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Case Studies of HCI in Practice

Quick Facts

CHI 2023 is structured as a hybrid conference from April 23-28, 2023 in Hamburg, Germany and remote.

Important Dates

All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.

  • Submission deadline: October 13th, 2022
  • Notification: November 30th, 2022
  • e-rights completion deadline: December 5th, 2022
  • Initial upload to TAPS deadline: December 15th, 2022
  • Publication-ready deadline: January 5th, 2023
  • Video presentations deadline (mandatory): March 23rd, 2023

Submission Details

Submission Format

  • Case studies should be 4-10 pages (excluding references).
  • Authors may include an illustrative video (5 minutes maximum, recommended 2-3 minutes) to better explain what they did and what they learned.
  • Accepted papers must present at the conference (in person or virtually) as well as upload a video talk for remote participants. See technical requirements for video content at CHI.
  • Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.

Selection Process

Reviewed

What is a Case Study?

Case Studies are compelling stories about applied HCI practice based on real-world experiences that will be instructive and of interest to other community members. Based on the concrete research and design cases, HCI practitioners and researchers will learn how they can apply HCI principles and methods in practical HCI work.

Case Studies should describe how a problem was addressed by HCI work carried out in applied settings. They should describe the challenges experienced and how they were tackled, reflect on the experience, what could have been improved, and explain why the case study is important to the HCI community. Case Studies can also inspire HCI researchers to investigate further issues that arise from practical research and design work. Case Studies can illustrate, explore, report, analyze, summarize, challenge, or describe practical HCI work to address a problem. They might focus, for instance, but not limited on the following topics:

  • Design to support a specific type of experience, discussing its rationale and lessons learned
  • Research of a specific domain, user group, or experience, discussing its insights and lessons learned
  • Domain-specific topics, significantly lesser known but essential fields of interest
  • Management and strategy of research (either academic research or user research) and design in organizations
  • Pilot studies preceding and informing larger-scale investigations
  • Application, critique, or evolution of a method, process, or tool
  • Innovation through Research or Design (disruptive or otherwise)
  • Practical issues associated with HCI Teaching and Learning in education, training, or knowledge sharing

Importantly, Case Studies need to make a contribution beyond the study itself. A writeup of a single usability study, for example, would not make for a Case Study. Submissions need to reflect on methods or situations and be largely interesting to the broader HCI Community.

Case Studies differ from archival research papers in that Case Studies do not need to define themselves as part of the potentially longer-term body of academic research. Case Studies are not considered academic archival publications and can be republished as appropriate. They might not have an extensive literature review as archival research papers or might not explicitly add to HCI theory within an academic school of thought.

Best Case Study Recognition

The SIGCHI “Best of CHI” awards honor exceptional submissions to SIGCHI sponsored conferences. Based on reviewer recommendations, the CHI Case Study chairs nominate submissions for the Best Case Study Recognition, as appropriate.

Preparing and Submitting Your Case Study

A Case Study must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The Case Study submission must have a paper, and can also have supplementary material. A video may be included as supplementary material, but the video presentation will be mandatory upon acceptance.

  1. Paper. The primary submission material consists of an extended abstract in the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column; 4-10 pages). The paper should describe the authors’ experience, focusing on the lessons you want readers to take away from the presentation. The paper must stand alone; readers must be able to understand the Case Study with only this material.
  2. Supplementary material. Your submission may be augmented with a video as supplementary material. Additional supporting materials can be included such as documents (e.g., pictures beyond those included in the paper) or interactive media (e.g., interactive prototypes). Authors who submit supplementary materials should also include a list of the supplementary items in their submission. This should explain the nature and purpose of each item submitted. The list is not part of the paper.

Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper and in the technical requirements for video content for their video. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at [email protected].

Selection Process

The evaluation of submissions will not be constrained by traditional academic expectations but will be based on the significance of the Case Study’s contribution to the field of HCI practice and on how compellingly the story of the Case Study is told. Accepted submissions will be chosen on the merit and contribution of the report, not only on the quality of the outcome that it describes. This means that a valuable lesson learned from a poor outcome is just as acceptable as a valuable lesson learned from a good result.

Submissions will be reviewed by an expert panel of HCI practitioners and practitioner researchers. Authors will receive the reviews of their submissions after the decisions are announced and should keep in mind that the Case Studies program is a juried contribution and thus does not follow the strict peer-review process as applied to Papers.

Specifically, the review criteria will be the extent to which the case study report accomplishes the following:

  • tells a convincing story of a real-world experience of HCI practice that will be instructive and of interest to other members of the HCI community
  • reflects on the experience, and describes why the case study is of importance
  • advances the state of the practice
  • clearly outlines any limitations of the report as well as of the activity described

The extended abstract should contain no sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions must not be anonymous. However, the confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, except for title and author information which will be published on the website before the conference.

Upon Acceptance of your Submission

The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted paper has to follow the instructions on preparing and submitting a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove the paper from the program. The publication-ready version has to follow the LaTeX and Word templates from ACM. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: [email protected].

At the Conference

Accepted Case Studies will be presented at the conference in 15-minute time slots assigned by the conference committee. Authors will have 10 minutes to present and 5 minutes for questions. During the 10 minute presentation, authors may choose to play portions of their video submission, but this is not required. Authors might be asked to focus on particular aspects of their case study (e.g., surprises, learnings, implications for practice) to maximize the benefits of the presentation to conference attendees.

After the Conference

Accepted Case Studies will be published as CHI Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library. The Case Study supporting videos will be attached.