I am just back from a trip to the annual SIGCHI conference, this year in San Jose. This is where the great and the good of the HCI and interaction design world get together to fret about the future. 

 

This year was different, however, as the theme was “Reach Beyond” and there was quite a focus on the developing world. The best for me was the workshop on the Saturday before the conference, specifically focused at how HCI and UCD can be applied to the developing world. This was inspirational as there were people from all over the world committed to using technology to improve the lives of those around them.

 

The reassuring element was that their stories were the same as ours. Basically, you have to spend a long time getting to know people. Training and communication are an issue when your users are not familiar at all with digital technology and you cannot use vanilla versions of, say, participatory design as they do not understand the technology well enough.

 

Not sure where-to from here. There will be a workshop at DIS in Cape Town, but I feel like we need to lay out a grand vision of where we are going so that we can all buy-in.

 

The rest of the conference was a bit intense as I had to give a plenary talk to about 1000 people on the Tuesday morning (see photo). I really have never been this nervous in my life, but fortunately I seem to have got away with it. An interesting side effect of giving such a talk is that lots of people want to talk to you afterwards. This was really great and I met some interesting people, but it meant that the rest of the formal sessions were a write-off. 

 

Wednesday, Matt and I did our tutorial on Mobile Interaction Design. Some people paid good money to listen to us for 6 hours straight! I hope we didn’t disappoint. On one of the feedback forms, someone wrote “Edutainment at its best.” I am hoping this is a compliment.

 

 

So take-aways from the conference are: