Interactions - May/June 2012

COMMUNITY 
SIGCHI: The First 30 Years
Gerrit C. van der Veer

SIGCHI | gerrit@acm.org

CHI 2012 in Austin, Texas (May
5–10), marks the 30th anniver-
sary of our society. The first
conference, on Human Factors in
Computer Systems, took place in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, on March
15–17, 1982. The second and third
conferences were a year and a half
apart, and from then on CHI, as
the conference has been called
since 1983, has been an annual
event. In the official name, “com-
puter systems” was replaced by
“computing systems,” indicating
a shift in focus from hardware
toward the total system. The
same shift is visible on the cov-
ers of the proceedings: Whereas
the first cover showed a template
for drawing flow charts and the
next two referenced online printer
output, the human user has since
then been represented, first by a
fingerprint or an eye, followed by
indications of the location of the
conference (e.g., hotel meeting
hall, Seattle totem pole), and then
by more abstract references to
people meeting and to balancing
technology and user. The popula-
tion evolved as well. In a SIGCHI
Bulletin in 1986, Ben Shneiderman
recorded the early years, when
a purely North American group
of volunteers (the Software
Psychology Society) started the
movement that soon found a home
in ACM and a new name: SIGCHI.
In this group Bill Curtis and Ben
Shneiderman originated the idea
for a conference (expecting 200 to
300 attendees), and Jean Nichols
and Michael Schneider were the
first conference chair and pro-
gram chair, respectively—who
then had to face the fact that
the first conference actually
drew more than 900 attendees!