Note: This is very US-centric.
I get the impression that a lot of HCI professionals never matured past the “picture on the fridge” stage. If you read enough SIGCHI papers, it becomes that the “human” part is for NSF-funding rather than actually caring about people. And its understandable: we are very self rather than communally focused.
… This is hard. I have decided to create my own field at 23 years old, despite—or because of?—emotional disabilities. It is so much easier to be like anyone else. But, then I wouldn’t be me. And, even if no one will come with me on this crazy path, I just have to believe that what I’m doing is worth it; that I’m helping people I may never meet.
As a high schooler, one of my English teachers would mark my essays thusly: underline a sentence I had written and write “so what?” in the margin. And that’s stuck with me.
HCI professionals have developed a need to create interactions without any consideration to the device’s place in the world. And that’s really flawed. If the point of your field is developing interactions between people and technology, then you damn well ought to know something about people.
It’s always fun to see new toys. But, I have enough experience that if your toy doesn’t fill a void in a person’s life than it will never be adopted.
HCI papers, when we get to the people part will do a study on one of the following groups: women, minorities, children, people with disabilities or DIYers. And there is very little intersectionality within these groups for these studies. There is always a big emphasis on learnability of the system, and, to a lesser degree, creativity the users displayed.
To anyone who writes papers this way, please go take a sociology class. (If you’re writing these papers, I know you’re economically privileged enough to further your education.)
What’s wrong with these papers?
- They focus on technology rather than on people. No matter how creative the system, a human judges its value.
- There are no poor people in these studies. For minorities and people with disabilities, there’s systematic poverty. If your device costs much, then you aren’t going to be helping the people you claim to want to help.
- Every participant has some prior technological experience. Widening the technology gap is unethical for our field.
- Ignoring accessibility in educational settings. The ADA is a law, not a set of guidelines, and I’m totally down with suing you out of grant proposals.
So, what do I want to do differently? First, I want HCI to redefined to “human-computer interfaces” because why keep lying about what you actually care about?
Second, I want to develop a new field within computer science that integrates more with the social sciences and the arts. At present, I don’t know what to name it (and names are so damn important). Perhaps “Inclusive Computing” or “Human-Centric Tech” or even something outrageous like “Computational Humanity.” *shrug*
Third, I want to continue raising awareness about socio-economic inequalities. I don’t care if you can make a fantastic device for five billion dollars. How can you help people using $5? I’m much more impressed by overcoming restrictions.
