12 years ago, wrote this classic rant on the challenges of doing systems work in academic human-computer interaction: dubfuture.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-give
I know this post generated a lot of discussion and intentions. I’m curious—how’s the situation different now vs. 2009?
Conversation
i'd also be curious what the state of things are now. it seems like clean, well-defined, "bite-sized" problems is a phenomenon in all of academia though, rather than specific to HCI...
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i'm tempted to say it's a feature, not a bug (better to do real-world systems work in industry, interfacing with real users for a sustained period of time). are there reasons to shift more of this to academia?
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I think put it well in the comments section: "systems with no present market but with the potential to create or change one.” CSCW is a generative recent example.
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interesting, i love this breakdown. one thought here: if case (3) applies, what does full-fledged system-building get you over building an "atomic" proof-of-concept? e.g. if the market is that nascent, maybe we need to explore smaller test cases first before something e2e?
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You often can’t understand your ideas without seeing them refracted through a serious context of use. Some more comments on that challenge here:
