CHI 2021 Reflections
After needing to cancel the 2020 conference due to covid-19, the ACM’s CHI conference was held virtually for the first time ever in 2021!
Georgia Tech’s MS-HCI program sponsored about fifteen students to attend the conference, including four presenters (skip to the end to see those papers!). We are so grateful for the program’s support. Below are some of the highlights of the conference for us:
Phoebe Tan, first year
My favourite part of CHI was the paper presentations. I enjoyed watching the featured videos to get a quick overview and key insights from the research — it was also easy for me to access the papers if I wanted to dive further into it. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about findings beyond the fields I was used to, such as learning about research and applications in machine learning and artificial intelligence, which are not my typical domain. I also enjoyed going on the Discord channel to meet new people and engage with other attendees. Overall, it was a great first experience and I am looking forward to CHI next year!
Niharika Mathur, second year
The experience with my first ever CHI was surreal and at the same time convenient. I liked the fact that the conference organizers put tremendous thought into making it a fulfilling virtual experience, and one which centers both on productivity and networking. During the course of the conference I focused a lot on paper presentations, particularly in the Clinical Health session. A lot of the papers this year had the undertone of the pandemic but touched on different aspects of it, ranging from mental health during isolation to co-working while being remote. The paper that I was a part of as a second author was also presented during the Clinical Support session. I also enjoyed papers which introduced novel ways of incorporating existing cultural techniques into User Experience Design, such as this paper which introduces aspects of a Japanese aesthetics technique called Wabi Sabi into design.
Another aspect of CHI that I enjoyed were the pre-conference mentoring sessions that gave an overview of what to expect from the conference and on navigating the conference interface. The mentoring sessions were also conducted in various time zones to be able to adjust to people logging in from all over the world. I also attended a few virtual gatherings with people in the field of healthcare technology and was able to be a part of conversations with respected researchers from all over the world. Overall, this experience has served as an incredible initiation into the world of CHI and I am greatly looking forward to the conference next year! A big thank you to the MS-HCI program and Dr. Richard Henneman for giving me the opportunity to attend this conference and awarding me with a travel grant for the same!
Matthew Lim, first year
As someone who has been interested in Human-AI interaction, it was fascinating to see all the new systems and seminal work that is being done in that field at CHI. AI or ML (Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning) is an interesting problem in HCI because it is difficult, by its own nature, to explain or predict. HCI academics have pushed for AI and ML transparency and explainability for end users and experts throughout AI/ML use cases. This year I was able to see work in explaining datasets, automated data science, creating frameworks for transparency, even ML used to train ML. In addition, I saw some new synthesis programs firsthand. These programs develop other programs using simplified semantics. All in all, I was able to get a glimpse into the world of Human-AI/ML interaction and some of the nuances that surround it. It was also cool to see Georgia Tech’s own Mark Riedl featured in some of the more foundational papers. I hope I can attend CHI next year and I believe I’ll have some papers of my own by then to present.
Grace Barkhuff, first year
My favorite session at CHI was the SIG on Access (Special Interest Group). The session was an open discussion over Zoom about accessibility barriers to accessing the virtual CHI conference. We discussed issues such as poor video captioning and difficulty navigating the virtual platform, as well as positives like having accessibility-focused student volunteers and the presence of live ASL interpreters during the keynotes. It was awesome to see a space just for listening to folks about their experience with the conference — and during the conference, not as an afterthought!
Whitney Li, second year
The session I liked the most was the workshop on User Experience for Multi-Device Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities. I’m a TA of ubiquitous computing class this semester, and this workshop made me realize how the class material is closely related to the most recent HCI research. I really appreciate the MS-HCI program that has supported me to attend this conference and see so many brilliant ideas from researchers across the globe.
I also want to share some exciting papers that I learned about at the conference: watch IOT, point and control your devices through a smart watch’s side camera; home-based reminder system to assist older people with dementia; screen jump enables users to smoothly transition their work to different screens of devices.
Hung-Yeh Lin, second year
Unlike in-person CHI, this year, most papers have a pre-recorded video that could be watched anytime. So I aimed at attending panels and keynote speeches whose content would only be accessible if joined live (except a few would be recorded). One panel that impressed me was “Making at a Distance: Teaching Hands-on Courses During the Pandemic”. The content shared by the speakers resonated with me a lot because in Fall 2020, I took the course “Prototyping Interactive Systems” offered by Dr. Hyun Joo Oh, where we learned about Processing and Arduino. I didn’t realize how much time and effort was necessary for this kind of hands-on course to be successful until hearing about all the hard work the speakers put into their own courses. Reflecting back on my experiences with the course, Dr. Oh really did an amazing job and I really appreciated that. We all know every teacher and student is doing their best to make remote learning work. To make virtual CHI happen, much more work was put into it as well. This panel reminded me of this fact, which we should all be grateful and proud of.
