Last updated on July 12, 2021
The 2021 CHI conference, which ran virtually from May 7th to May 16th 2021, was a great opportunity to learn about current work being done in Human-Computer Interaction, and observe how researchers present their work to peers. While the CHI conference had more exciting events than we could possibly write about in one blog post, we have written about a sampling of our favorite events from the conference in order to give you an overview of what it was like to attend a virtual conference from our point of view as undergraduate students. We hope that this blog post gives you an idea of what one can get out of a virtual conference as a student who wants to learn more about Human-Computer Interaction research, see papers presented first-hand, and participate in panels and workshops with experts.
Doctoral Consortium
The CHI 2021 Doctoral Consortium was an opportunity for Ph.D. students to present on their dissertation research [1]. This allowed the Ph.D. students to increase their research’s visibility and receive feedback on their work [1]. The doctoral consortium featured exciting presentations that were interesting and informative to watch. One particularly interesting presentation was one studying how head-worn displays could assist Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers.
Head-Worn Displays for Emergency Medical Services. This presentation was given by Paul Schlosser, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland School of ITEE [2]. Schlosser began the presentation by highlighting the challenges EMS workers face while working in the pre-hospital emergency medical service environment [2]. These challenges include variable weather conditions, confined spaces (the back of an ambulance or rescue helicopter), and the difficulty of accessing clinical equipment and clinical consultation [2]. Schlosser explains that prior research has proposed that decision support systems and information exchange systems should be developed to assist EMS workers in the pre-hospital environment [2]. Schlosser goes on to explain that a head-worn display has been proposed over a hand held display in the pre-hospital environment because EMS workers are often working with their hands in the pre-hospital environment [2].
After describing the prior work on the subject, Schlosser continues the presentation by describing his own contributions to the research topic [2]. This research included a survey of different types of head worn displays [2]. It also included field research riding on a rescue helicopter to observe an EMS team, and identifying along with the team use cases for head-worn displays in the work [2]. These use cases were remote collaboration support, monitoring vital signs, and training support [2]. Schlosser’s research also included an activity where participants matched up cards with situations an EMS worker might face with cards that had features that a head-worn display can provide [2]. Schlosser concluded the presentation by describing that the next phase of the research will be to evaluate head-worn display applications that have been developed in collaboration with EMS workers [2].
AllyShip Chat
At the “AllyShip Chat” event a panel discussed what it means to be an ally and how CHI attendees could be effective allies [3]. The panelists were Helena Mentis, the ACM sigCHI President; Michael Muller, who works in IBM Research and is involved in sigCHI CARES; Shaowen Bardzell, a Professor at Pennsylvania State University who is involved in sigCHI CARES; Rita Orji, a Canada Research Chair, an associate professor at Dalhousie University, and a STEM Diversity ambassador; and Vinoba Vinayagmoorthy, who is an engineer for BBC and is involved with sigCHI AC for equality [4].
A main topic of the panel discussion was how each attendee could be an ally and make the communities they are a part of more inclusive [3]. One key point was that being an ally involves learning to speak up not just for yourself but also for others, being an advocate against injustice even when you aren’t being directly affected by the injustice [3]. Another key point was that non-minoritized people need to listen to minoritized people about their struggles and how they need to be supported [3]. An additional point was that being an ally involves continuously learning, sitting with your discomfort, and continuously working towards helping your community [3].
Another topic discussed by the panel was sigCHI Cares, a resource in which many panelists were involved [3]. sigCHI cares is a part of SIG that works to deter discriminatory, harassing and other unethical behavior and works to support and get justice for those who have experienced it [5]. It was great to see this resource highlighted at the AllyShip event because it let CHI participants know this was available to them. Overall, it was also great to see CHI placing an emphasis on being an ally and supporting minoritized-groups by running this important event.
Inclusive and Ethical Computing Session
What follows is a summary and overview of three papers that were presented at CHI 2021 in the session on Inclusive and Ethical Computing. While the three papers tackle distinct issues, and were presented in three quite different formats (a video, a formal presentation, and a poster, respectively), they all focus on issues surrounding gender, whether that is analyzing practices that disproportionately affect people by gender, the effect of gendering technology, or an evaluation of how data on gender is collected. Below are the detailed overviews of the three papers, with some comments.
You’re Making Me Sick: A Systematic Review of How Virtual Reality Research Considers Gender & Cybersickness. This first paper explores the issues of negative consequences caused by extended exposure to screens and digital resources in general. In particular, it analyzes how these phenomena can be grouped under the umbrella term of ‘cybersickness’ and how the symptoms disproportionately affect female-identified people. Several studies in the past had provided evidence for how cybersickness disproportionately affects female-identified participants. Yet, MacArthur presented a systematic review of 71 eligible virtual reality publications which revealed a number of confounding factors in the design of the various studies, such as a variety of specifications, contents, and tasks, a lack of demographic data and potential sources of biased participant recruitment [6]. Thus, the authors argued for the need within virtual reality research to include and prioritize the experiences of female-identified users, in order to understand thoroughly how gender interacts with cybersickness [6]. In the presentation, MacArthur also hinted as some study design recommendations for future work present in the paper, once established that gender considerations are essential at all stages of study design, with an especially careful consideration when the study itself is not ‘about’ gender [6].
