Final alt.chi Schedule!

Each session is 90 minutes
Presentation times are given as (presentation + questions)
Click on each title to access the complete paper and reviews

Evaluating evaluation

Monday 16:30-18:00
Session chair: Barry Brown, Glasgow University, UK

The Evolution of Evaluation (20+10)
Joseph “Jofish” Kaye, Cornell University, USA
Phoebe Sengers, Cornell University, USA
We provide a historical context for assessing evaluation methods by explicating the history of evaluation in HCI. We trace the history of evaluation in the field from electrical engineering and computer science, to experimental approaches drawn from cognitive science, to usability’s emphasis on in-situ studies and expertise.

From Mice to Men – 24 years of Evaluation in CHI (15+5)
Louise Barkhuus, University of Glasgow, UK
Jennifer A. Rode, Donald Bren School of Information, USA
This paper analyzes trends in the approach to evaluation taken by CHI papers in the last 24 years. A set of papers was analyzed according to our schema for classifying type of evaluation. Our analysis traces papers’ trend in type and scope of evaluation. Findings include an increase in the proportion of papers that include evaluation, and a decrease in the median number of subjects in quantitative studies.

Make Evaluation Poverty History (15+5)
Gilbert Cockton, University of Sunderland, UK
Argues for the need to ground evaluation in achieved worth rather than established psychological measures, and proposes the use of worth maps, based on approaches from consumer psychology, to do so, providing a shared representation for design and evaluation.

Public Usability Laboratory (15+5)
Ana Klasnja, Ontario Science Centre, Canada
This case study describes the concept of a public usability laboratory within a science museum environment. The integration of formal and community education will improve accessibility of cutting edge research and stimulate creativity.

Re-thinking humans, computers, interaction, and design

Tuesday 14:30-16:00
Session chair: Louise Barkhuus, Glasgow University, UK

The Three Paradigms of HCI (20+10)
Steve Harrison, Virginia Tech, USA
Deborah Tatar, Virginia Tech, USA
Phoebe Sengers, Cornell University, USA
Informal histories of HCI commonly document two major intellectual waves that have formed the field: the first orienting from engineering/human factors with its focus on optimizing man-machine fit, and the second stemming from cognitive science, with an increased emphasis on theory and on what is happening not only in the computer but, simultaneously, in the human mind. In this paper, we document underlying forces that constitute a third wave in HCI and suggest systemic consequences for the CHI community.

Questioning the Technological Panacea: Three Reflective Questions for Designers (15+5)
Eric Baumer, University of California, Irvine, USA
Bill Tomlinson, University of California, Irvine, USA
This paper argues that asking whether or not a technological solution is appropriate should be an explicit and exposed part of the design process. It raises three questions that should be addressed during the design process: Are there other, possibly non-technological, solutions that could address the problem equally well, if not better? Are designers creating solutions to problems that users themselves do not need to have? Are these technological solutions treating a problem rather than its cause?

Uptake of Situationism Considered Harmful (15+5)
Lucian Leahu, Cornell University, USA
Claudia Pederson , Cornell University, USA
Jennifer Thom-Santelli, Cornell University, USA
Pavel Dmitriev, Cornell University, USA
Phoebe Sengers, Cornell University, USA
We examine Situationist art practice as an inspiration for HCI design. We argue that methods from Situationist art practice have often been picked up without regard for their underlying sensibility. We describe an experiment in incorporating Situationist sensibility in design and use it to elucidate the challenges that face HCI in truly integrating the arts.

Computer Imagination as Holographic Processor for Text Animation (15+5)
Adim Astakhov, University of California San Diego, USA
Tamara Astakhova, University of California San Diego, USA
Brian Sanders, University of California San Diego, USA
Imagination is the critical point in developing of realistic artificial intelligence (AI) systems. One way to approach imagination would be simulation of its properties and operations. We developed two models “Brain Network Hierarchy of Languages”, “Semantical Holographic Calculus” and simulation system ScriptWriter that emulate the process of imagination through an automatic animation of English texts.

Life on Mars: HCI in space, cyberspace and beyond

Wednesday 14:30-16:00
Session Chair: Lars Erik Holmquist, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden

Challenges in human-computer interaction for manned Mars exploration (20+10)
Kim Binsted, University of Hawaii, USA
A seven-member crew (including the author) will spend four full months (May-Aug 2007) at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in Haughton Crater on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, in a Mars manned exploration simulation. The simulation will be as realistic as possible: limited water, cramped quarters, going outside in EVA (extra-vehicular activity) suits only, preserved food etc. The author will present remotely from the FMARS habitat, giving a tour of the facility and its equipment, and discussing various human-computer interaction issues.

Augmented Nature: Activated, Actuated and Animated Small Natures with Pervasive Computers (15+5)
Hiroya Tanaka, Keio-University, Japan.
Yusuke Murata, Keio-University, Japan
This paper proposes our novel way to design new-style "nature-mediated" interactive gadgets. It can also be called “computer-embedded small natures”. We adopted small, natural and inorganic earth materials such as rough stones (on the street) and raw shells (on the beach), and embedded small micro-controllers into them for giving interactive functions.

