CHI maintains its legacy as the premiere research conference in human-computer interaction, but it has grown into much more than that. It is now a gathering that reflects a core value of our field: that human-computer interaction design is an inter-disciplinary activity requiring a broad set of expertise. But that also raises a challenge: how to design a conference that meets the needs of such a diverse set of HCI professionals.
{"title":"CHI: reflecting and looking forward","authors":"Kevin M. Schofield","doi":"10.1145/543459.543463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543463","url":null,"abstract":"CHI maintains its legacy as the premiere research conference in human-computer interaction, but it has grown into much more than that. It is now a gathering that reflects a core value of our field: that human-computer interaction design is an inter-disciplinary activity requiring a broad set of expertise. But that also raises a challenge: how to design a conference that meets the needs of such a diverse set of HCI professionals.","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"34 1","pages":"4-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82423486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Warning: Abandon hope of finding a logical flow through the thoughts that follow. They are a collection of observations with little connection among them. As always, I welcome both e-mail about them and letters to the editor (for publication in a future issue). You know, there was something very nice about not just the size of CHI 2002, but the people who came. Early reports suggest that almost all attendees were "repeaters." My own subjective experience confirms that. Despite, or perhaps because of, the smaller number of people, I kept running into people I knew and people I wanted to meet. Perhaps the first-timers were kept away by economic or security concerns, but the CHI regulars seemed to come in force! After the opening plenary I had an interesting conversation with a student volunteer at an information booth. The question: is more transparency really the way to protect our privacy? Is it enough to be able to watch a stalker stalking me? What kinds of automated tools would be needed to help alert me (or the police) quickly if someone takes an "unhealthy inter-est" in my personal data? What kinds of counter-tools will the criminals develop? Do we reach a peaceful and safe fixed point, or an ever-escalating spy-vs.-spy scenario? Yes, I could have done without the first 20 minutes of the closing plenary (Stelarc's video's of "the body, suspended"). Certainly the local restaurants would have done better without such appetizing images. But they did have a point, I think. Perhaps the goal was to inoculate us from shock, so that when we started to see electrode-based remote control of "the body," we wouldn't say "ick" but rather "hey, that's cool!" It is fun, but very tiring, having CHI in your back yard. Everyone should try it, so I strongly encourage you all to move to Fort Lauderdale, Vienna, or Port-land. Or not. Thoughts about SIGCHI Is it a sign of strength, or of weakness, that SIGCHI is a large and successful organization? From the Computer Science perspective, would we be better off if only a few specialists would consider "joining" an HCI organization, but nobody could imagine not learning about humans and HCI? How many of you computer scientists out there want to join "SIG-Data-Structures" or "SIG-Debugging?" It has taken a while to crystallize, but I really like the idea of SIGCHI (and this field's) key strength being its …
{"title":"Pseudo-random thoughts","authors":"J. Konstan","doi":"10.1145/543459.543461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543461","url":null,"abstract":"Warning: Abandon hope of finding a logical flow through the thoughts that follow. They are a collection of observations with little connection among them. As always, I welcome both e-mail about them and letters to the editor (for publication in a future issue). You know, there was something very nice about not just the size of CHI 2002, but the people who came. Early reports suggest that almost all attendees were \"repeaters.\" My own subjective experience confirms that. Despite, or perhaps because of, the smaller number of people, I kept running into people I knew and people I wanted to meet. Perhaps the first-timers were kept away by economic or security concerns, but the CHI regulars seemed to come in force! After the opening plenary I had an interesting conversation with a student volunteer at an information booth. The question: is more transparency really the way to protect our privacy? Is it enough to be able to watch a stalker stalking me? What kinds of automated tools would be needed to help alert me (or the police) quickly if someone takes an \"unhealthy inter-est\" in my personal data? What kinds of counter-tools will the criminals develop? Do we reach a peaceful and safe fixed point, or an ever-escalating spy-vs.-spy scenario? Yes, I could have done without the first 20 minutes of the closing plenary (Stelarc's video's of \"the body, suspended\"). Certainly the local restaurants would have done better without such appetizing images. But they did have a point, I think. Perhaps the goal was to inoculate us from shock, so that when we started to see electrode-based remote control of \"the body,\" we wouldn't say \"ick\" but rather \"hey, that's cool!\" It is fun, but very tiring, having CHI in your back yard. Everyone should try it, so I strongly encourage you all to move to Fort Lauderdale, Vienna, or Port-land. Or not. Thoughts about SIGCHI Is it a sign of strength, or of weakness, that SIGCHI is a large and successful organization? From the Computer Science perspective, would we be better off if only a few specialists would consider \"joining\" an HCI organization, but nobody could imagine not learning about humans and HCI? How many of you computer scientists out there want to join \"SIG-Data-Structures\" or \"SIG-Debugging?\" It has taken a while to crystallize, but I really like the idea of SIGCHI (and this field's) key strength being its …","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"29 1","pages":"3 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86531317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The main advantage of the book is that the readers can be sure that the authors practice what they advocate. The authors present the fruit of expertise gained through years of web usability and web design projects and practices. The direct and practical involvement of the authors in usability area is evident throughout the book, where practical tips and advice are given prime focus and attention. However, though the discussions on usability practices are both thorough and comprehensive, the book does not seem to pay too much attention to the theoretical aspects of usability.
