The theme of CHI 2004 was “Connect”. Unfortunately, we found many attendees had problems doing just that at the conference. Whether it was trying to find tape and paper to leave a message on the board, connecting to the rather unreliable wireless network or getting your powerpoint to show up on the projector in the opening plenary, “Connect”ing proved difficult at times.

Having said that, I think CHI 2004 was a resounding success. Keeping a group of HCI (or CHI) professionals happy is almost a no-win situation. SOMEthing is bound to be deemed unusable. The signage is bad! The program is hard to navigate! The digital proceedings are inaccessible! The croissants aren’t usable because it makes my fingers dirty!

CHI 2004 had a few panels focused on videogames. Of these, a couple of ideas were particularly innovative and really point to how games are leading the way in the field of HCI: Uncle Roy All Around You and The ESP Game.

CHI was awesome. I’ve finally recovered from jet lag, so it’s time to post. KC and I saw many things worth writing about, several of which we will handle in detailed articles later. For now here a quick rundown (in no particular order) of some interesting things I saw there:

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