We just returned from CHI2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii—the top conference in Human-Computer Interaction—where we learned about state-of-the-art research, presented talks, networked, and, of course, surfed! 🏄🏽‍♂️ Four key highlights stand out for me.

Makeability Lab Mini-Reunion

One of my favorite parts of CHI was reconnecting with so many of our Makeability Lab alums—many of who are now professors and brought their own students (so fun!). See picture above in the header!

Research Presentations

Makeability Lab students and collaborators presented seven papers and one late-breaking work on:

• Chu Li had two first-authored papers on (1) community science + urban accessibility, a case study of Project Sidewalk in Oradell, NJ working with the local girl scouts and community organizations; and (2) LabelAId, a real-time AI assisted to improve crowdsourced labeling with in-situ feedback.
• Jae Lee presented GazePointAR, a real-time conversational assistant that uses eye gaze, pointing gesture, and conversation history to support more natural interactions (including automatic pronoun replacement). 
• Xia Su presented (1) RASSAR, a smartphone-based prototype for semi-automatically identifying, categorizing, and localizing accessibility and safety issues using LiDAR and computer vision; and (2) SonifyAR, a context-aware sound effect generation system for AR authoring.
• Daniel Campos Zamora presented MoiréWidgets, a novel approach for tangible interaction harnnessing the Moiré effect—a prevalent optical phenomenon—to enable high-precision event detection on physical widgets
• Emma McDonnell (advised by Leah Findlater) presented our work on user-driven captioning practices on TikTok
• Finally, Jesse Martinez (advised by James Fogarty) presented our qualitative examination of video game adoption for gamers with disabilities (Jesse presented at that CREATE-sponsored para.chi event) rather than attending in Hawaii.

Congratulations students!

James Landay's Lifetime Research Award

My PhD co-advisor, James Landay—once a professor at UW (in fact, I have his office!) now a professor at Stanford—was awarded the prestigious SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award. I was honored both to attend his celebratory dinner on Saturday night on the famous Waikiki beach as well as his award talk on Tuesday afternoon. The SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award is "This award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the study of human-computer interaction. This award recognizes the very best, most fundamental and influential research contributions. It is awarded for a lifetime of innovation and leadership."

Shwetak Patel Elected SIGCHI Academy

My other PhD advisor, Shwetak Patel, was elected to the SIGCHI academy. The SIGCHI Academy is "is an honorary group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. Selected annually, these are the principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the disciplines and led the research in human-computer interaction."