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HCI International News, Number 97, September 2019

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HCII 2019: Thank you for your participation

HCI International 2019, the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, was held in Orlando, Florida, USA, 26 – 31 July, under the auspices of 18 distinguished international boards of 440 Board Members from 42 countries.

The 35-volume Conference Proceedings have been published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) and Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series, and are available on-line through the SpringerLink Digital Library, readily accessible by all subscribing libraries around the world.

This year the HCII Conference has introduced the new option of “Late Breaking Work”, which applies both for papers and posters. The corresponding volume(s) of the proceedings will appear in early October 2019. Full papers will be included in the ‘HCII 2019 Late Breaking Work Papers Proceedings’ Volume published under the Springer LNCS series, while poster extended abstracts will be included as short papers in the ‘HCII 2019 Late Breaking Work Poster Extended Abstracts’ Volume published under the Springer CCIS series.

An impressive number of about 2,000 individuals from 74 countries registered to participate in this truly international in scope event, where the work of the world’s leaders in the field is presented.

We were privileged to have Prof. Richard H. R. Harper, Co-director of the Institute for Social Futures, Professor at the School of Computing and Communications of Lancaster University, United Kingdom, as the keynote speaker at the opening plenary session. He delivered a speech entitled “Understanding AI, Understanding Interaction: the Future of HCI”. In his talk, he has discussed current misunderstandings about the nature of AI, as well as the role that HCI needs to have in making AI-related applications better and more usable. Presenting examples from both consumer-oriented AI applications and more specialized scientific domains, Harper has shown how the role of HCI is more important than ever before and turns around canonical problems of rendering the functioning of computer systems and processes in relevant and accountable ways. Suggesting that the AI community has failed to recognize or comprehend these and that the HCI community itself has not been robust enough in articulating their importance, this keynote has put forward a call for a confident and assertive HCI in the age AI.

Prof. Gavriel Salvendy (Major Professor to 67 PhD students) held a Mentoring Session for PhD students with the following important topics: Development of a high impact PhD Dissertation and its effective dissemination; Transition from a PhD student to industry professional; Transition from a PhD student to successful Faculty.

For a second time running, a Student Design Competition took place. All accepted submissions were presented during the conference. Three awards were conferred along with three prizes during the Opening Plenary Session – the videos are available on YouTube.

Finally, as established in previous years, nineteen awards were conferred during the Opening Plenary Session. The awards, in the form of a plaque and a certificate, were presented to the author(s) of the Best Paper of each Thematic Area / Affiliated Conference and of the Best Poster Extended Abstract.

Pictures from the conference are available through the Conference website and Facebook.

We look forward to seeing everyone in Copenhagen, Denmark for HCII 2020, 19-24 July 2020.

A.M.

HCII 2020: Mark the dates in your calendar

HCI International 2020, jointly with the affiliated Conferences, held under one management and one registration, will take place at the AC Bella Sky Hotel and Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, 19-24 July 2020.

HCII2020 invites you to participate and contribute to the international forum for the dissemination and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on generic, theoretical and applied areas of HCI. The Conference will start with three days of Tutorials (19-21 July). Parallel Sessions with paper presentations, Poster Sessions and the Exhibition will be held during the next three days of the Conference (22-24 July).

HCII 2020 will be held under the auspices of 21 distinguished international boards. Please visit the Conference website for the list of topics of each Thematic Area / Affiliated Conference.

Please mark in your calendar the dates of the HCII 2020 Conference and the deadlines for submissions:

11 October 2019: regular paper proposals (an abstract of 800 words is required)
11 October 2019: tutorial proposals (an abstract of 300 words is required)
31 January 2020: poster proposals (an abstract of 300 words is required)
10 April 2020: student design proposals (an abstract of 300 words and a video clip are required)

Additionally, the Conference has a long established tradition of inviting distinguished scientists and professionals in the broader HCI field to organize parallel sessions. Prospective authors should submit their proposal upon invitation from a session organizer. The process is open until 31 January 2020 (under the guidance of Parallel Session Organizers).

An award will be presented to the best paper of each of the HCII 2020 Thematic Areas / Affiliated Conferences and the best poster extended abstract.

The Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer in a multi-volume set. Papers will appear in volumes of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. Poster Extended Abstracts will be published in the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series.

Student Design Competition: Students are invited to submit an up to 5-minute video clip and an abstract summarizing their design idea. The deadline for Video and Abstract Submission is 10 April 2020.

Demonstrations constitute an alternative form of presenting ideas and results to the international audience of the HCI International Conference. The deadline for proposal submission is 1 May 2020.