{"title":"Usability for the web","authors":"S. Kurniawan, Panayiotis Zaphirs","doi":"10.1145/543459.543477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543477","url":null,"abstract":"The main advantage of the book is that the readers can be sure that the authors practice what they advocate. The authors present the fruit of expertise gained through years of web usability and web design projects and practices. The direct and practical involvement of the authors in usability area is evident throughout the book, where practical tips and advice are given prime focus and attention. However, though the discussions on usability practices are both thorough and comprehensive, the book does not seem to pay too much attention to the theoretical aspects of usability.","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"20 1","pages":"11 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78569325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Peter pointed out that any biometrics-based ID system exhibits three kinds of failure: false acceptance, false rejection, and failure to enroll. False acceptance is incorrectly authenticating someone. False rejection is the failure to authenticate someone who should have been. Failure to enroll is when a person does not possess the biometrics data needed for identification. For example, people without hands cannot provide fingerprints, and many elderly people have such thin skin that their fingerprints don't register. Error rates of ID systems are not fixed but can be adjusted depending on the security desired and the cost of the various types of errors.
{"title":"Identification technologies","authors":"Jean Scholtz, Jeff Johnson","doi":"10.1145/543459.543473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543473","url":null,"abstract":"Peter pointed out that any biometrics-based ID system exhibits three kinds of failure: false acceptance, false rejection, and failure to enroll. False acceptance is incorrectly authenticating someone. False rejection is the failure to authenticate someone who should have been. Failure to enroll is when a person does not possess the biometrics data needed for identification. For example, people without hands cannot provide fingerprints, and many elderly people have such thin skin that their fingerprints don't register. Error rates of ID systems are not fixed but can be adjusted depending on the security desired and the cost of the various types of errors.","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"1 5 1","pages":"9 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87282566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
July/August 2002 8 Scientific American has collected together a number of printed articles for one of their new online editions (URL below) entitled "The Future of the Web". While some of the content has dated considerably since its first appearance, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila's article on the semantic web still provides much interest and promise. Unfortunately, this is mostly due to the almost complete lack of effect that XML the primary mechanism for producing a semantic web has had on end users.
