So CHI is nearly over. It was a very fun conference...and very tiring as always. But I thought I'd share what I thought were some of the best papers for anyone who might be interested...
Best of main papers and notes...Girls, technology and privacy: "is my mother listening?" Wendy March, Constance Fleuriot
Pages: 107 - 110
This was a great paper on how and where teenage girls used communications devices. They looked at girls who wanted extra privacy and made calls from closets or used IM while doing homework. Some very interesting ethnographic observations.
Design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity Sunny Consolvo, Katherine Everitt, Ian Smith, James A. Landay
Sunny et al built a system to help people be more active. They built this cool cell phone app to allow people to see how many steps they and each of their friends had taken in a given day as a way to promote activity.
Mobile phones and paper documents: evaluating a new approach for capturing microfinance data in rural India Tapan S. Parikh, Paul Javid, Sasikumar K., Kaushik Ghosh, Kentaro Toyama
Pages: 551 - 560
This was an amazing study of a mobile phone being used to manage "paper"work in a women's microfinance group in India.
Understanding photowork David Kirk, Abigail Sellen, Carsten Rother, Ken Wood
Pages: 761 - 770
I didn't make it to this talk, but the paper looked like a very interesting study of the work that people need to do in order to prepare photos for sharing.
Everyday practices with mobile video telephonyKenton O'Hara, Alison Black, Matthew Lipson
Pages: 871 - 880
This was an interesting look at the issues with mobile video telephony today, espescially that video just doesn't work in the places where people make their mobile phone calls.
From awareness to connectedness: the design and deployment of presence displaysAnind K. Dey, Ed de Guzman
Pages: 899 - 908
Anind had a nice talk about creating systems that make people feel more connected and not just "aware" of each other.
Collective creation and sense-making of mobile media Antti Salovaara, Giulio Jacucci, Antti Oulasvirta, Timo Saari, Pekka Kanerva, Esko Kurvinen, Sauli Tiitta
Pages: 1211 - 1220
I didn't make it to this talk either, but it seemed like a very interesting paper on mobile media sharing in large group environments.
Best of alt.chiTokyo Youth at Leisure: Towards the Design of Media to
Support Leisure Planning and Practice
Diane Schiano, Ame Elliot, Victoria Bellotti, PARC, USA
PARC did a nice study into how people use mobiles to plan and meet up with each other in Tokyo. Surprisingly they weren't used much for deciding where to go, more for just coordinating attendees and exact places and times to meet while in the process of meeting.
I Just Clicked To Say I Love You: Rich Evaluations of Minimal
Communication
Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye, Cornell University, USA
This was a really great paper about how a simple click to say "thinking of you" can dramatically make couples feel closer to each other. Very great talk!
AuraOrb: Social Notification Appliance
Mark Altosaar, Roel Vertegaal, Changuk Sohn, Daniel Cheng,
Queen’s University, Canada
This group took one of those caller ID orbs and turned it into a presence display. While they were just display status like email alerts or stock information, systems like this could easily be used for presence.