The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering left a big impression at the prestigious ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Papers were presented, awards were won and workshops organized during the mid-May event. It was, Luddy Assistant Professor James Clawson said, “a strong year for us,” especially impressive given CHI is considered the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. It allows researchers and practitioners from around the world to discuss the latest in interactive technology.
IU faculty and students presented more than 10 papers in research, case study and workshops. They organized multiple workshops, won two paper awards and had a student selected to doctoral consortium.
Overall, globally more than 4,000 papers were submitted, with a 26.4-percent acceptance rate.
“We had more publications than we’ve had in a few years, and we had a strong presence there in terms of grad students and faculty,” Clawson said. “There was a sense of pride that IU punched above its weight.”
The biggest punch was delivered by Ph.D. student Zaidat Ibrahim, who participated in the prestigious Doctoral Consortium, presented four papers and organized a workshop. She won best paper honorable mention for her research paper, “Tracking During Ramadan: Examining the Intersection of Menstrual and Religious Tracking Practices Among Muslim Women in the United States.”
“She knocked it out of the park,” said Clawson, who called Ibrahim one of his key Ph.D. students. “She worked incredibly hard. She was definitely the most prolific member of the IU group.”
Ibrahim’s research focuses on designing technologies that support Muslim women tracking their health alongside their faith. There are more than a billion people of Muslim faith.
“My work lies in the intersection of women’s health, self-tracking, and lived experiences,” she said. “It’s important to understand the needs and lived experiences of women in a manner that supports the design of technologies that are culturally inclusive of their day-to-day lives.
“My paper sought to understand and uncover the tracking needs of Muslim women. I’m grateful that it got recognition for the effort that went into the work.”
Clawson said a practicing Muslim is likely to pray five times a day, every day.
“That type of motivating factor in terms of how you live your life is never accounted for in the designs of technologies. There are no technologies right now that help you track that.”
It’s more complicated for Muslim women because they aren’t allowed to pray or fast during Ramadan if they’re on their period.
“If you’re deeply religious and trying to improve your religious and spiritual wellbeing,” Clawson said, “that quest is interrupted by biology. There is no health technology that considers that information or supports that information.
“Zaidat had a lot of work that was focused on how to support Muslim females and how to design technologies to do that.”
Religious goals are tracked on a lunar calendar. Female biology is tracked based on a Gregorian calendar.
“Zaidat did a lot of work to figure out what people do, how they manage multiple calendars and how they manage multiple systems,” Clawson said.
Ibrahim will intern at Microsoft Research this summer. After completing her Ph.D., she will consider industry positions and tenure-track positions at R1 institutions.
“Wherever I go, I want to continue making societal impacts through my research and work,” she said.
The conference’s theme was Surfing the World to reflect the focus on pushing forth the wave of cutting-edge technology and riding the tide of new developments in human-computer interaction. The conference enabled researchers, practitioners and industry leaders to share their work and ideas, and to foster collaboration and innovation in the field.
Here are the IU award winners:
Third-place student competition: Ege Otenen, “Towards Designing for Multimodal Remembering: Findings from an Interview Study.”
Best-paper award (top 1 percent): Novia Nurain, Clara Caldeira and Kay Connelly, “Designing a Card-Based Design Tool to Bridge Academic Research & Design Practice for Societal Resilience.”
Best paper honorable mention (top 5 percent): Zaidat Ibrahim, “Tracking During Ramadan: Examining the Intersection of Menstrual and Religious Tracking Practices Among Muslim Women in the United States.”
Lead authors of research papers were Colin Lefevre, Aswati Panicker, Long Jing (Claire) Hsu, Sabid Bin Habib Pias, Peter Caven, Ibrahim and Nurain.
Michaela Krawzyk and Ibrahim each presented case study papers that were co-authored by Katie Siek, Luddy professor of Informatics
Workshop paper presenters were Jacob Abbott and Sabila Nawshin.
Workshop organizers were Panicker, Yuxing Wu, Ibrahim, Nurain and Siek.