Sigaccess fy’04 Annual Report

1.5. UIST

• Best Paper Award

VizWiz: Nearly Real-Time Answers to Visual Questions

Jeffrey Bigham, University of Rochester, Chandrika Jayant, University of Washington, Hanjie Ji, University of Rochester, Greg Little, MIT CSAIL, Andrew Miller, University of Central Florida, Robert C. Miller, MIT CSAIL, Robin Miller, University of Rochester, Aubrey Tatarowicz, MIT CSAIL, Brandyn White, University of Maryland, Samuel White, University of Rochester, Tom Yeh, University of Maryland

• Best Student Paper Award

Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside

Michael S. Bernstein, MIT CSAIL, Greg Little, MIT CSAIL, Robert C. Miller, MIT CSAIL, Bjoern Hartmann, UC Berkeley. Mark S. Ackerman, University of Michigan, David R. Karger, MIT CSAIL, David Crowell, MIT CSAIL, Katrina Panovich, MIT CSAIL

1.6. Ubicomp Best Papers
ElectriSense: Single-Point Sensing Using EMI for Electrical Event Detection and Classification in the Home

Sidhant Gupta (University of Washington), Matthew S. Reynolds (Duke University), Shwetak N. Patel (University of Washington)

2. Significant Papers on new areas that were published in proceedings

See 1.2 – 1.6.

3. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts
3.1. SIGCHI Sponsored Regional Workshops for Asia
Purposes

In order to better anticipate the possibility of SIGCHI events (including the CHI conference) in Asia, we need to have a clearer understanding of the actuality of HCI development in Asian countries. Capturing an understanding of HCI knowledge and practice that exists in Asia would be useful in formulating a strategy for using SIGCHI resources with clear targets to help Asian HCI communities mature and in building/strengthening ties with them.

Aiming at this, we have been organizing a SIGCHI sponsored Workshop series on HCI in Asia. We organized successfully the first workshop in Beijing, China (a three-day event) attempting to better know about the HCI situations in Asian countries in the following aspects:

• 
  The current status of HCI development in academia, industry, education, organizations etc.
  
• 
  The problems and challenges faced in HCI development in Asian communities.
  
• 
  Where help from external bodies like SIGCHI can make a difference and how
  
• 
  How SIGCHI can better involve local HCI communities in the global SIGCHI community and help them mature in Asia - specifically what are the areas SIGCHI needs to work on with priority and what are the feasible approaches and achievable goals?
  

The results of this workshop proved helpful for SIGCHI leadership to have a direct contact with the Asian HCI communities and their leaders that enabled better and close working relationships to be developed with ease later on.

Workshop Participants

This was not an open conference, but a targeted workshop. We invited representatives from Asian countries/regions (20) and from the SIGCHI committee (6), totaling 26, to attend the workshop. The following represents the distribution of the invited participants:

• 
  1 for each country/region, 2-3 for countries/regions with bigger HCI community, 5 for the host country China
  
• 
  Representing local SIGCHI chapters or HCI organizations if possible
  
• 
  Representing different disciplines: computer science, design, psychology, ergonomics etc.
  

Country/region	Quota
China-Mainland	5
Taiwan	1
Hong Kong	1
Japan	3
Korea	3
India	2
Singapore	1
Malaysia	1
Indonesia	1
Thailand	1
Australia & NZ	2
SIGCHI	6

Logistics and Venue

The workshop was held in Beijing, China, March 25-27^th, 2011. This was shortly after the ACM SIGCHI Sponsored CSCW 2011 conference in Hangzhou, and attempted to incorporate lessons learned from that event. SIGCHI covered travel and meeting expenses for the participants for around $45K for this event.

Sponsorship

ACM SIGCHI is the primary sponsor. Additional support has been being solicited from local relevant organizations like CCF (Chinese Computer Federation), and from the local SIGCHI chapters like SIGCHI China etc.

Outcome

• 
  A report on the state of the HCI field in the Asian region to be published in the ACM interactions magazine soon.
  
• 
  Key areas identified to be worked on by SIGCHI towards staging future SIGCHI events in Asia and the initial action plans for such events.
  
• 
  identify key challenges for HCI development in Asia like legitimacy, education, access to publications etc. and get them attended by the relevant parties within SIGCHI-EC
  
• 
  working groups formed from the local HCI people to work on feasibilities and proposals on potential Asian SIGCHI organization and Asian CHI conference
  
• 
  Learned about what might be effective ways for SIGCHI to help mature local communities and duplicate to other continents
  
• 
  Started to identify issues and needs from other continents
  
• 
  Decided to have a SIGCHI Asia workshop every year in principle, either somewhere in Asia or attached with CHI as a platform for deepen mutual learning, fostering cooperation, tackling Asia specific challenges, coordinating Asia specific activities and helping CMC with preparing for CHI Asia
  
• 
  Decided to expand the speakers tours currently we sponsored for China to cover other Asian regions
  
• 
  Planned to have some Asia focused sessions at CHI every year
  
• 
  Planned to have more SIGCHI chapters in Asia set up
  

As a direct follow-up of the first workshop. The 2^nd workshop was held in Vancouver in May, 2011 attached with CHI2011 with 25 attendees from around Asian countries. The 3rd one is planned to be held in Kunming, China in October.

We are now working a proposal for a workshop series for Latin-America with the same model we did for Asia.

3.2 CHI Communities