The Program for Student Volunteers gives full time university students from around the world the opportunity to attend and contribute to one of the most prestigious conferences in the field of computing and HCI. The deadline for applications is 31 January 2020.

Download the HCII 2020 Call for Participation in PDF format

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HCII 2020: New affiliated Conferences

Three new affiliated conferences join the HCI International Conference umbrella, starting from HCII2020 in Copenhagen.

C&C: 8th International Conference on Culture and Computing
Program Chair: Matthias Rauterberg

Culture and Computing is an important research area which aims to address the human-centred design of interactive technologies for the production, curation, preservation and fruition of cultural heritage, as well as developing and shaping future cultures. There are various research directions in the relations between culture and computing: to preserve, disseminate and create cultural heritages via ICT (cf. digital archives), to empower humanities research via ICT (cf. digital humanities), to create art and expressions via ICT (cf. media art), to support interactive cultural heritage experiences (cf. rituals), and to understand new cultures born in the Internet and Web (cf. net culture, social media). The International Conference on Culture and Computing provides an opportunity to share research issues and discuss the future of culture and computing.

AI-HCI: 1st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in HCI

Program Chairs: Helmut Degen and Lauren Reinerman-Jones

The conference brings academics, practitioners and students together to exchange results from academic and industrial research, as well as industrial experiences, on the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies to enhance Human-Computer Interaction.

In particular, the following areas of research are relevant: (i) AI-enabled components to model the behavior of humans, groups, and computer-enabled dialogs; (ii) Evolution of HCI methods, tools and processes based on AI; (iii) Processes, methods and technical frameworks in the area of generative UX / UI design, automatic creation and adaptation of user interfaces ; (iv) AI-enabled advanced and natural interaction modalities and styles, (e.g., conversational voice or text user interfaces), and enhancement of traditional ones (e.g. visual, direct manipulation, 2D, 3D); (v) AI-based user task support in various application domains, by making core tasks useful, usable, explainable, comprehensible, safe, secure and ethical.

The conference is targeted at individuals and organizations who have performed research and developed industrial applications in the area of AI in HCI. The conference is also targeted at individuals and organizations which want to learn from those results, so they can (re-)use them in research or industrial applications.

MOBILE: 1st International Conference on Design, Operation and Evaluation of Mobile Communications

Program Chairs: Gavriel Salvendy and June Wei

With the rapid technological advances of mobile communications, mobile applications not only are changing people’s living style but also organizations’, industries’ and governments’ operation, management and innovation in a new way, which further impact economy, society and culture in different countries. Human-computer interaction plays an important role in this change.

The MOBILE conference addresses the design, operation, evaluation and adoption of mobile technologies and applications for consumers, industries, organizations and governments. The purpose of this conference is to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to discuss challenging ideas, novel research contributions, and present current practice and theory of mobile communications related research topics and practices.

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HCII2020: Accommodation

The AC Bella Sky Hotel and Bella Center will be the conference venue and AC Bella Sky Hotel will be the official HCII2020 hotel.

Boasting a location near the Copenhagen's airport and the vibrant city center, the hotel allows for easy exploration of local attractions including Tivoli Gardens and Amager Common. Unpack your bags in modern hotel rooms with pillowtop bedding, floor-to-ceiling windows and authentic Danish design. Then, explore the hotel's luxurious amenities, including a 4-star spa, a fitness center and delicious restaurants.

A number of rooms have been reserved to be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, while significantly reduced rates have been agreed with the hotel, valid for all Conference participants for the duration of the Conference as well as for 2 additional days, before and / or after the Conference, subject to availability of rooms at the time of the reservation.

Special guest room rates have been agreed for conference participants (rates include breakfast, internet access, taxes and airport shuttle).

Please note that Wednesday, 17 June 2020 (CET) is the cut-off date for reservations. Any requests after that date will be accepted at the Hotel's prevailing rate based on availability.

Further information about accommodation is available through the Conference website.

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HCII 2020: Sponsorship

Sponsorship in the context of HCI International 2020 is an ideal opportunity to expose your organization to an international audience of around 2,000 academics, researchers and professionals in the field of HCI.

Sponsorship is not limited to financial support, but can also take the form of material and service provision.

If you are interested in sponsoring this international event or simply wish to receive more information, please contact Conference Administration.

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HCII 2020: About Copenhagen, capital and largest city of Denmark

Copenhagen, with a population of more than 1.3 million in the wider urban area, is regularly top ranked among European cities for quality of life. The Danish capital is one of the world’s greenest, cleanest and most sustainable urban centers. By having buses and metro running frequently and around the clock and with more than a third of the population using cycling as their main transportation for work, Copenhagen is compact, accessible and a very easy place to explore.

