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Archived: HCI Remixed: Project Goals and FAQ
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Page Contents
HCI Remixed Goals
The FAQ
- How should I go about choosing what to write about? There are so many possibilities!
- What are other people writing about?
- What are you looking for in the essay?
- How do I get started?
- What if I’m interested in writing on multiple papers by the same author?
- I don’t want to write about a paper – I want to write about a ...
- What's this about a blog?
- Is it OK to write about my advisors work?
- What if the work I want to write about isn’t HCI?
- What are the chances that this will be published?
- Can I write about a paper or work that’s less than 10 years old?
- Can I write about a person (teacher / advisor / colleague / mentor) who had a huge impact on my approach to HCI?
- Can I write about a theoretical perspective / methodological approach / body of research that’s critically important to HCI?
- A paper I wrote many years ago had a critical impact on my thinking -- can I write about that?
- Can I jointly author an essay?
Project Goals
As a field, HCI is almost three decades old. While this is not old as disciplines go, it is old enough that those who were present at the beginnings of HCI are moving into retirement, and it is old enough that ‘fourth generation’ HCI researchers and practitioners are entering the field. During this period HCI has produced a rich and varied array of literature, as well as drawing on a wide variety of work from neighboring fields. As newer researchers come to the fore, and as the volume of literature grows, the newer literature increasingly becomes the focus of attention. Older contributions that have shaped the trajectory and character of the field may soon be lost or forgotten. The premise of this project is that there is value in reconsidering earlier work in HCI, and in reflecting on how it has shaped research, practices, our community, and individual perspectives. Our aims are as follows:
- Provide a chance to view work reflectively and appreciatively.
These essays represent an important difference in the way researchers and practioners are challenged to think about research. The current reviewing and pedagogical models take a critical and analytical approach: reviewers are encouraged to look for flaws in submitted work, and students and other readers tend to address a work critically, carefully examining its suppositions and claims, often at a very fine-grained level. This is a necessary and worthy approach designed to refine and elaborate work that is often in an early stage. However, we suggest that there are other ways of engaging with work that are more synthetic. In our case, we are asking contributors to take a piece of work that has been previously published and to write an original essay or reflection on that work. This will allow members of the research community to articulate important contributions, and draw out the value of each contribution. We believe that a collection of these reflections will provide a unique perspective on how the field has developed, and the varying ways in which contributions shape future work.
- Provide HCI researchers and practitioners a chance to build community.
Communities are often defined by their shared interests and shared history. This collection of essays will begin to form a shared view of the value that select prior contributions have made to the field. These essays help develop a sense that the community is involved in a shared endeavor, and that the community has developed and matured in a way that is worthy of reflection.
- An opportunity to save worthy prior work from obscurity.
HCI has seen a huge increase in research over the last 25 years. As the years have progressed, the rate of production has increased. As a result, older work has been obscured by the sheer quantity of newer work – it has fallen out of the field’s working memory. A book of essays that highlights key contributions will save valuable work from obscurity by foregrounding work that experienced researchers and practitioners see as valuable.
- A resource for newcomers to the HCI field.
Many newcomers to HCI – whether they be students or established scholars whose interest have brought them into the area – are faced with the critical problem of both coming up to speed in the discipline and understanding new research streams in their historical context. Understanding the history of a field is critical to engaging in a research discussion in a meaningful way. We hope that graduate students and newcomers to the HCI field will find a book like ours valuable because it clearly articulates which work is critical from the view of more experienced researchers and practitioners in the field.
The FAQ
How should I go about choosing what to write about? There are so many possibilities!
There's no simple answer to this question, but here are some possibilities to consider:
- One of our aims is to remind users of forgotten or underappreciated work, so you might want to favor more obscure works over the well-known classics.
- Another thing to consider is how much you have to say about a particular piece of work – some pieces may not sustain the roughly 1800 words we are aiming at (however, if you do produce a very short piece, please see "What's this about a blog?").
- Another question to ask yourself is what sort of impact did the work have on you? Did it cause a shift in your approach to HCI, provide a foundation for your thinking, or introduce you to a compelling example or system? Given a choice between writing about a work that had an impact on you for very idiosyncratic reasons, versus one that might have a similar impact on readers, the latter might be a better choice.
Note that while we expect essays to be positive and appreciative of work, this does not rule out being critical as well. It could be quite interesting to explore some of the ways and reasons that an otherwise insightful piece of work got some things wrong, or simply to reflect on how the field has advanced in the meantime.
What are other people writing about?
Here is a list of currently selected works, though it is constantly changing. While we do not prohibit multiple authors from writing on the same work, we do encourage you to consider other works if something you wanted to write on is on this list.
What are you looking for in the essay?
The closest model to what we are looking for is a book review: the essays should be brief (up to1800 words), engagingly written, reflective, and personal in tone. They also need to stand alone – that is, we will not be publishing the works the essays are about, so you need to be able to convey the key points to your readers. The reader should come away from your essay with an understanding of what the piece is about, and perhaps a itching to read it themselves. But the essay should also be more than just a review of a piece of work. Hopefully, the reader will also come away with something that will shape how they engage with HCI. An essay might alert readers to a perspective, theory or method they weren't aware of. It might make them reflect on how they go about practicing HCI. It might cause them to ponder the ways in which a single paper can, over time, have a larger impact on the field. It might cause them to reflect on how or why the field has progressed over the last few decades.
How do I get started?
An essay is a rather personal thing, and we are wary of over specifying. However, here are a few suggestions about starting points.
