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UW iSchool garners awards, recognition at CHI 2010

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI, www.chi2010.org/) is the largest annual Human Computer Interaction (HCI) conference in the world, and is considered the top venue for almost every type of HCI work. At this year's conference, which will be held in Atlanta, Ga., from April 10 to 15, the University of Washington iSchool had 10 paper and note submissions accepted out of 28 submitted - an acceptance rate of 35.7 percent, nearly twice the typical conference average of between 19 and 22 percent. The Design-Use-Build group (DUB) at the UW as a whole was 17 for 45, with 13 of 32 full papers and 4 of 13 notes accepted.

Beyond the outstanding acceptance statistics, papers submitted by both students and faculty at the iSchool won several noteworthy awards. Dr. Leah Findlater, a postdoctoral fellow at the iSchool, won a CHI Best Paper Award for a paper she co-authored with Jon Froehlich and James Landay, titled "The Design of Eco-Feedback Technology." Best paper winners represent the top one percent of all submissions received. This was Findlater's first submission to CHI since she began her affiliation with the UW.

"The potential of eco-feedback is compelling: to encourage pro-environmental behavior change by providing feedback on individual and group behaviors," she says about the award. "In this paper, we bring together findings from environmental psychology and the emerging area of eco-feedback research in human-computer interaction. The iSchool is particularly well-suited for this type of interdisciplinary work."

Assistant Professor Andrew Ko and iSchool Ph.D. candidate Parmit Chilana were named a CHI best paper nominee for their paper, titled "How Power Users Help and Hinder Open Bug Reporting." Best paper nominees represent the top five percent of all full papers submitted.

These two awards were part of a very strong showing for the iSchool at the conference, as iSchool adjunct faculty member Alan Borning won a Best Paper Nominee Award as a co-author on "OneBusAway: Results from Providing Real-Time Arrival Information for Public Transit" and adjunct faculty member James Landay was a co-author on Findlater's Best Paper Award submission.

Associate Professor Wanda Pratt went four for four for her submissions written with her team, which will present an entire session of its own during the conference.

Among the faculty and researchers contributing to the iSchool's strong presence at CHI 2010 are Associate Professor David Hendry and Ph.D. student Jill Woelfer, who have a CHI paper this year on their ongoing work with homeless youth. Ph.D. alumna Lisa Nathan (University of British Columbia) and Professor Batya Friedman have a CHI note on the multi-lifespan information system design framework. And Friedman has a CHI paper with Tammy Denning (UW CSE Ph.D. student), Tadayoshi Kohno (CSE), Alan Borning, and Brian Gill (SPU) on value sensitive security for implantable medical devices (such as pacemakers). The Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal team, which Friedman leads, also has an alt.chi paper on their work in Rwanda this summer.

These achievements mark multiple years of very strong showings at CHI for the iSchool and DUB. The iSchool is fortunate to have extremely strong HCI collaborators in Computer Science and Engineering, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical and Health Informatics, and the Design Division, along with Microsoft, Intel, and other businesses in the local region. Puget Sound has quickly emerged as a hotbed of HCI in both academia and industry, and this status has been confirmed by the prospect of an excellent showing by the iSchool at CHI.

CHI is sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI), an active community within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Paper citations:

Froehlich, J. Findlater, L., and Landay, J. (2010 - In Press) The Design of Eco-Feedback Technology. Proceedings of CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010. To Appear. Best Paper Award. (Available here.)

Ko, A.J. and Chilana, P. (2010 - In Press). How Power Users Help and Hinder Open Bug Reporting. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Atlanta, GA, USA, to appear. (Available here.)

Unruh, K.T., Skeels, M., Civan-Hartzler, A., & Pratt, W. (2010 - In Press). Transforming Clinic Environments into Information Workspaces for Patients. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). April 2010, Atlanta, GA. (Available here.)

Skeels, M., Unruh, K.T., Powell, C., & Pratt, W. (2010 - In Press). Catalyzing Social Support for Breast Cancer Patients. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). April 2010, Atlanta, GA. (Available here.)

Klasnja, P., Civan-Hartzler, A., Unruh, K.T., & Pratt, W. (2010 - In Press). Blowing in the Wind: Unanchored Patient Information Work During Cancer Care. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). April 2010, Atlanta, GA. (Available here.)

Civan, A., McDonald, D., Powell, C., Skeels, M., Mukai, M., & Pratt, W. (2010 - In Press) Bringing the Field into Focus: User-Centered Design of a Patient Expertise Locator. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). April 2010, Atlanta, GA. (Available here.)

Saponas, T. Scott, Desney Tan, Dan Morris, Jim Turner & James A. Landay. Making Muscle-Computer Interfaces More Practical. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2010. CHI Note. (Available here.)