CFP: Culture, Creativity, and Interaction Design

At BCS HCI2011, I am co-organizing a workshop, CCID2: The Second International Symposium on Culture, Creativity, and Interaction Design, along with Shaowen Bardzell, Ann Light, and Mark Blythe. The first one in 2006 was a phenomenal experience for me personally and it helped my career in profound ways. The presentations were provocative and illuminating, the spirit was fun and friendly, and it helped me build a professional network and led to my first HCI-related journal publication!

We hope to recreate that success this year, additionally placing a special emphasis on building infrastructure for HCI’s cultural agenda, which we believe now is more widely legitimized than it was in 2006, but remains somewhat ad hoc in terms of networks, conferences, tracks, and jobs. Here is a blurb from the abstract:

In the past decade, HCI’s cultural research agenda has stabilized as an important sub-domain of the field. Although cultural approaches to interaction take many forms, broadly speaking they share a number of common features. These include disciplinary inputs beyond the social sciences, including literary theory, critical theory, aesthetic philosophy, feminism, performance theory, film studies, hermeneutics, postmodernism, fine arts, queer theory, and post-colonialism. Where they turn to science, it is more often to sciences’ responsive to critical traditions, such as ethnography and sociology, rather than experimental psychology or computer science. Many cultural approaches are also non-reductive; instead of isolating and manipulating independent variables, for example, they are more likely to embrace holistic and interpretative accounts of interaction, with all the benefits and limitations that implies. The focus of inquiry also differs from many traditional psychological and social science accounts of interaction. Cultural HCI research is often more concerned with accounts of the interiority of human experience (i.e., felt life) as it unfolds within—-and is made possible by—-particular social and political situations, of which technology is a part.

Following on the success of 2006’s First International Symposium on Culture, Creativity and Interaction Design (CCID), CCID2 seek to strengthen the connections among the diverse disciplines contributing to culture, creativity, and interaction design research. It will explore critical and reflective approaches to the design and analysis of interactive technology. Additionally, it will also develop strategies to improve its professional network infrastructure and provide educational and professional opportunities for the next generation of design researchers.

The CFP is open, and I really encourage folks to come and participate!