Interaction Design Research Publication Strategy (CHI and DIS)

A lecture at the Interaction Design Seminar Series at Chalmers University of Technology x University of Gothenburg.
I arrived to interaction design research as an engineer and designer. In my first five years as a researcher, most of my papers were rejected because I didn’t “situate” my work properly and my “contributions” were unclear. Around 2018 I had a breakthrough. Around 90% of my submissions since then have been accepted, some have received awards. More importantly, I’m able to make research contributions from the work that I enjoy, which in my case is design. This talk is about that breakthrough: the literature-based mental model I use for planning and writing design research..
This is about how to plan, do, and publish interaction design research at venues like CHI and DIS without problems like the following:
- How do I get past this pesky Reviewer #2?
- What even is "situate"?
- How do you ever do actual design and still get published?
- I’ve been working on this for years, what do you mean what’s my *contribution*?!?
00:00 Intro
00:22 The problem and the promise
06:39 Why do we get rejected?
08:27 What counts as design research?
12:17 What counts as research through design?
15:50 What counts as research contributions?
19:48 The big picture
21:22 Combining contributions, ordering contributions, and the "process" contribution
26:21 Case studies: Drone Chi and Azalea
30:35 DIS, process, and pictorials
33:48 Closing remarks: transcending categories
35:15 Discussion
REFERENCES
Nigel Cross (1982)
Designerly Ways of Knowing
Design Studies 3:4
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Frayling (1993)
Research in Art and Design
Royal College of Art Research Papers 1:1
researchonline.rca.ac.uk/384/...
James Landay (2009)
I Give Up on CHIU/UIST
dubfuture.blogspot.com/2009/11...
John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson (2007)
Research through Design as a Method for Interaction Design Research in HCI
In Proc. CHI '07
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/124062...
Ilpo Koskinen, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redström, and Stephan Wensween (2011)
Design Research Through Practice
(Book)
Jacob Wobbrock and Julie Kientz (2016)
Research Contributions in Human-Computer Interaction
Interactions 23:3
interactions.acm.org/archive/...
Joseph La Delfa, Mehmet Aydın Baytaş, Olivia Wichtowski, Rohit Ashok Khot, & Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller (2019)
Are Drones Meditative?
In CHI EA '19
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/329060...
Joseph La Delfa, Mehmet Aydın Baytaş, Rakesh Patibanda, Hazel Ngari, Rohit Ashok Khot, & Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller (2020)
Drone Chi: Somaesthetic Human-Drone Interaction
In Proc. CHI '20
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/331383...
Joseph La Delfa, Mehmet Aydın Baytaş, Emma Luke, Ben Koder, & Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller (2020)
Designing Drone Chi: Unpacking the Thinking and Making of Somaesthetic Human-Drone Interaction
In Proc. DIS '20
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/335723...
Simon Mare, Sjoerd Hendriks, Mehmet Aydın Baytaş, & Mafalda Samuelsson-Gamboa (2020)
Azalea: Co-experiencing Embodied Information in Remote Communication
In Proc. MobileHCI '20
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/340632...
Sjoerd Hendriks, Simon Mare, Mafalda Samuelsson-Gamboa, & Mehmet Aydın Baytaş (2021)
Azalea: Co-experience in Remote Dialog through Diminished Reality and Somaesthetic Interaction Design
In Proc. CHI '21
LINKS
- designdisciplin.com
- podcast.designdisciplin.com
- / designdisciplin
- / designdisciplin
- baytas.net/
- / doctorbaytas

[@mbaytas]

If you found this useful you'll enjoy my channel Design Discipline, with lectures and conversations on design and design research:
ua-cam.com/channels/tXM3JdnERaNOiFKaHZJL_w.html
designdisciplin.com
podcast.designdisciplin.com
twitter.com/designdisciplin
instagram.com/designdisciplin

[@BabaGotGames]

Silent watcher here. Thank you so much for this and all the other videos on design research. Please keep making more of these.

[@mbaytas]

I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Are there any questions or topics I could cover for your benefit?

[@duylekhanh]

What I really adore in your works (either papers or videos) is the aesthetics :).

[@mbaytas]

Thanks, I try =)

[@duylekhanh]

@@mbaytas Well, I've been also trying. But yours is at a much higher level :).

[@mbaytas]

​@@duylekhanh There's graphic design resources in the pipeline for Design Disciplin, make sure you're subscribed then ;)
ua-cam.com/channels/tXM3JdnERaNOiFKaHZJL_w.html
designdisciplin.com

[@duylekhanh]

@@mbaytas by the way, watched the entire video. It's eye-opening and mind-blowing to me. I kind of figured out this roadmap and these categories by myself, but just partially. My enlightenment about this has been still very fragmented but still sufficient for me to have a full paper accepted at DIS for the first time (this year). I will definitely spend more time digesting the materials you provided :).

[@mbaytas]

@@duylekhanh so happy to be of help!