2011 SIGCHI Awards

CHI Academy

The CHI Academy is an honorary group of individuals who have made extensive contributions to the study of HCI and who have led the shaping of the field.

 This year we have elected seven new Academy members. In alphabetical order, they are:

Ravin Balakrishnan

Ravin Balakrishnan is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.  Ravin's research focuses on developing and evaluating novel interaction and visualization techniques and systems for a variety of devices and application scenarios. He is well known for his work on interfaces for new display formats such as 3D displays, surfaces, and ambient displays, enhancing and modeling target acquisition, adding physical simulation to the interface, and sketching interfaces. In addition to his primary appointment at the University of Toronto, Ravin has been a visiting researcher at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), INRIA and the University of Paris, Microsoft Research (Redmond, Beijing, Bangalore and Cambridge), and HP Labs (Bangalore). He has also actively pursued tech-transfer of his research to industry via several startups, and regularly serves on editorial boards and conference committees for the HCI and Graphics communities.

Steven Feiner

Steven Feiner is Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, where he directs the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab. His research interests include human-computer interaction, augmented reality and virtual environments, 3D user interfaces, knowledge-based design of graphics and multimedia, mobile and wearable computing, computer games, and information visualization. Steve is a coauthor of the well-known computer graphics text, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, and is responsible for some of the earliest work on automatically designing computer graphics to explain physical tasks. His lab has spent over twenty years developing augmented reality (AR) systems, including the first outdoor mobile AR system using a see-through display, and has pioneered experimental applications of AR to fields such as tourism, journalism, maintenance, and construction.  Steve has been active in many conferences, and has served as program chair for UIST 1994 and general chair for UIST 2004.

Joseph Konstan

Joseph Konstan is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is a Fellow of the ACM and has served as the President of ACM SIGCHI and as a member of the ACM Council and ACM Executive Committee.  He was General Chair of UIST 2003 and RecSys 2007, and is currently General Chair of CHI 2012.
Joe's research addresses a variety of human-computer interaction issues, including personalization (particularly through recommender systems), eliciting participation in online communities, and designing computer systems to improve public health.  His collaborative work on the GroupLens project led to new algorithms and interfaces for personalized collaborative filtering, including seminal work on recommendation explanations, on interfaces for new users, and on user-centered criteria for evaluating recommender systems.  He has also collaborated across disciplines to develop new theoretical and empirical understanding of online question-answering sites and innovative persuasive computing applications focused on behavior-change to reduce AIDS risk among high-risk individuals.

James Landay

James Landay is the Short-Dooley Professor of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) at the University of Washington (UW). His research over the past two decades has included contributions in the areas of automated usability evaluation, demonstrational interfaces, ubiquitous computing, user interface design tools, and web design. As a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, he began creating tools to support fluid user interface design and development through sketching.  From 1997-2003, he was a professor at UC Berkeley, where he was tenured after creating a strong HCI research community and continuing to develop tools for non-programmers that explored the then novel design spaces of web site, pen and speech interaction. He moved to Seattle in 2003 to join the faculty in CSE at UW and to direct the Intel Research Seattle lablet, which focused under his leadership on technologies and applications of ubiquitous computing. He has continued his leadership in developing tools for designers, adding to his long list of publicly available design tools through the investigation of location-aware computing, activity-based computing and ubicomp in the home.  He was a founding member of the cross-university DUB Group at UW, which under his leadership has quickly become an international power in HCI research. He is currently helping to establish an HCI research center at Microsoft Research Beijing.  He has also had success in commercialization efforts. His research contributions and those of his current and former students are alone worthy of election into the CHI Academy. But James' most lasting legacy will be his outstanding ability to create communities of HCI researchers (Berkeley, Intel Research Seattle, Washington) with international prominence and lasting impact.

Jenny Preece

Jenny Preece is Dean of the College of Information Studies, the University of Maryland's iSchool. She has investigated usability and sociability design issues in online communities, including empathy, lurking and posting behaviors, cross-cultural interactions, motivation, and evaluation methods. She authored/coauthored three high-impact books: Human-Computer Interaction (1994), Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (2000) and Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (2002, 2007, 2011).

Abi Sellen

Abigail Sellen is a Principal Researcher at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge UK, where she co-manages the interdisciplinary Socio-Digital Systems group.  Abigail's career spans a number of industrial research labs, including Apple Computer, Xerox's Cambridge Research Centre and Hewlett Packard, Bristol.  She is known for her wide range of contributions to HCI, covering input devices, help systems, reading, paper use in offices, Web use, videoconferencing design, computer support for human memory, mobile systems, digital music and more.  Her published books include "The Myth of the Paperless Office", co-authored with Richard Harper, which won an IEEE distinguished literary contribution award.  She has filed more than 50 patents, has served on many conference committees and advisory boards, and was recently elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society.

Dennis Wixon

Dennis Wixon is a discipline lead in the Microsoft Business Products Division and Adjunct Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering department at the University of Washington. Throughout his career Dennis has focused on applied research methods. In the early 80s he was part of the Software Usability Engineering group at Digital Equipment Corporation, which introduced Usability Engineering, Contextual Inquiry, and the application of analytic methods to logging data. Since joining Microsoft, Dennis has worked in a variety of product areas where he has developed new methods for creating emotionally compelling products such as the RITE method (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation method).  Dennis has been active professionally for many years, including serving as a CHI conference co-chair and Vice President for Conferences at SIGCHI. He is the co-author of numerous articles and two books, Field Methods Case Book for Software Design (with Dr. Judy Ramey) and Brave NUI World (with Dr. Daniel Wigdor).

Lifetime Practice Award

Along with the Lifetime Research Award, this is the most prestigious award SIGCHI gives. It recognizes the very best and most influential applications of human-computer interaction, work that has impacted the field over a career.

