A world of CHI

We last left this intrepid traveler in Brazil, home of one of my favorite real-life HCI anecdotes. I was in the city airport in São Paulo, where few if any announcements were being made in English. I saw my flight number light up, and boarded the shuttle bus to the plane. Then someone gets on the shuttle and makes an announcement in Portu-guese, and the other passengers get off the bus. What should I do? Get off the bus, of course! How did I know-it was a form of social navigation. By following in the footsteps of others, I was able to tell where I wanted to go. And in September, I visited Sweden, home of one of the world's leading research groups exploring social navigation at SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. In an action-packed week in Sweden, I saw a wide variety of HCI work, from research on community computing and annotated reality at SICS to innovative applications of usability engineering, speech, and technology at the University of Linköping. Along the way, I saw a number of research institutes with interesting projects involving non-work uses of computers and mobile computing. Meetings with STIMDI, the national HCI organization , led to interesting discussions of the role of professional societies-discussions that may help shape SIGCHI's agenda as we look carefully at how we can support professionals. On my last day in Sweden, I had a double-dose of creative research. I spent the morning seeing several projects involving a range of topics from CSCW and e-mail to ergonomics and design to telepres-ence. In the afternoon, I visited the Swedish Handicap Institute, an extensive facility that combines research and deployment activities to support the disabled. Here, I saw state-of-the-art computer interfaces for the blind, and learned more about their heavily user-centered design process. Sweden is a wonderful place to learn about HCI; the academic departments are well-established, as are the research groups in large labs. As a result, nobody thinks of HCI as an afterthought, or something that doesn't belong (whether in Computer Science or Engineering). From Sweden, I made my way to Bonn for the ECSCW 2001 conference. I already commented last month on the importance of in-person contact, especially after the events of September 11. This importance was echoed in Larry Prusak's closing plenary. As the director of IBM's Knowledge Management Institute, he is asked often about telecollaboration, effective …