researchers should ask themselves
whether CHI is or wants to be a
scientific conference. If not, then
the reasonable question is: Where is
the scientific conference on human-computer interaction? If, on the other
hand, we want to claim that CHI is
a scientific conference, we ought to
consider why it lacks mainstream
themes.
My argument here is that
the reason our discipline lacks
mainstream themes, overarching or
competing theories, and accumulated
knowledge is the culprit known
as implications for design. This is
the mantra of our discipline that
requires our papers to justify what
implications for design our results
have. While previous researchers have
argued the perils of this approach, our
work is the first to provide systematic
and justified grounds against it.
I argue that our eternal focus on
implications for design is behind our
discipline’s lack of motor themes.
Here is why:
• Implications for design put
practitioners’ needs above those
of researchers. Somehow our
discipline believes that our research
output should be more relevant to
practitioners rather than to fellow
researchers. Many will argue that
CHI and human-computer interaction
make up a multidisciplinary field
with practitioners, and therefore
implications for design are a way
to tie the field together. However,
one only has to look at the medical
field for a strong counterargument.
The medical field brings together
scientists and practitioners, and
in fact began as a “practice,” but it
maintains strong scientific approaches
involving repeatability and reusability
of findings that substantially develop
research themes.
• Implications for design give
preference to contextual knowledge.
The reason is that design is, indeed,
practical and contextual, and
therefore requires contextual advice.
However, this means that more
and more of our research provides
only contextual knowledge, which
is simply useless under slightly
different situations. As a result, our
field completely lacks accumulated
knowledge that could potentially
evolve into motor themes.
• Implications for design are usually
just a well-crafted argument. If we
scrutinize most HCI papers that offer
“Implications for Design” sections
(including my own!), we will find that
these are extremely polished pieces
of text that do a wonderful job of not
providing any reusable data, theory,
or tools, yet manage to convince us
that the implications are important.
A further downside is that the use
of English language is getting out of
hand in our discipline. Unlike other
disciplines that objectively and clearly
describe their findings in scientific
terms, our discipline has simply
gone overboard and turned research
into a prose competition. Doctoral
candidates wonder: If I design the
experiment, obtain the results, and
report the results, why is that not
enough? Why should I dress up my
paper with eloquent language?
• Implications for design
demotivate incremental research.
Because implications for design
are typically an elaborate piece of
English prose, it is in fact very difficult
to reliably demonstrate that my
research has improved on previous
implications for design. If previous
research gave me a tool or data, it
would be much clearer how to improve
those, but how do I slightly improve a
long argument?
• Implications for design
demotivate repeating studies. If my
research helps you design (because
I offer you implications for design
but no tool, theory, or data), then my
research does not help you with your
research. Given the billions spent on
HCI research globally, how much of
that research can be reused today?
Frankly, very little, but there are a ton
of implications for design.
As a way forward, I wish to urge
our community to consider ways
to establish motor themes. We
simply need to get behind a small
number of themes and develop
them sufficiently. We need to stop
conducting completely unrelated
studies year after year and figure
out ways to accumulate and develop
knowledge. One way to do this is to
change our mantra to “implications
for research.” For instance, we could
expect papers to explicitly argue
DOI: 10.1145/2729103 COP YRIGH T HELD BY AUTHOR. PUBLICATION RIGHTS LICENSED TO ACM. $15.00
whether their findings are repeatable,
how their findings can be reused by
other researchers in an experiment
or study, and how their findings can
be objectively improved. In addition,
we could expect that papers explicitly
provide tools (software), datasets, or
testable theories.
Finally, I wish to point out that I
am very optimistic about the future
of our discipline. Our work has been
very well received by the community
(getting an honorable mention for
the paper and one of the best-talk
awards for its presentation), a number
of researchers have provided us with
positive and encouraging feedback,
and a number of new initiatives have
sprung up our field to make it more
scientific in the sense of repeating
studies, incremental research, and
reusable findings.
Endnotes
1. Liu, Y., Goncalves, J., Ferreira, D., Xiao,
B., et al. CHI 1994–2013: Mapping two
decades of intellectual progress through
co-word analysis. Proc. CHI 2014. ACM,
New York, 2014, 3553–3562.
2. Bartneck, C. and Hu, J. Scientometric
analysis of the chi proceedings. Proc. CHI
2009. ACM, New York, 2009, 699–708.
3. Callon, M., Courtial, J.-P., Turner, W. A.,
and Bauin, S. From translations to
problematic net works: An introduction to
co-word analysis. Social Science Information
22, 2 (1983), 191–235.
4. Callon, M., Courtial, J.-P., and Laville, F.
Co-word analysis as a tool for describing
the network of interactions bet ween basic
and technological research: The case of
polymer chemistry. Scientometrics 22, 1
(1991), 155–205.
5. Le Marc, M., Courtial, J.-P., Senkovska,
E. D., Petard, J.-P., and Py, Y. The dynamics
of research in the psychology of work from
1973 to 1987: From the study of companies
to the study of professions. Scientometrics
21, 1 (1991), 69–86.
6. Coulter, N., Monarch, I., and Konda, S.
Software engineering as seen through its
research literature: A study in co-word
analysis. Journal of the American Society
for Information Science 49, 13 (1998),
1206–1223.
7. An, X. Y. and Wu, Q.Q. Co-word analysis
of the trends in stem cells field based on
subject heading weighting. Scientometrics
88, 1 (2011), 133–144.
Vassilis Kostakos is a professor of
computer engineering in ubiquitous computing
at the University of Oulu, where he directs the
Community Imaging Group.
→ vassilis@ee.oulu.fi