Larry Tesler

Larry Tesler's work at Xerox PARC and Apple has impacted literally every computer user today. He was closely involved in the invention of a many of the now-familiar low-level interaction techniques in all graphical user interfaces. These included cut-copy-and-paste editing along with their keyboard shortcuts, inserting and overwriting text without entering a mode by simply clicking or dragging and then typing, typing or pasting find and replace text into a form that can be edited before and after searching, between-character text insertion points, drop-down menus, paned-window browsing (now called frames in web browsers), and the GUI integrated development environment (IDE) for programmers including code browsers, object inspectors and stack-inspection debuggers. He identified and publicized the need to eradicate unnecessary modes from user interfaces, to the extent that this is now standard design practice. He was the first researcher to conduct formative usability studies at PARC. Previously, at Stanford, he had developed the PUB document compiler, an early markup language. At Apple during the 1980s and 1990s,  Larry built and managed teams of up to 200 technologists and designers that contributed to such innovative products as Lisa, Macintosh, Color QuickDraw, QuickTime, AppleScript, HyperCard, the Newton, and first commercial object-oriented frameworks (the Lisa ToolKit and MacApp). He also expanded Apple's research and development into new areas such as animation, 3-D graphics, speech synthesis, and scientific visualization. Subsequently he worked as Vice President for User Experience at both Amazon and Yahoo, before turning to independent consulting.

Lifetime Research Award

Along with the Lifetime Practice Award, this is the most prestigious award SIGCHI gives. The criteria for achievement are the same as for the CHI Academy, only more so.

Terry Winograd

Terry Winograd is professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he founded and directs the program in human-computer interaction. Over the course of his 40 year career, Terry has made fundamental contributions to the design of interactive computer systems by taking a broad view of HCI, considering it in the context of natural language processing, machine and human intelligence, cognitive science, human-machine communication, design, and software design. After building one of the most advanced natural language interactive systems of its time, he then showed that this symbol-based system was inadequate and proposed a new basis for human-machine interaction that emphasized the contextualized basis of communication in the physical world.  Thereafter, he developed the consequences of these ideas for software design and showed how human activities, computer science, and design can be united, not just through a series of articles and books, but also through the design and teaching of a set of classes and the founding of a new design school.  Terry has explored other dimensions of the relationship between people and computers, receiving the Rigo Award for lifetime contributions to Computer Documentation (from ACM SIGDOC) and the Founders Award as one of the founders of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He has been a major influence in HCI through broadening its perspectives, demonstrating the relevance and importance of diverse schools of thought to understanding and designing interaction.

Social Impact Awards

Alan Newell

Alan Newell is the founder head of the School of Computing at Dundee University. This includes the Queen Mother Research Centre, which contains one of the largest academic groups in the world researching computer and communication systems for older and disabled people.   Alan has been researching into HCI, particularly by older people and disabled people, for over forty years. His team has developed stenograph transcription systems and television subtitling systems for deaf and hearing impaired people and a wide range of communication systems for non-speaking people.  More recently they have been investigating research techniques for use with, and developing computer systems to support, older people.  He has given many keynote lectures in conferences in Europe, the UK, the US, Japan, and Canada, including InterCHI 1993 and ASSETS 2002.  Together with colleagues, he has won best paper awards at the IEEE Intl. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, and the ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies.   He was a Deputy Principal of Dundee University between 1992 and 1995.  He is a member of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy.  In 2006, he was named ACM Fellow for his contribution to computer-based systems for people with disabilities. 

Clayton Lewis

Clayton Lewis is a Professor of Computer Science and Scientist in Residence at the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado. He is a pioneer in the science of usability. He was manager of the Human Factors Group at the IBM Watson Research Center in the early 1980s where he led and inspired some of the first HCI projects on iterative, user centered design. He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2009. Most relevant to this Award, he has had a strong influence on HCI with regard to designing for people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities.  He has made designers and developers of accessible technologies aware of these groups, where previously they had been left out.  Major projects in which he has participated include Fluid, an international family of projects on accessible Web Technology, the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure initiative (GPII), and the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies (RERC-ACT). His work has been recognized in many ways, including invitations to contribute to deliberations on technology and policy in many national and international venues. Specifically, he has made presentations to the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee of the US Access Board, G3ICT, and the Interagency Committee on Disability Research. He also is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Commission AEGIS project.

Lifetime Service Awards

Arnie Lund

Arnie Lund is a Principal Director of User Experience at Microsoft.  He is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, and a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).  He has a rich history of SIGCHI service including conference co-chair for CHI 1998 and for CHI 2008, and is currently chairing a revitalization of communities within CHI.  He has brought his passion and leadership to a variety of roles on CHI conference committees, and founded the SIGCHI chapter in Denver, Colorado.  He has reviewed for and served on the boards of several HCI journals.  Elected to the HFES Executive Committee, he also chaired the HFES Institute that sponsored the first ANSI HCI standard, served on the standards committee through its long history, and has brought his influence to a wide range of other standards and policy efforts.  Arnie has worked tirelessly over the years to grow the larger HCI community and advance the discipline by bridging the diverse groups that make up our field.

Jim Miller

Jim Miller is the principal consultant at Miramontes Interactive, a user experience consultancy.  He has a long record of service to SIGCHI and the HCI community, having served on the SIGCHI Executive Committee from 1994 to 1996, including a term as Chair.  He was co-chair of CHI'92, and has been a frequent member of the Conference Management Committee.  He has held a range of conference and society positions, was a long-time member of the ACM interactions editorial board, and has often worked as an informal liaison between SIGCHI and ACM.  He was also a member of the founding committee for BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area local SIG.