{"title":"The objective web","authors":"W. Hudson","doi":"10.1145/543459.543471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543471","url":null,"abstract":"July/August 2002 8 Scientific American has collected together a number of printed articles for one of their new online editions (URL below) entitled \"The Future of the Web\". While some of the content has dated considerably since its first appearance, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila's article on the semantic web still provides much interest and promise. Unfortunately, this is mostly due to the almost complete lack of effect that XML the primary mechanism for producing a semantic web has had on end users.","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"286 ","pages":"8 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91461358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As SIGCHI's new vice chair for finance, I'd like to use this opportunity to share what I've learned about how our budget works and what's happening with it this year. We are currently planning our fiscal year 2003 budget, which begins on July 1, 2003, and it is shown here. SIGCHI (the organization) has a variety of functions, one of which is to run our annual CHI conference. Our organization budget, excluding the conference, is about $300K per year. Your dues are about $200K, and income from other subscriptions, sales, and interest add another $100K. But, while our annual operational budget is about $300K, we sponsor a $2500K event every year (the CHI conference). So even a small, 10 or 20% perturbation in the CHI conference finances could wipe out its parent organization (SIGCHI). Because of this, we maintain a substantial insurance fund. ACM requires us to maintain about $700K in it, but we have reached about twice that amount recently. Until the last year or so, this fund had been growing steadily, as each year's CHI conference added part of its surplus to the fund. This year, however, attendance was down considerably and it looks like the conference will lose a significant amount of money. Without our insurance fund, a loss like that could have bankrupted us, but we can draw on the fund to cover it. In the past, maintaining this fund sometimes seemed unnecessarily conservative, but now it suddenly seems like a very good idea! Why did the conference lose money? Attendance was down considerably from recent years, most likely due to the recession in the technology world. Why couldn't we do anything about it? Conference planning is very asymmetrical with respect to income and expenses. You must commit to most of your expenses years in advance, but you don't know your income (attendance) until a few weeks before the conference. For example, convention centers are typically booked 5 years in advance; contracts for professional services must be signed before the work begins, often a year or two ahead for CHI. For CHI 2002, at the time we were planning these things a couple of years ago, the prospects looked very bright; by the time we saw the downturn, many of our expenses were already contracted. Food is one of the only expense items that can be altered at the last minute, once you know the actual …
{"title":"The SIGCHI budget for dummies","authors":"R. Jacob","doi":"10.1145/543459.543479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543479","url":null,"abstract":"As SIGCHI's new vice chair for finance, I'd like to use this opportunity to share what I've learned about how our budget works and what's happening with it this year. We are currently planning our fiscal year 2003 budget, which begins on July 1, 2003, and it is shown here. SIGCHI (the organization) has a variety of functions, one of which is to run our annual CHI conference. Our organization budget, excluding the conference, is about $300K per year. Your dues are about $200K, and income from other subscriptions, sales, and interest add another $100K. But, while our annual operational budget is about $300K, we sponsor a $2500K event every year (the CHI conference). So even a small, 10 or 20% perturbation in the CHI conference finances could wipe out its parent organization (SIGCHI). Because of this, we maintain a substantial insurance fund. ACM requires us to maintain about $700K in it, but we have reached about twice that amount recently. Until the last year or so, this fund had been growing steadily, as each year's CHI conference added part of its surplus to the fund. This year, however, attendance was down considerably and it looks like the conference will lose a significant amount of money. Without our insurance fund, a loss like that could have bankrupted us, but we can draw on the fund to cover it. In the past, maintaining this fund sometimes seemed unnecessarily conservative, but now it suddenly seems like a very good idea! Why did the conference lose money? Attendance was down considerably from recent years, most likely due to the recession in the technology world. Why couldn't we do anything about it? Conference planning is very asymmetrical with respect to income and expenses. You must commit to most of your expenses years in advance, but you don't know your income (attendance) until a few weeks before the conference. For example, convention centers are typically booked 5 years in advance; contracts for professional services must be signed before the work begins, often a year or two ahead for CHI. For CHI 2002, at the time we were planning these things a couple of years ago, the prospects looked very bright; by the time we saw the downturn, many of our expenses were already contracted. Food is one of the only expense items that can be altered at the last minute, once you know the actual …","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"32 1","pages":"13 - 13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77343827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For the last 5 years a meeting for Local SIGs representatives has been organized at the CHI conference. The Local SIGs workshop’s main goals are to give Local SIGs representatives a chance to meet and share their experiences and also talk about the Local SIGs/SIGCHI relationship. Although chapters have different goals, constituencies, activities and represent geographical areas varying from cities to a whole country, the chance to exchange experiences and ideas is very fruitful and can help leaders in coordinating their local groups. CHI Local SIGs are an important part of SIGCHI/ACM and the workshop allows Local SIGs to bring forward their needs, priorities, expectations and discuss their relationship to SIGCHI.
