SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award Talk – Riding the Wave

I’m an optimist. I entered our field believing that we can use technology to make people’s lives better, and agreeing with Lincoln, Drucker, Kay and others that “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” For HCI, as the technological tools we have available to design experiences have evolved, our impact has moved from its initial focus on human factors, fitting systems to users (efficiency and effectiveness), to 2nd wave considerations of people in community and the rich context of life, and delight and identity. Third wave HCI recognizes the growing ubiquity of a digital world as the new context that we shape and are shaped by, and its ability to touch every aspect of what it is to be human. It is the ecosystem of digital products that many of us are creating with maturing and diverse design perspectives that is enriching lives. There has certainly been a dark side of those left behind, unintended consequences and apparent failures of promising innovations. In this talk I will be reflecting on lessons learned through these waves of evolution in our field. I’ll also be sharing what I believe are some of the properties of the wave that could come if we embrace the transformative power of the next generation of technology to address the toughest social issues we face by baking universal design into the fabric of the digital world.