- Think about the various aspects/features of the work. Spend some time thinking about its motivation, method, or approach. Reflect on what it is – a technique, an architecture, a feature, etc., – that interests you about it. Be clear in your own mind what it is that you like: is it something explicit in the work or maybe something implicit about the work?
- Place the work in context; discuss how it relates to an established topic or theme in HCI, what was going on in industry at the time, what ‘computers’ were like at the time (keep in mind, current and future readers may not know these contextual details the way you do).
- Write a synopsis of the work/paper, maybe a type of brief outline. Describe several key points that are made in the work you selected. Identify the feature(s) of the paper had an impact on you! Be clear, unequivocal, give clear praise for the strength of the work. Did the work effect you this way the first time you read it? Have you come back to the work to appreciate it now, sometime later?
- Have the results been further developed? In some cases, you might want to cite the work that built on or extended the work you are discussing.
What if I’m interested in writing on multiple papers by the same author?
We are quite firm about keeping essays focused on a single piece of work. One of the aims of this book is to explore how publishing a single paper – something within the grasp of anyone working in the field – can make a difference, and result in shaping the work of the work of others. That said, there are two options you can pursue.
- The first is to write the essay on one of the papers – most likely the first or most significant one – and comment briefly on how the author(s) subsequently developed the work (or how the key ideas were foreshadowed in previous work).
- The second is to write multiple essays. While we do not believe that we will tend to publish multiple essays by the same authors, we do plan to launch a blog in association with the book, and are quite interested in contributions for that. A good way to proceed could be to write a couple short pieces, develop a feeling for which has the most potential to grow into a piece substantive enough for the book, and then contribute the other(s) to the blog.
I don’t want to write about a paper – I want to write about a…
It is OK to write about something that can be categorized as an individual piece of work: a book, a demo, a video, a system. Note, however, that the essay needs to stand alone – we will not be re-publishing the original alongside your essay – and therefore you will need to be able to summarize its key aspects in a relatively short space. This will be more difficult for some types of work, than others.
Another thing to consider is the type of impact the work made on the field, or you personally. In some cases alternative works might have a somewhat diffuse impact as a result of work being more a summary of many different contributions. The degree to which you can be clear about the type and character of the contribution of the work is a measure of how the essay will be received.
The question to keep in mind is to what degree does the piece of work represent the work of an individual at a particular point in time? While we do not rule out works produced by groups, or that represent a set of cumulative findings and understandings, the more diffuse the origins of the work, the less likely it is to fit in with our aims.
What's this about a blog?
We intend to launch a blog in association with the book. The details remain to be worked out, but we see the blog as providing an opportunity for more direct interaction with the audience. Also, some pieces of work may be most suitable for the blog (e.g. very short pieces, or essays that could be linked to a source work like a video).
Is it OK to write about my advisors work?
While we will not prohibit this, we will look closely at such submissions. We are most interested in cases where it is the work that has had the impact, rather than the person. That is, we hope that those who read your essay may go on to read its progenitor and perhaps tap into some of the same value you received. If the impact was primarily a result of the long and intimate advisor-advisee relationship, that is not as likely to be transferable and is thus of less interest to the readers.
What if the work I want to write about isn’t HCI?
That’s fine. What matters is that it had something to say to HCI, or that it had an impact on your approach to HCI.
What are the chances that this will be published?
We have signed a letter of agreement with MIT Press for publication of the book. Once we have produced a complete manuscript, MIT Press will review the work, and can, of course, decide not to publish if it does not meet their standards. Thus far the Press has been very enthusiastic.
Can I write about a paper or work that’s less than 10 years old
No. The goal is to be reflective and appreciative of work that can only be appreciated from the perspective of time. Pick something that is older and that you want to save from obscurity. If the work is close to 10 years old we're happy to discuss it.
Can I write about a person (teacher / advisor / colleague / mentor) who had a huge impact on my approach to HCI?
No. The essays are not mini biographies. As we say in the response to “Is it Ok to write about my advisor’s work,” we are interested in cases where it is the work itself – and not a relationship – that had impact. It is acceptable to write about a paper, etc. that that person produced, provided that readers can gain value from it.
Can I write about a theoretical perspective / methodological approach / body of research that’s critically important to HCI.
No. Although if you encountered the material in the guise of a particular work that had an impact on you, then writing about the work is fair game. Furthermore, it is fair to write about a paper, and then discuss some of the ways in which it had an impact on the field (see, as well, our answer to “What if I’m interested in writing on multiple papers by the same author?”). However, the bottom line is that this book is not about ideas, per se, rather it is about particular instantiations of ideas.
A paper I wrote many years ago had a critical impact on my thinking -- can I write about that?
No. Although we recognize that the process of writing is an important means of reflection, for the purposes of this project we are interested in essays on work produced by others. In part this is because the ways in which the writing of a work changed the author may not be entirely captured in the work itself, and in part because writing about the work of another provides a bit more distance.
Can I co-author an essay with someone else?
Yes, although we suggest you think carefully before doing this. One of the things we are after in this project are reflections on how a piece of work had a personal impact on the author; we also hope to get a sense of the author's 'voice.' This is likely to be more difficult to achieve with a co-author, although it may be quite appropriate in the case of close partnerships.
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Page Change History
- 25 May 2006: Minor changes to headings and navigation structure
- 17 April 2006: Restructured for public call: combined goals and FAQ
- 29 Mar 2006: Added the last two FAQ's
- 28 Feb 2006: Original material
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