Full-Context Videos for First-Time, Non-Literate PC Users (15+5)
Indrani Medhi, Microsoft Research Labs India Pvt, India
Kentaro Toyama, Microsoft Research Labs India Pvt, India
Following previous work focused on non-literate users, we observed that in spite of our subjects’ understanding of the UI mechanics, they experienced barriers beyond illiteracy in interacting with the computer: lack of awareness of what the PC could deliver, fear and mistrust of the technology, and lack of comprehension about how information relevant to them was embedded in the PC. In this paper, we address these challenges with full-context video, which includes dramatizations of how a user might use the application and how relevant information comes to be contained in the computer, in addition to a tutorial of the UI.

Power of the Few vs. Wisdom of the Crowd: Wikipedia and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie (15+5)
Aniket Kittur, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Ed Chi, Palo Alto Research Center Inc., USA
Bryan A. Pendleton, Palo Alto Research Center Inc., USA
Bongwon Suh, Palo Alto Research Center Inc., USA
Todd Mytkowicz, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
In this study we examined how the influence of “elite” vs. “common” users changed over time in Wikipedia. The results suggest that although Wikipedia was driven by the influence of “elite” users early on, more recently there has been a dramatic shift in workload to the ”common” user. We also show the same shift in del.icio.us, a very different type of social collaborative knowledge system.

Ideas lab: inspirations, innovations and insights

Thursday 14:30-16:00
Session Chair: Joseph “Jofish” Kaye, Cornell University

Table Tennis for Three - the Video (10+2)
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Martin Gibbs, The University of Melbourne, Australia
We aim to demonstrate that a networked exerting leisure game for three players is possible and can be enjoyed by players. We believe it can be inspiring for other CHI researchers who design interfaces that aim to support social interactions between geographically distant participants.

Design of an Ecosystem for Ad-Hoc End-User Prototyping (10+2)
Seung Chan Lim, MAYA Design, USA
Peter Lucas, MAYA Design, USA
Our goal with the Javascript Dataflow Architecture (JDA) is to bring this spirit of end-user innovation back to the Web. We aim to achieve this while fully harnessing the powerful modern day Web technologies. The architecture fosters the growth of a marketplace of components and lends itself nicely to the ad-hoc copy-paste-and-tweak paradigm of end-user rapid prototyping.

Arduino: An Open Electronics Prototyping Platform (10+2)
David Mellis, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Denmark
Massimo Banzi, Tinker.it!, Italy
David Cuartielles, Malmö University, Sweden
Tom Igoe, ITP, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, USA
Arduino is a platform for prototyping interactive objects using electronics. It consists of both hardware and software: a circuit board that can be purchased at low cost or assembled from freely-available plans; and an open-source development environment and library for writing code to control the board. Arduino comes from a philosophy of learning by doing and strives to make it easy to work directly with the medium of interactivity.

RadioActive: Enabling Persistent Mobile Communications for Groups (10+2)
Aaron Zinman, MIT Media Lab, USA
Judith Donath, MIT Media Lab, USA
RadioActive is a technological and interaction design for persistent mobile audio chat spaces. Our work focuses on strategies to navigate and structure large asynchronous audio discussions. In this paper we examine related work, describe our approach, highlight a conceptual framework for navigation, discuss our evaluations, and provide suggestions for future research.

Tug n’ Talk: A Belt Buckle for Tangible Tugging Communication (10+2)
Drew Harry, MIT Media Lab, USA
Matt Adcock, MIT Media Lab, USA
Matthew Boch, Harvard University, USA
Vanessa Harden, MIT Media Lab, USA
Raul-David V. Poblano, MIT Media Lab, USA
Tug n’ Talk is a prototype of a tuggable communication device, allowing for intimate communication between two individuals using tugging as a metaphor. In this paper we discuss the advantages of tugging over other haptic communication modalities, such as vibration, with a focus on input/output spaces and meaning construction.

Qualities of Perceived Aesthetic in Data Visualization (10+2)
Nick Cawthon, University of Sydney, Australia
Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia
Through results gathered from a large-scale online survey, this paper empirically investigates the assessment of aesthetic in 11 common data visualization techniques. Visualizations represented in this study were generated from an identical hierarchical dataset and visually normalized to avoid unwanted implications of default application parameters or personal preferences.

Using Equations in Concept Maps to Graphically Build Knowledge Bases (10+2)
Aaron Spaulding, SRI International, USA
Vinay K. Chaudhri, SRI International, USA
Bonnie. E. John, SRI International, USA
Gus Prevas, SRI International, USA
Sunil Mishra, SRI International, USA
John Pacheco, SRI International, USA
In this paper we describe a graph based user interface to connect equations to richly defined concepts within a knowledge base. This makes it possible to support reasoning about the concepts referenced in an equation.

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