SMU HCI @ CHI2024

Posted by Kotaro on June 6 2024.

The Conference

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024) was held from May 11th to 16th 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. The conference attracted 3955 attendees. Of the 4028 papers submitted, 1058 got accepted, resulting in an acceptance rate of 26.3%. From Singapore Management University, we had four technical papers.

Opening Keynote by Kate Crawford

The conference kicked off with a keynote by Kate Crawford, who highlighted the pressing and critical issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and existential risks. With a balanced and nuanced perspective, Crawford acknowledged AI's exciting opportunities while raising concerns. Her talk touched on the tangible impacts of existing AI technologies across three critical domains: ecological, economic, and electoral. Crawford observed a paradox wherein the very entities driving AI development, collecting substantial financial and political power, are often the same voices around alarms about potential existential threats. Ironically, these voices tend to understate the more immediate and concrete harms stemming from current AI applications, such as the questionable use of natural resources like freshwater reserves.

This keynote provided a very thought-provoking start to the conference. I observed many people talking about this talk even after the first day of the conference.

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TODO. The talk was so good. Embed the recording here if SIGCHI updates the keynote on YouTube.

During the Conference

Attendees from Singapore. Photo Credit: Jude Yew

I felt that the prominent topics of this year’s CHI were on AI and accessibility. It was not too surprising to see so many AI related papers. But it was pleasant to see so many accessibility focused papers. Perhaps it reflects the field's growing interest on inclusive technology design.

The folks from SMU and our collaborators from other institutions had the opportunity to present four papers:

“Navigating Real-World Challenges: A Quadruped Robot Guiding System for Visually Impaired People in Diverse Environments” Shaojun Cai, Ashwin Ram, Zhengtai Gou, Mohd Alqama Wasim Shaikh, Yu-An Chen, Yingjia Wan, Kotaro Hara, Shengdong Zhao, David Hsu

“SwapVid: Integrating Video Viewing and Document Exploration with Direct Manipulation” Taichi Murakami, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kotaro Hara, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura

“The Impact of Avatar Completeness on Embodiment and the Detectability of Hand Redirection in Virtual Reality” Martin Feick, André Zenner, Simon Seibert, Anthony Tang, Antonio Krüger

“VAID: Indexing View Designs in Visual Analytics System” Lu Ying, Aoyu Wu, Haotian Li, Zikun Deng, Ji Lan, Jiang Wu, Yong Wang, Huamin Qu, Dazhen Deng, Yingcai Wu

Future CHIs

As always, CHI was an enriching experience. It served as an opportunity to connect with HCI people around the world. It allowed us to engage in discussions that could lead to future research collaborations.

The upcoming CHI 2025 conference is scheduled to take place in Yokohama, Japan. And CHI 2026 will be held in Barcelona, Spain.

We aim to continue active participation in forthcoming CHI conferences. Hope to see you there in 2025 and 2026!