Travels in Jutland with an Academic - Review of NordiCHI 2002

The NordiCHI conference series acts as a forum for HCI issues in the Nordic region. Our experience of the second conference, NordiCHI 2002, was of an open and constructive international forum for the discussion of all HCI related issues.

Mihai Nadin's plenary talk (Professor and Head of Computation Design programme at the University of Wuppertal) set the scene by critiquing what he saw as the lack of conceptual distance between humans and machines in conventional HCI – currently focussing on the reactive nature of machines rather than the anticipative characteristics of humans. He argued that in the end this leads to 'dumming down' of humans to fit with machines' capabilities – resorting to baby talk as a means of communication.

The conference as a whole balanced high quality theoretical, methodological, industrial, empirical, and tools-based papers. In some cases there was a lack of interrelation between the viewpoints, eg. connection between theory and practice. For example, Janni Nielsen presented a well argued theoretical paper critiquing the 'talk-aloud' techniques employed by usability practitioners, but there was a lack of glue relating these ideas to what the practical implications for eliciting user requirements would be. Similarly, Tore Urnes and his colleagues extended principles of participatory design by utilising theatrical conventions to act out design scenarios, but there was a lack of evaluation of the practical implications of such a technique. One reason for the lack of connections may be the short time speakers had to express their ideas due to the high number of quality submissions to the conference.

As with the theoretically motivated papers, the empirical and tool-oriented papers tended to not connect to a wider set of topics. For example, Konrad Tollmar and Jaokim Persson from the Interactive Institute in Stockholm presented an interesting and novel means of supporting remote presence. Their system involved lamps in geographically dispersed family homes which glowed when family members were present eg. when a daughter returned to her flat in Stockholm, a lamp would light in her mother's house in Malmö. Studies of three families using these prototype systems were carried out, but there was little development of theoretical implications.

Work on remote presence using lamps reflects the growing interest in non-work based interactions and issues, for example areas of fun, leisure, and play (see the growth of meetings such as 'Computers and Fun'). In addition to full papers which investigated this area, NordiCHI 2002 included an 'aesthetic artefact' session in which local interaction design students exhibited their work. Artefacts exhibited included bicycles which sounded like horses (see pic), giant seed pods which expressed the sensation of seasons through heat, light, and sound, and interactive music devices. These were not simply creative follies, but were designed to meet some user requirements. For example, the seed pod was intended to communicate changes in our environment over time in a multi-modal and engaging manner.

Overall NordiCHI 2002 contained a balanced set of high quality work ranging from theory through to practice, though lacking in evidence of connections between the themes. One of the stranger aspects of NordiCHI 2002 was the lack of socio-theoretic approaches and derivatives of Activity Theory which we had naively assumed would be one of the main flavours of the conference. This conference's contribution to HCI lies in moving the discipline out of the desktop into multimodal environments, and providing a supportive and constructive forum in which to discuss a gamut of HCI issues. We look forward to the next NordiCHI conference in Tampere, 2004, and encourage others from the UK to join us.

(A longer version of this article is to appear in Interfaces magazine.)

All change at the top for System Concepts
Source: System Concepts Ltd, 3 July 2009
 
Leslie Fountain has been promoted to joint Managing Director of leading usability consultancy System Concepts.

Life in UCD immortalised in fiction: you couldn't make it up
Source: UN, 2 July 2009
 
Sarah Herman's fictitious book on life in a user-centred design company has hit the shelves and The Guardian's book pages...

Interfaces Magazine - Issue 79: The Education Issue
Source: Interaction Group, 1 July 2009
 
The latest issue of Interfaces is now available as a free download from the Interaction Website.

Two new Behavioural research Tools from Noldus
Source: UN, 30 June 2009
 
Tool updates make on-site behavioural data collection easier.

Cell Phones that Listen and Learn
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 June 2009
 
New software tracks a user's behavior by monitoring everyday sounds.

Top Six Don’ts for Usability Testing
Source: FutureNow Inc., 27 June 2009
 
Six tips for creating quality usability tests to ensure useful feedback from testers.

Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
Source: FT.com, 26 June 2009
 
In a recent survey by Global Graphics, 77 per cent of office workers estimate they lose up to one hour a week because business software is difficult to use.

And what do you do?
Source: Dexo Design, 25 June 2009
 
How do you describe your job role? Here are the results of a recent 'Preferred UX/UI Title' Poll.

Most Doctors cite Usability as critical to Electronic Health Record Adoption
Source: TMCNet, 24 June 2009
 
It's all about 'meaningful use'.

Glossy monitors look good but can hurt
Source: QUT, 23 June 2009
 
A new advisory cites research which suggests high gloss monitors make users sit awkwardly.