Northumbria University

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

The 25th conference of the British Computer Society on Human-Computer Interaction was held at Northumbria University. The theme of this conference was: "Health, Wealth & Happiness". The meeting was divided into several concurrent tracks but with no overarching structure. I tried to pick and choose the ones addressing health issues. However, this conference didn't live up to my expectations due to a broad set of presentations and topics.

THE FIRST EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

On the first day, I took part in EuroHCIR2011 (The 1st European Workshop on Human-Computer Information Retrieval), thinking that it might be beneficial in understanding how people (patients) search for information online. It was rather theoretical and algorithm-heavy while I was looking for a practical workshop. The rest of the day was full of lectures and presentations.

I was at the Doctoral Consortium for the whole second day. The idea was to bring PhD students in the early years of research to discuss their interests. The DC was a success. There were twenty students with various topics, but all struggling with the academic processes. The Consortium moderators nailed the Ph.D. problems and provided valuable lectures on organizing and executing the work. It was practical and helpful experience.

ROB TIEBEN PRESENTING THE PLAYFUL INTERACTIONS GROUP

At the conference, the winner of the best presentation was a Dutch Ph.D. student Rob Tieben, from TUe where they have a Playful Interaction Group, trying to make people engaged and fit by designing physically and digitally interesting/ interactive environments. The presentation was full of proven concepts with some interesting behavioral insights.

The conference was a patchwork of different topics, not necessarily health-related. I tried my best to criss-cross the agenda to maximize the impact but with a mediocre result. I followed many presentations, to name a few: 1) The behavioral impact of a visually represented virtual assistant in a self-service checkout context, 2) Family versus individual profiles in a health portal, 3) Distributed cognition for evaluating healthcare technology, 4) An approach to designing interactive decision aids for cardiac patients, 5) Design and evaluation of interactive visualization of therapy plans and patient data, etc.

I am pretty optimistic about the Human-Computer Interaction initiative of the British Computer Society as it has delivered what I was looking for - an understanding of contemporary issues. But, on the other hand, the HCI was not a health-related conference and, as such, of mediocre value to me.