{"title":"Changing local SIGs at CHI 2002","authors":"R. Prates","doi":"10.1145/543459.543465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543465","url":null,"abstract":"For the last 5 years a meeting for Local SIGs representatives has been organized at the CHI conference. The Local SIGs workshop’s main goals are to give Local SIGs representatives a chance to meet and share their experiences and also talk about the Local SIGs/SIGCHI relationship. Although chapters have different goals, constituencies, activities and represent geographical areas varying from cities to a whole country, the chance to exchange experiences and ideas is very fruitful and can help leaders in coordinating their local groups. CHI Local SIGs are an important part of SIGCHI/ACM and the workshop allows Local SIGs to bring forward their needs, priorities, expectations and discuss their relationship to SIGCHI.","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"24 1","pages":"5 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90221829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For me, and many other people, the filling in of forms is one of the most gut-wrenchingly difficult tasks that there is. Tax forms make me cringe, and forms connected with nasty things like car insurance claims are frightening. Often the problems associated with form filling have to do with how well they cater for your particular situation. If they match well you can just get on with it, if they match badly you spend all your time filling things in and crossing them out; 'do they mean this or do they mean that?' A small part of good form design, be they paper or on-line forms, involves guiding the user through the filling-in of the form; only asking them questions that are relevant and hiding information that is not relevant. However a deeper part of form design is the building blocks at the foundation of the very system that the form is a part of. This is the aspect I want to concentrate on here; forms as an indication of how closely systems match reality. A form that needs to be filled in is not just a means of gathering data, it is an embodiment of assumptions made by the system (and the system's designer) about who the user is and what they are doing. Forms are the 'skin' of underlying systems, and systems are often set in old ways of doing things and old ways of classifying people that don't match the real world. Here is a common example; although a huge proportion of long-term, stable relationships do not involve marriage , there is still very little recognition of this in forms and processes. For men they must either tick 'Single' or 'Married', there is no box for 'Actually living with someone for the last twenty years and fathering their kids and probably going to be with them a good sight longer'. For women it's even worse, if they have already been married and then got divorced before settling down without marrying, then for the rest of eternity there is only one thing they can choose when faced with the choice; 'Mar-ried, Single or Divorced'. Even the simple, multiple-choice questions I've been working on recently for an on-line, user survey have had to be adjusted to take all the user's eventualities into consideration. As well as the five optional choices, two extra options have been added. An 'other' …
{"title":"Fill-in forms","authors":"Lon Barfield","doi":"10.1145/543459.543481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543481","url":null,"abstract":"For me, and many other people, the filling in of forms is one of the most gut-wrenchingly difficult tasks that there is. Tax forms make me cringe, and forms connected with nasty things like car insurance claims are frightening. Often the problems associated with form filling have to do with how well they cater for your particular situation. If they match well you can just get on with it, if they match badly you spend all your time filling things in and crossing them out; 'do they mean this or do they mean that?' A small part of good form design, be they paper or on-line forms, involves guiding the user through the filling-in of the form; only asking them questions that are relevant and hiding information that is not relevant. However a deeper part of form design is the building blocks at the foundation of the very system that the form is a part of. This is the aspect I want to concentrate on here; forms as an indication of how closely systems match reality. A form that needs to be filled in is not just a means of gathering data, it is an embodiment of assumptions made by the system (and the system's designer) about who the user is and what they are doing. Forms are the 'skin' of underlying systems, and systems are often set in old ways of doing things and old ways of classifying people that don't match the real world. Here is a common example; although a huge proportion of long-term, stable relationships do not involve marriage , there is still very little recognition of this in forms and processes. For men they must either tick 'Single' or 'Married', there is no box for 'Actually living with someone for the last twenty years and fathering their kids and probably going to be with them a good sight longer'. For women it's even worse, if they have already been married and then got divorced before settling down without marrying, then for the rest of eternity there is only one thing they can choose when faced with the choice; 'Mar-ried, Single or Divorced'. Even the simple, multiple-choice questions I've been working on recently for an on-line, user survey have had to be adjusted to take all the user's eventualities into consideration. As well as the five optional choices, two extra options have been added. An 'other' …","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"22 1","pages":"15 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90361670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
So I've been doing my homework, reading the Ministry of Education's web site, which includes detailed lists of expected outcomes at all levels of education. When I started to read these I expected to see something like the attainment targets in the UK National Curriculum: abilities in language, numeracy, etc. In fact the closest the Singaporean outcomes come to pure academic statements are things like "seek, process and apply knowledge" or "have a lively curiosity about things".
