This one-day workshop sets out to discuss academic impact, its multi-faceted meanings and, therefore, the various ways it can be achieved.
Over the last year, for both HCI research and other academic fields, impact has become a key notion to assess research, including the evaluation of funding proposals, project outcomes, and departments. Expressions such as community outreach, environmental harms and benefits, societal relevance, or industry interests are all expressions that can be associated with this growing focus. Yet, questions remain about the audience of academic research, the societal role of academia, the tensions between corporate-driven technological trends and critical intellectual interests, and how mutually beneficial partnerships between academia and other actors can be developed.
The theme of this year’s conference “Computing [in] Crisis” reminds us of the importance of such questions and the urge for future research to take them seriously. The workshop will provide a platform for HCI researchers, practitioners, representatives of public institutions, and diverse interested actors to discuss impact, and how a future research agendas that take it seriously might look like. We plan to accept up to twenty contributions and run the workshop on-site.
Paving the way for the next decade of research in computing, the workshop aims to: 1) map out conceptual, empirical, and technological examples that illustrate different instances of what impact can entail, 2) define a nuanced vocabulary to talk about impact, 3) discuss participatory methods, design materials, and strategies that can enable mutually beneficial collaborations, 4) outline the political dynamics, power relations, ethical issues, interest, or historical reasons that can shape how impact is defined, 5) envision ideas for future research collaborations and dissemination beyond the time frame of the workshop; 6) develop long and short-term strategies to encourage collaborations and partnerships between researchers, practitioners, public and private institutions.
Chiara Rossitto is Associate Professor of HCI at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her work explores questions related to more sustainable futures, social change, and the politics of designing. She has previously worked with aspects of impact and scale in academic research.
Sharon Lindberg is a designer, researcher, and teacher at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. Her work explores how design practitioners engage with and envision ethics in professional interaction design practice.
Christian Dindler is Associate Professor and distinguished senior innovator at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies at Aarhus University. Here, he co-directs the Interaction Design research program and leads the DEEP research project exploring how ethics is understood and dealt with by designers working in commercial settings.
Maurizio Teli is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sustainability and Planning, Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, Denmark. His research focuses on participatory design, digital technologies, sustainable futures, and eco-social justice.