Another paper that was presented in the category of Inclusive and Ethical Computing was Female by Default? – Exploring the Effect of Voice Assistant Gender and Pitch on Trait and Trust Attribution. This paper explores the realm of voice assistants by focusing on how trust is differently attributed with respect to the gender and pitch of the assistant. Like “You’re Making Me Sick”, this paper provides insight into how gender complicates the reality of technological advancements, yet the two papers clearly tackle separate and equally significant issues. We all know multiple voice assistants notoriously gendered as female (Siri and Alexa being two examples), and Tolmeijer posited in their paper presentation that the design choices surrounding pitch and gender have shown to strengthen harmful stereotypes [7]. Interestingly, there is a dearth of research that systematically analyses user perceptions of different voice genders in VAs. This study in particular set out to investigate gender-stereotyping across two separate tasks regarding trait ascription and trust formation in an online experiment with 234 participants [7]. Additionally, the authors deployed a gender-ambiguous voice to compare against the gendered ones [7]. The findings presented show that implicit stereotyping does occur with virtual assistants. In particular, Tolmeijer highlighted that there are no significant differences in trust when employing a gender-ambiguous voice compared to gendered voices, making them a potentially interesting addition for commercial usage [7].
Finally, the third paper I wanted to highlight was Revisiting Gendered Web Forms: An
Evaluation of Gender Inputs with (Non-)Binary People. Gender input forms act as gates to accessing information, websites, and services online. Non-binary people regularly have to interact with them, though many do not offer non-binary gender options. [8] Scheuerman cleearly presented how this results in non-binary individuals having to either choose an misleading or not appropriate gender category or refrain from using a site or service at all. The second choice is not always available though, when the form completion is required to access a service or product. The authors of this paper tested five different forms through a survey with binary and non-binary participants, for a total of 350 people, in three contexts—a digital health form, a social media website, and a dating app. [8] The results indicate that the majority of participants found binary “male or female” forms exclusive and uncomfortable to fill out across all contexts. Scheuerman emphasized that their work aims to sensitize designers of web forms to the needs and desires of non-binary people [8].
All three papers provided great insight into how gender interacts with technological products and more specifically, voice assistants, fatigue induced by the prolonged use of screens, and web forms. The three papers identified the issues they wanted to tackle and provided solutions, or suggestions for further research. Overall, all papers were extremely interesting and illuminating in connecting issues within Human-Computer Interaction with questions surrounding gender.
We hope that these descriptions of various CHI events have given you a taste of what one can learn and experience at the CHI conference. We are very grateful we had the opportunity to attend CHI this year. It helped us gain a better understanding of the exciting variety of work being done in Human-Computer Interaction research and gave us a better understanding of the field, and what it means to present a paper at a research conference, or participate in a panel discussion.
Works Cited
[1] “Doctoral Consortium | CHI 2021.” https://chi2021.acm.org/for-authors/students/doctoral-consortium (accessed May 28, 2021).
[2] P. Schlosser, “Head-Worn Displays for Emergency Medical Services,” presented at the CHI 2021, May 08, 2021. Accessed: May 28, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://acmchi.delegateconnect.co/talks/head-worn-displays-for-emergency-medical-services-2113
[3] Rina R. Wehbe, CHI2021 Allyship Fireside Chat Recording, (May 11, 2021). Accessed: May 28, 2021. [Online Video]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EicuWv6qYfI
[4] “Allyship Fireside Chat | CHI 2021.” https://chi2021.acm.org/information/5407.html (accessed May 28, 2021).
[5] “SIGCHI CARES – ACM SIGCHI.” https://sigchi.org/resources/sigchi-cares/ (accessed May 28, 2021).
[6] C. MacArthur, A. Grinberg, D. Harley, and M. Hancock, “You’re Making Me Sick: A Systematic Review of How Virtual Reality Research Considers Gender & Cybersickness,” in Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama Japan, May 2021, pp. 1–15. doi: 10.1145/3411764.3445701.
[7] S. Tolmeijer, N. Zierau, A. Janson, J. S. Wahdatehagh, J. M. M. Leimeister, and A. Bernstein, “Female by Default? – Exploring the Effect of Voice Assistant Gender and Pitch on Trait and Trust Attribution,” in Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama Japan, May 2021, pp. 1–7. doi: 10.1145/3411763.3451623.[8] M. K. Scheuerman, A. Jiang, K. Spiel, and J. R. Brubaker, “Revisiting Gendered Web Forms: An Evaluation of Gender Inputs with (Non-)Binary People,” in Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama Japan, May 2021, pp. 1–18. doi: 10.1145/3411764.3445742.
