Halfway to the Future 2024 is a direct continuation of the original HttF, organized by the Mixed Reality Lab back in 2019. Envisioned as a one-off small celebration of their 20th anniversary, that event attracted so much attention it organically evolved into a vibrant international event: researchers from many different places gathered in Nottingham to discuss the past, present, and future of design-oriented HCI. It was a memorable event: the atmosphere it created, the conversations it spurred, the new collaborations it gave rise to, and the overall experience it delivered felt like a fresh breeze of air in a community where several other, more established and traditional conferences take place on a yearly basis.
This year we’re giving HttF continuity to reflect again on the evolution of designerly HCI. Since 2019, so much has happened: climate change became ever more obvious to us all, and the COVID pandemic tore the social fabric of our global community, increasing stressors that continued to fracture our common understanding of who we are and what we are doing. Meanwhile, large language models heavily reshaped our expectations of how Artificial Intelligence will intersect human activities and design processes. How shall we as design researchers address this present moment together? As noted in a previous post, our call for papers received a lot of insightful submissions addressing this question. Thanks to that, we could craft a program we’re really excited about.
When creating the program of this year’s HttF, we did our best to recreate the original HttF’s modus operandi, which we very much enjoyed and learned from. The program we introduce here was carefully crafted to privilege genuine discussion over plain presentation of consolidated research, to build bridges between key seminal works and cutting-edge contemporary thinking, and to enable reflexive conversation among designerly HCI researchers regardless of their origin or career stage. Below, we unpack it in detail:
Halfway to the Future will start on October 21 with a Welcome Reception at the UCSC Haybarn (6 pm), featuring a conversation between Donna Haraway and Fred Turner. Attendees will be invited to partake in the discussion, which should set the stage for the many conversations that we hope to see emerge during the rest of HttF. Dinner and drinks will be served during the reception so attendees also have an opportunity to network.
From the second day (October 22) on, the symposium will take place at the Dream Inn. After a Welcome session (9:30 am) led by the General Chairs, we’ll host the first panel where we’ll address the theme New Ways of Knowing (10 am). We’ll turn back to 2001, where tangible and social computing emerged, challenging existing usability and task-oriented models. Through a core voice talk, Paul Dourish will reflect on his book, Where the Action Is, and how he introduced the concept of embodied interaction. Following his talk, three paper presentations will explore the resulting creative wave that ensued: first, a documentary on designers who embraced the freedom to “muck about”, second, how this freedom may also be reflected in literature surveys, and third, strategies for designing embodied experiences in social XR. These presentations will be followed by a second core voice talk, where Kristina Höök will discuss her book Designing with the Body, where she added the felt, lived, pulsating, somaesthetic bodily experience to embodied interactions. The subsequent three presentations will cover, first, designing for intercorporeality, second, how first-person methods blur the line between researcher and participant, and third, the potential of Soma Design in fast-paced industrial processes. Following such an exciting stream of presentations, we will host a roundtable conversation where the audience will get a chance to converse with all authors and core voices included in the panel. That will be followed by a 1h break, where lunch will be provided onsite.
The afternoon session will start with our second panel, focused on the theme of Reflective Practices with AI (2 pm). This panel will begin with a conversation with another of the symposium’s core voices, Terry Winograd, who will reflect on the history and future convergence of HCI and AI. Following this, there will be short presentations on the paradox of computational poetry, challenges in Explainable AI with Large Language Models, design principles that emphasize inclusivity, cultural sensitivity, and social justice in AI development, turning human-AI interaction into a game of table tennis, and a critical perspective against Generative UI. The panel will conclude with a roundtable conversation among all speakers involved, where they will engage with the audience to think about and discuss the intersection of AI, creativity, ethics, and HCI.
Day 2 of the symposium will end with our first Interactive Forum session (4 pm), where we will host works related to the New ways of knowing, Reflective practices with AI, and Plurality of Humanness themes. The forum will start with a round of lightning talks where all presenters will have a chance to briefly introduce their research. Following, we will move to the presentation area where presenters and other attendees will have a chance to engage in informal conversations around each author’s work in their designated presentation space.
The third, and last day of the symposium (October 23) will start with a Recap and Reflection session (9 am), where members of the organizing committee will facilitate an informal conversation to invite attendees to share their thoughts about Days 1 and 2. After that, we’ll host the second Interactive Forum (9:30 am). Following the same structure as the day before, the forum will host authors presenting works related to the More-than-Humanness theme.
Our conversations around the theme of More-than-Humanness will extend into the following agenda item: the third panel of the symposium (10:30 am). Building on a core voice talk by Ron Wakkary, where he will reflect on his book Things We Could Design: For More-than-Human Worlds, this panel will look at how we can cultivate meaningful interactions with the non-human living world. Six paper presentations will engage with that topic by discussing how designers might better engage nature and the environment, both conceptually and in practice, through a combination of manifestos, calls for action, methodological reflections, and remarkably caring design/research work. Following those presentations, speakers and the audience will engage in a roundtable conversation to reflect on how we might as future-makers work past the Anthropocentrism often driving contemporary design. A 1h break will follow the panel, with lunch provided onsite.
The last afternoon of the symposium will feature the fourth (and last) of the panels, addressing the theme Plurality of Humanness (1:30 pm). It will start with a core voice talk where Shaowen Bardzell will discuss her Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design. Following, 6 paper presentations will add to the conversation and help us reflect on how, as designers, developers and researchers, we have to wrestle with plurality and the many facets of being a person in the first place. Through a combination of those talks and presentations, as well as the roundtable that will follow them, we’ll put at the forefront of our conversations a set of questions we see as key to design research: How do our identities shape how we design and receive technologies? How best to address/adapt to this knowledge in shaping our future? How do we ensure that our work does justice to diversity?
The last panel of the symposium will give way to a Synthesis Conversation (3:30 pm), where we’ll invite attendees (core voices, other presenters, and non-presenters alike) to share their takeaways from the symposium. What did our conversations reveal about the past, present, and future of designerly HCI? What have we learned that we can build on (or must try to address) in our future research? Building on those reflections, we’ll also discuss our expectations for Halfway to the Future moving forward. Before we put an end to HttF 2024 by sharing our Closing Remarks (5:30 pm), we hope to consolidate the key takeaways from the symposium and set the foundations for its next edition in 5 years time.
We hope the above program makes for yet another stimulating Halfway to the Future, where conversations are at least as inspirational and transformative as those we experienced in 2019. We also hope this year’s edition paves the road for many more HttFs to come in the future. We can’t wait to meet with all of you in Santa Cruz and reflect on how our field has evolved and will continue to evolve in the future.
