmail.com>. To know more about HCI4SouthAsia visit — https://hci4south.asia/
