Historical CHI Video Project
Bringing 1983–2002 treasures to the ACM Digital Library and YouTube
Catherine Plaisant and Nat DeMenthon
LINKS
- Video Preview
- YouTube Playlist on the SIGCHI channel
- The COMPLETE LIST OF VIDEOS (posted or to appear)
- Maryland Project webpage for more information about the project
Working with ACM SIGCHI, we have been digitizing and archiving historical videos from the CHI Conference, creating a treasure trove of early influential designs for researchers, historians and journalists. The collection covers 20 years (1983 to 2002) of CHI Technical Video Programs. 322 videos have been preserved — and counting. Soon they will all be available in the ACM Digital Library and on YouTube.
Early CHI researchers know that the CHI conference had a long history of producing videos — all the way back to the 1st CHI conference in 1983, but those historical CHI videos could not be found on the ACM Digital Library. Some had been posted online but since many existed only as VHS tapes -which have a limited lifespan, we decided that it was time to digitize and archive the entire collection of early CHI videos in the Digital Library.
UPDATE: As of February 20, 2021:
- All the Historical CHI Technical Video Programs from 1983 to 2002 are now in playlists on the SIGCHI YouTube Channel.
- The CHI 1992, 2000, 2001 and 2002 Video Programs have been added in the ACM Digital Library. Video files have been added as supplementary materials to the video abstracts when they pre-existed in the Digital Library. In the later years Video Programs also included video figures linked to full papers.
Unfortunately there is no good way to search for those videos, so instead you can: - >>> see the COMPLETE LIST OF VIDEOS (posted or in progress)
A bit of history about the CHI Videos
Videos are the closest thing to experiencing the real interface, so early CHI conferences had a Technical Video Program. Authors hired professionals to tape videos and mailed a physical videotape to the Video Chairs for review. Accepted videos were presented in a loop during the entire conference and could also be viewed on TV in the hotel rooms. VHS tapes of the programs were available for purchase (see photo of the CHI’99 videotape at the top of the post). After 2002 the separate Video Program disappeared, and videos became part of the additional materials found in the conference CD-ROMs or online. The early CHI videos were used extensively for teaching, and by researchers and practitioners to stay up-to-date. Only around 2013 did a video track reappeared at CHI, in a different format.
Examples of what you will be able to see (once all the videos are posted)
The tapes do not contain a complete record of all the HCI research but represent a fairly extensive survey. Sometimes work that preceded the CHI conference was retrospectively included. The 1990 “All the Widgets” includes Doug Engelbart demonstrating editing using a new device called a mouse, recorded in 1968, among many other important early interaction designs. Still, the bulk of the videos illustrates work published shortly after it was conducted. For example, we see pioneering use of virtual reality demonstrated by NASA’s “VIEW,” along with the DataGlove (CHI 1987). Watching the videos we smiled at the youthful faces and abundant hair of the researchers. We laughed seeing users having trouble discovering how to use a mouse (even twenty-seven years after it was invented in 1963). Natalie, as a first year HCI master student was amazed to see things like virtual reality and 3D modeling in such a sophisticated state back in the 80s and 90s. Some videos played a major role in patent litigation. For example the CHI’92 video “Touchscreen toggle design“ was cited as prior art when Samsung successfully contested the Apple patent for the “Slide to Unlock” touch screen slider that unlocked the early iPhone.
Examples, from top left to bottom right:
CHI ’83: Robert Spence demonstrating focus + context
CHI ’89: Cathy Wolf explaining paper-like interfaces
CHI ’91: Catherine Plaisant demonstrating touchscreen sliding toggles
CHI ’98: Hiroshi Ishii in the Ambient Room
In addition to the Technical Video Programs, special videos were occasionally published. The most important one may be the 1990 special issue “All the widgets,” a two-hour review edited by Brad Myers, cataloging the diversity of new and historical interactive components (i.e. widgets) found in computer interfaces.
The challenge of getting permission from authors
The Copyright of 1983–2002 videos was retained by the authors so we had to track all the authors to ask for permission to post their videos on the ACM-DL, which was a big challenge. A small percentage of authors could not be contacted to provide permission, and a few companies declined to give permission for those historical videos, so consult our project webpage to see if those videos are available elsewhere.
Lessons learned
The upcoming ACM interactions paper about the project will describe in more details the process of archiving the videos and the lesson learned aimed at teams who will lead future preservation efforts. More importantly we strongly encourage researchers to:
- Record videos of their prototypes.
- Submit videos as supplementary materials to the papers.
- Consider including segments documenting the design process, and real users using the interfaces.
- Write about the history of their area of research.
We hope that this new collection of historical CHI videos will help you gain an appreciation for the contributions of CHI researchers to the design of systems and applications you use every day.
It might also help you find related work relevant to your research, and we hope it will also convince you to write about the history of your field.
Folks are starting to write about those videos. For example Saul Greenberg wrote a blog post titled The Value of Published User Interface Videos for Intellectual Property Litigation. Nat wrote about the Development of Early VR as seen through the lens of historical CHI videos. Deepthi Raghunandan and Ameya Patil wrote about A Bifocal View:Data visualization research of the past and present. Check those out, and write your own blog post.
Catherine Plaisant is a senior research scientist at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of the University of Maryland, and INRIA International Chair. She has authored more than 200 technical publications (and many CHI videos) and co-authored with Ben Shneiderman for the 4th through 6th Editions of Designing the User Interface. She is member of the CHI Academy since 2015, and in 2020 received the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award as well as the IEEE Visualization Career Award. plaisant@umd.edu
Nat DeMenthon is a second year Human-Computer Interaction Master student in the iSchool at the University of Maryland. She graduated from VCUarts in 2017 with a degree in Communication Arts. She focuses primarily on design with and for youth, and has a background in making artwork for children’s educational game companies. natalied@umd.edu
