Early Days in Futuring SIGCHI
In October, the Futuring SIGCHI Committee kicked off its first couple of meetings, bringing together 11 energetic early career professionals, and four supportive mentors, to imagine ways we can expand the horizons of the SIGCHI community. As mentioned in a previous post, the Futuring SIGCHI committee was started as part of SIGCHI Turns 40 celebrations, with two goals in mind: prefiguring desired futures in HCI through creative pilot projects and building community and leadership skills among early career professionals. Already, we’re starting to see these visions unfold!
First, who are we as a committee? We are from 17 institutions in nine countries across four continents. Early career members comprise five students (including undergraduate and graduate), one research fellow, and seven professors and lecturers (some of whom hold multiple of these titles at once!). We also work across academic and industry research, consulting, and design. Together, we begin to reflect the community we aim to serve — an increasingly global SIGCHI community that spans research, practice, and numerous career stages. Members include:
Early career professionals
- Aakash Gautam, San Francisco State University, USA
- Doug Zytko, Oakland University, USA
- Jan Kučera, Newcastle University, UK
- Jaydon Farao, University of Cape Town, South Africa
- Miriam Sturdee, Lancaster University, UK
- Sarah Dsane, Koforidua Technical University/University of Cape Town, South Africa
- Sarina Till, Varsity College/University of Cape Town, South Africa
- Tan Gemicioglu, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
- Uğur Genç, Koç University, Turkey
- Vanissa Wanick, University of Southampton, UK
- Yi-Chieh Lee, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Mentors
- Arne Berger, Hochschule Anhalt, Germany
- Indrani Medhi Thies, Microsoft Research, India
- Jan Smeddinck, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Salzburg, Austria
- Marianna Obrist, University College London, UK
For our first meeting, we focused on team-building, as well as high-level brainstorming to figure out what our common priorities are for pilot projects. Working with the virtual format, we played the HCI edition of Snake Oil, a game where one player plays a customer (in this case, an HCI professor), and the rest must string together a product name from a (limited) wordbank and pitch it to the customer. After a round of selling “email traps” to magically disappear an overflowing inbox, “hero rugs” to make travel to conferences easier, and “coffee jackets” to wake up in the mornings, it was clear that, as a group, we definitely have the skills to consider our audience, think creatively, and sell our ideas! Then, for the high-level brainstorming phase, we asked ourselves what we considered to be HCI’s grand challenges. We came up with the following challenge areas, many of which we have had first hand experience grappling with: sustainability and climate change, underrepresented countries and cultures, rethinking incentive structures in academia, supporting HCI education, and diversifying knowledge production.
For our second meeting, we were joined by Neha Kumar, SIGCHI president, to reflect on how Futuring SIGCHI could be most effective. We gained inspiration from knowing that SIGCHI is one of the largest SIGs within ACM, comprising about one-third of all of ACM’s conferences, and already known for strong community-building efforts. Thus, futuring projects are an opportunity to not only further expand what “community” means within SIGCHI, but to also offer a model for what is possible within ACM and beyond in related disciplines. Keeping this in mind, we thought through what changes we might strive to foster in the HCI community. We considered ideas around sustainability, such as data collection on conferences’ carbon footprints or developing best practices for hybrid or decentralized conferences. We thought about how to support global participation, such as innovative ways to support mentorship opportunities, improving perceptions of HCI as a field, and creating clearer pathways to getting involved in the HCI community. In thinking about how incentive structures in academia could better align with values of community and recognition of diverse forms of labor, we discussed ways that SIGCHI awards might be reconfigured to support these aims. We also brainstormed around supporting HCI education, such as nurturing writing and presentation skills, offering a recurring spring school for students just starting to get involved in HCI research, or creating programs for pathways to a first research paper. We considered ways to diversify knowledge production through supporting non-written submission formats and participation at conferences. A number of ideas centered around building community, such as improving outreach and communication from SIGCHI, better demonstrating value of SIGCHI membership, creating sustainable and interactive virtual communities, and hosting podcasts about diverse experiences in academia and rejected-turned-accepted papers.
These ideas only mark the beginning of our creative efforts. Over the next couple of months, early career members will form teams, propose ideas, and iterate, to create a plan for ambitious, creative projects that expand what it means to be a part of the HCI community. Mentors will play a supportive role in offering guidance and inspiration. We’ll also host coffee hours as a way for the whole committee to stay connected and occasionally hear from members of the SIGCHI community experienced in mentorship, community-building, and service. Stay tuned to hear updates on the projects we work on and the visions for the HCI community they entail!