{"title":"Pride and hubris","authors":"A. Dix","doi":"10.1145/543459.543469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543469","url":null,"abstract":"So I've been doing my homework, reading the Ministry of Education's web site, which includes detailed lists of expected outcomes at all levels of education. When I started to read these I expected to see something like the attainment targets in the UK National Curriculum: abilities in language, numeracy, etc. In fact the closest the Singaporean outcomes come to pure academic statements are things like \"seek, process and apply knowledge\" or \"have a lively curiosity about things\".","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"73 1","pages":"7 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81575341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I just came back from this year's CHI conference. There were many interesting technologies for children that were presented and discussed, from talking dolls to wireless mobile technologies for children. Unfortunately, for the first few days of the conference I just couldn't keep my mind on much except my poor frightened three-year old daughter. (Warning: what follows in this column will contain discussions of toilets and what children do in them, so the squeamish-at-heart may want to turn the page.) This year my husband and I decided to take our little girl, Dana to the CHI conference. She had gone in years past and had a wonderful time. But that's not what had her so frightened on our trip. It was the airport's automated toilets! The offending technology accidentally flushed on her while she was still sitting on the toilet doing her business (I know my daughter in later years will probably kill me for even writing this column about her, but in the interest of technology and children I'm hoping some day she will understand ;) In any case, I tried to explain to Dana that the toilet was not going to "pull her in" while she was still on it, but this did not appease her. I tried to explain to her how sensors worked and that when I covered "the eyes of the toilet" it would flush-but this only made things even worse. My poor little three-year old just did not want to believe that we humans could control the whims of toilets with eyes. Before our trip, my daughter had finally graduated out of diapers and was essentially self-sufficient in areas of the bathroom. But this airport incident set her back months. Thanks to the addition of technology to toilets, my child would not go near anything that flushed. What finally worked was the purchasing of a little plastic portable "potty" that she could sit on and empty out into a regular toilet. This made me so mad, not just as a mother who struggled through glamorous potty-training experiences with her child, but as a researcher who thinks about HCI and children. What this situation showed me all too well was how technology can serve adults, yet hurt children in the process. I remember thinking when I first saw an automated toilet, "How wonderful! I won't have to get my hands dirty touching a flushing mechanism." …
{"title":"When technology does not serve children","authors":"A. Druin","doi":"10.1145/543459.543467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/543459.543467","url":null,"abstract":"I just came back from this year's CHI conference. There were many interesting technologies for children that were presented and discussed, from talking dolls to wireless mobile technologies for children. Unfortunately, for the first few days of the conference I just couldn't keep my mind on much except my poor frightened three-year old daughter. (Warning: what follows in this column will contain discussions of toilets and what children do in them, so the squeamish-at-heart may want to turn the page.) This year my husband and I decided to take our little girl, Dana to the CHI conference. She had gone in years past and had a wonderful time. But that's not what had her so frightened on our trip. It was the airport's automated toilets! The offending technology accidentally flushed on her while she was still sitting on the toilet doing her business (I know my daughter in later years will probably kill me for even writing this column about her, but in the interest of technology and children I'm hoping some day she will understand ;) In any case, I tried to explain to Dana that the toilet was not going to \"pull her in\" while she was still on it, but this did not appease her. I tried to explain to her how sensors worked and that when I covered \"the eyes of the toilet\" it would flush-but this only made things even worse. My poor little three-year old just did not want to believe that we humans could control the whims of toilets with eyes. Before our trip, my daughter had finally graduated out of diapers and was essentially self-sufficient in areas of the bathroom. But this airport incident set her back months. Thanks to the addition of technology to toilets, my child would not go near anything that flushed. What finally worked was the purchasing of a little plastic portable \"potty\" that she could sit on and empty out into a regular toilet. This made me so mad, not just as a mother who struggled through glamorous potty-training experiences with her child, but as a researcher who thinks about HCI and children. What this situation showed me all too well was how technology can serve adults, yet hurt children in the process. I remember thinking when I first saw an automated toilet, \"How wonderful! I won't have to get my hands dirty touching a flushing mechanism.\" …","PeriodicalId":7070,"journal":{"name":"ACM Sigchi Bulletin","volume":"43 1","pages":"6 - 6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86643600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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