As one of Europe’s oldest capitals, hosting the world’s oldest monarchy, Copenhagen is rich in historical buildings and sights, like the Amalienborg Palace, to get a taste of royal life, the Kronborg Castle, known worldwide as Hamlet's and Shakespeare's castle, the Rosenborg Castle in the King’s Garden, Tivoli Gardens in the heart of the city and many more. In addition, many museums offer a wide range of exhibitions including the Denmark's National Museum, ranging from Stone Age to modern history, the National Gallery of Denmark and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

More about Copenhagen is available through YouTube

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Story of Human Errors in the Chernobyl Disaster

The Chernobyl nuclear accident disaster occurred on April 26, 1986, at the No. 4 nuclear reactors in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near the city of Pripyat in the north of Ukraine in the former Soviet Union.

The disaster happened after a safety test went wrong and caused an explosion that blew up part of reactor number 4. The explosion caused a fire that burned for more than a week. A cloud of radiation was released into the atmosphere. The radiation spread across the local area and over large parts of Europe. According to some reports, the amount of radioactive material was estimated to be 400 times more than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The cause of the Chernobyl Disaster is attributed to "human error" and mismanagement of nuclear power plant control room.

An exclusion zone of nineteen miles was defined around the plant in all directions around Chernobyl, which was then abandoned. Soon after, this area became a ghost town with buildings left to rot and almost all humans fleeing for their lives. The disaster is also considered to be one of the causes that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Over thirty-three years have passed since this disaster. A recent HBO miniseries "Chernobyl," written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, has brought the disaster back into the spotlight with an on-screen fictionalized version of the accident and the events that followed. Although this miniseries is not a documentary, it depicts this disaster and how it happened with some accuracy, including how the accident occurred, the political impact, the accident investigation, and rescue/cleanup actions. Chernobyl has received 19 Emmy nominations, and received an impressive number of viewers, over 1.9 million viewers, on May 6, 2019 (Adalian 2019).

However, the miniseries is not free of errors. The New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen pointed out some of the flaws in an article, noting minor issues such as how schoolchildren wore a holiday uniform on a non-holiday and how teenagers are shown carrying little kids' school bags, as well as voicing larger critiques about how the Soviet Union's system is portrayed (Masha Gessen 2019).

As discussed in the show, the following investigation of the disaster "revealed that a good majority of these incidents are caused by a combination of many factors whose roots can be found in the lack of human factors (micro- and macroergonomics) considerations" (Meshkati 1991). Consequently, in the fields of human factors and ergonomics, this catastrophic accident is regarded as an example of how human factors are essential in the design and organization of control systems. In his book "Midnight in Chernobyl", the journalist Adam Higginbotham, who has spent years investigating the causes of the accident, summarizes that "design flaws, human hubris and Soviet secrecy all contributed to the disaster" (Adam Higginbotham, NPR Fresh Air 2019). Higginbotham's new book provides a more detailed view of this huge disaster of the twentieth century.

"Chernobyl" is an excellent entertaining, informative media material for the general public to better understand the issues in nuclear technology and the consequence of human error. It is also a good training resource for human factor professionals dealing with safety.

Abbas Moallem, Ph.D.

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Chernobyl: dramatizes the story of the 1986 nuclear accident created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck for HBO. Produced by HBO in association with Sky UK, Starring Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson, May 6, 2019

Josef Adalian (2019): "How Chernobyl Became HBO's Surprise Monday-Night Hit", Vulture.com, June 4, 2019.

Masha Gessen (2019): What HBO's "Chernobyl" Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong, The New Yorker, June 4, 2019

Najmedin Meshkati (1991: "Human Factors in Large-Scale Technological Systems' Accidents: Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Chernobyl," Industrial Crisis Quarterly," Vol. 5, 131-15

Fresh Air, NPR, Uncovering The Story Of Chernobyl, July 2, 2019.

Adam Higginbotham (2019): Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Simon & Schuster (February 2019), 560 pages, ISBN13: 9781501134616

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About HCI International NEWS

The HCI International NEWS is a newsletter that contains information about the HCI International Conference, book reviews, news from the field of HCI, as well as links to interesting articles and conferences. If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to make a contribution, please contact the Editor, Dr. Abbas Moallem. The opinions that are expressed in this Newsletter are the sole responsibility of its authors and do not represent any institution or company.

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We welcome your contribution to the HCI International News. Please send to us interesting news, short articles, interesting websites, etc. We will consider your comments and contributions for upcoming issues. Please send your contribution to the Editor, Dr.Abbas Moallem.

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