===CALL FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE APPROACHING JAN 12th===

ACM SIGCHI 2007 Workshop: Supporting Design Studio Culture in HCI

Please see: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/hcid/CHI2007/workshop.htm

or read below:

CFP: CHI 2007 WORKSHOP: SUPPORTING DESIGN STUDIO CULTURE IN HCI

IMPORTANT DATES

• 12 January 2007, 5:00 PM (1700) PDT: Due date for position papers
• 1 February 2007: Notification date for the acceptance of the papers
• 9 April 2007: Workshop registration deadline

TOPIC DESCRIPTION

In the general case, a design studio is creative, collaborative, and
most-of-all highly material —that is the space is dominated by material
objects, surfaces for sharing ideas and inspiration, making ideas and
activities visible and tangible by means of physical materials such as
post-it notes, sketches, magazine scraps, models, and physical prototypes.
The physical arrangement of a design studio creates shared spaces and
personal spaces. There are oftentimes walls and other less permanent
vertical surfaces that are highly decorated with various images, diagrams,
sketches, and objects related to design work-in-progress. The persistence of
what is represented on such surfaces is important to the design process and
serves as collective memory and external cognition for the design teams. The
rich environment of the design studio stimulates creativity in a manner
germane to the design tasks at hand. Many of the objects in a design studio
may have seemingly little to do with the projects at hand, but in fact serve
to challenge and inspire new ideas, to create cross-contextual remindings
that lead to breakthrough thinking and conceptualization.

Setting up a workspace as a design studio with work-in-progress in clear
view invites critique and fosters the deeply entrenched designerly practice
of showing work and eliciting feedback early and often . Such practice
encourages discourse and reflection during the design process. Much of
design work is collaborative and group-oriented and the physical nature of
design studios affords such group-orientation and collaborations. There is a
beehive effect in a fully functional design studio in which the energy of
others serves as a stimulus to each individual and between groups. The
physical environment encourages and emphasizes sharing and collaborative
interaction more than individual work in front of individual personal computers.

For the specific case of interaction design and HCI, we want to understand
to what extent common design studio culture can and should play a role. The
purpose of the workshop is to explore the degree to which design studio
culture is already a part of the practice of design in HCI or interaction
design, and to understand how best to support the best practices of studio
culture in this specific context in the future.

One of the most important questions concerns the degree to which virtual,
online notions of design studio culture can be effectively realized in the
context HCI and design—how do virtual world studios compare to physical
world notions of design studio culture and to mixed physical and virtual
world notions?

The goals of the workshop are to examine these and other pertinent questions
from the perspectives of research, education and practice.
Outcomes

Depending on the quality of the position papers, we may invite certain
authors to contribute to an anthology that we will make public and publish
in a suitable venue to be determined. We will circulate a transcript of the
insights and strategies discussions to all participants. Assuming sufficient
interest, we will make the wiki an on-going forum for discussion of design
studio culture in interaction design. We will host and maintain the wiki at
the School of Informatics.

ORGANIZERS

•  Eli Blevis, Assistant Professor at Indiana University, School of
Informatics. ([log in to unmask])
•  Youn-Kyung Lim, Assistant Professor at Indiana University, School of
Informatics. ([log in to unmask])
•  Erik Stolterman, Professor and Director of the HCID program at Indiana
University, School of Informatics. ([log in to unmask])
•  Tracee Vetting Wolf, Staff Software Product Design Professional at IBM
T.J. Watson Research. ([log in to unmask])
•  Keiichi Sato, Professor and Ph.D. program co-coordinator at the Institute
of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology. ([log in to unmask])

SUBMISSION

Selection of participants: We expect to receive 2-4 page position papers
around the following three areas:

Questions about Design Studio Culture and HCI in Research
• What is design studio culture?
• How does design studio culture vary from one design discipline to another?
• Should HCI community care about design studio culture? How so? How is HCI
different?
• What technologies can scaffold design studio culture? Wikis? Blogs? Social
networks? Podcasts?
• What are the benefits and limitations of particular technologies for the
purpose of creating virtual design studio culture?
• How can different design disciplines share knowledge and experiences?
• What is the role and nature of design critique appropos of interaction design?

Questions about Design Studio Culture and HCI in Practice
• How do you make the case for design studio culture at your organization?
• How will the design studio culture change your ways of working in your
organization based on the reflections from your own experience?
• How do you get the facilities and resources to create design studio culture?

Questions about Design Studio Culture and HCI in Education
• How can we create studio culture in HCI programs, even if the physical
facilities are not the same as design schools and firms?
• How do you aculturate students to designerly ways?
• How do you get them used to critique?

The papers will be reviewed by organizers, and the selection will be based
on the level of contribution to this topic. We expect to have positions
papers from various groups including design practitioners with a traditional
design background and HCI design background, and HCI and design researchers
and educators.

Papers should be submitted as .doc or .pdf files. The format of the papers
is not restricted although we expect to have standardized formats--regular
fonts like Times New Roman in 12 pts.

Please send the submissions to Eli Blevis ([log in to unmask]).