Anjali Devakumar, second year
Attending the 2021 CHI conference online amidst a worldwide pandemic was a surreal yet exciting experience, as this was my first CHI conference as an attendee and as a presenter. I presented my first-author paper, A Review on Strategies for Data Collection, Reflection, and Communication in Eating Disorder Apps, in the Mental Health paper sessions. I created a 5-minute video with captions broadcasted during the live stream, and immediately after my video played, I participated in a live Q+A where I answered questions from attendees. Although nervous at first, I appreciated the thoughtful questions I received and felt both honored and confident to be sharing my work on a platform of this scale. The highlight of my presentation was when I received a question from a researcher whose works we cited in our paper, who later responded that he liked my answer and presentation.
Additionally, in my paper session, I felt inspired and in awe of the range of topics and thorough work represented in Mental health research. From understanding the experiences of helpline callers in India to creating game environments to aid those with social anxiety, the studies presented helped understand the relationship and tradeoffs of technology-supported interventions and be more informed as a researcher and designer to create therapeutic technologies. Overall, I felt energized by the CHI environment, and I look forward to attending future conferences (hopefully in person)!
I appreciate my professor, Dr. Munmun de Choudhury, for sponsoring my CHI attendance and my co-authors and professors for their incredible work and feedback to make this paper and presentation a reality.
Lucy Chen, first year
Over the course of the many accessibility projects I’d worked on in the past, it had often felt like I was alone in my efforts and there weren’t many people I could consult with about the subject. While joining Georgia Tech began to shift that perspective, it wasn’t until listening to the passionate discourse in the accessibility paper sessions and connecting with the students and researchers behind the papers that it really hit me how there exists a massive, international community in this space full of people who are so open and ready to support each other’s work. I really loved that aspect of the conference, having the opportunity to see the newest work in so many different subjects, and how I feel much more a part of the HCI community now. Looking forward to attending CHI again!
Ruchita Parmar, second year
I found Ruha Benjamin’s keynote talk titled ‘Which Humans? Innovation, Equity, and Imagination in Human-Centered Design’ particularly interesting and eye-opening. Hearing about her perspective on how innovation needs to take into account social dimensions in order to decrease injustice and inequity in the society was thought-provoking. She conveyed this sentiment really well when she said “Less friction for some means more friction for others” — minimalist design of apps and websites very well hides the complex and fast-paced mechanisms that go on in the backend to provide a seamless experience to the customers, sometimes at the cost of the workers’ health and safety and needs. While this is just one example, the speaker gives many such insights which are definitely worth listening to and I would highly recommend everyone in the field of design to watch this talk.
Another favourite part of CHI was the paper presentations. A conference I had presented at last year did not have the bandwidth to let us present our work in real-time, so we were only able to record a video which the viewers would play on their end. Here at CHI, the authors had the chance to present their work during a video conference which made the whole experience much more engaging. The tracks covered a very wide range of areas within Human-Computer interaction — accessibility for visually impaired users, education, medicine and health, game design, tangible interfaces, to name a few. I tried to attend as many of these presentations as I could and was extremely impressed by the quality of work. I am hoping I will get to attend many more of these in the years to come. This was my first CHI attendance, but it certainly won’t be my last. Special thanks to Dr. Richard Henneman and the MS-HCI program at Georgia Tech for offering the travel grant that made this possible.
Hannah Tam, second year
My first-ever CHI was the perfect conclusion to the end of my HCI program at Georgia Tech. Attending CHI was a wonderful experience because it allowed me to connect concepts and build upon the knowledge I had been exposed to in my academic HCI electives (such as HCI for development, personal health informatics, and issues in online communities). It was intriguing to see these topics evolve as well, as many novel ideas and research directions emerged at the conference.
Most of my conference participation centered around the paper presentations, which was especially exciting whenever I came across research presentations by Georgia Tech faculty or even my peers in the program! Each of the presentations fostered my curiosity on different levels. A few of them stood out: it was fascinating to learn about the consideration of religious beliefs and values in HCI and really thought-provoking to understand data literacy through a critical race perspective. I also found the sessions related to online support and care particularly useful to me, as I am currently exploring these topics in my research.
What I enjoyed the most about CHI was celebrating the differences and similarities across various bodies of work while being surrounded by an active community making an effort to understand both the dimensions of being human, just as much as the dimensions of technology. I am so thankful to the MS-HCI program for providing me with the opportunity to attend CHI this year!
MS-HCI Presenters
Four Georgia Tech MS-HCI students were selected to present at the conference this year! Check them out:
Niharika Mathur
Empowering Dyads of Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment And Their Care Partners Using Conversational Agents
Authors: Tamara Zubatiy, Kayci L Vickers, Niharika Mathur, Elizabeth D Mynatt
Anjali Devakumar & Jay Modh
A Review on Strategies for Data Collection, Reflection, and Communication in Eating Disorder Apps
Authors: Anjali Devakumar, Jay Modh, Bahador Saket, Eric P. S. Baumer, Munmun De Choudhury
Jack Towery
What The Flock?: Fostering collaborative Active Breaks for Online Education
Authors: Sara Milkes Espinosa, Jordan Graves, Jack Towery
Check out their video at this link!
