CHI 2004: European Research Perspectives bring much-needed Theory

'Changing expertise is causing a loss of roots, and a kind of intellectual chop suey,' said Alan Dix at a special panel at CHI2004 looking at European research perspectives. The focus on Europe took its cue from the location of the conference: based in Vienna this year, its one-in-four year jaunt out of America.

Dix was the most challenging of the panellists assembled to present their European perspective. He asked the key questions: Why look at European perspectives? What are they being contrasted to? And what differences do they offer in this context?

He argued that Europe has a lot of theory and many methods to offer, in part because research institutions in Europe do not have the budget to focus on indiscriminate development, but also because of what he called the 'weight of history'. He held up participatory design and activity theory as examples of the 'soft stuff' and methodology and formal methods as examples of the 'hard stuff' coming out of Europe.

If Europe was being contrasted with the USA, as he suspected it was, it was necessary to recognise that not just distance separates the continents, but deep intellectual gulfs, as one might expect from different cultures, he said. He identified intellectual style, academic structures (hierarchical vs flat – with the UK very flat), stability and disciplinary boundaries as all differing between the US and the UK, but said the gap was less in some areas of Europe.

He also commented on the interesting effect of EU funding forcing people together, a combination of political pressure and proximity.

And finally, like a grenade lobbed into the proceedings, he aired a concern that spanned the continents: the intellectual decoupage he was seeing as a result of second generation HCI.

Whereas the first HCI specialists had created the discipline out of backgrounds in psychology, computer science, sociology and maths, to name a few; the new generation was coming straight to HCI without a specialisation and then cherry-picking theory from other disciplines. He said that the anti-intellectualism was a worrying thing: ideas and methods were afloat without their theoretical moorings and the weaker for it.

'Professional practice is passed off as academic, but practitioner techniques are likely to be on a shorter timescale. This is shifting research from 15-20 year lifecycles to 5 years,' he said.

And he concluded: 'HCI needs theoretical and methodological foundations, but we don't have them. Europe is perfectly placed to deliver.'

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