HCI, the Arts and the Humanities

a new community exploring the academic borderlands

News: visit the arts-hci/lit-hci web site for further events, related news and information.

The workshop on 21st July at King's Manor, University of York, was the second meeting of a growing international community focused on explored the potential contribution to HCI of approaches from branches of the Arts and Humanities. Approaches include literary and cultural studies, critical theory, semiotics and film theory and applications include non-linear digital narrative, games design and 'mainsteam' interface design such as e-commerce.

See reports on the York workshop on UsabilityNews by Ann Light "Humanities and Arts Research Agenda brings together HCI Enthusiasts" and by Nick Bryan-Kinns "The Art of Blending Humanities and HCI".

On the agenda for the York meeting was fun, enchantment, trust, loyalty, community and identity. The aim: to explore techniques and concepts from the Arts and Humanities with a view to analysing the role and meaning of interaction with digital technologies. In this way we hope to situate the purely functional construal of human interaction that has supplied models for our understanding of interaction design in the past.

The workshop brought together researchers who are actively exploring the application of new metaphors, models and approaches and those with a strong interest in doing so. The intention is to move beyond the sharing of work and experience, to the construction of new insights. As an outcome of the York workshop an active research community in the field has been established and is currently producing materials that inform the wider HCI community of its potential. See the arts-hci/lit-hci web site.

A discussion website is running at smartgroups:

subscribe by email to: <lit-hci-subscribe@smartgroups.com>
or on the web at: <http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/lit-hci>

From the lit-hci web you can also read the position papers for the first workshop on HCI and Literary Theory held as part of HCI2002 at South Bank, London in September 2002.

York Workshop Organisers: Peter Wright (University of York), Janet Finlay (Leeds Metropolitan University), Ann Light (University of Sussex and Usability News)

pages by Alan Dix and Hiraeth Mixed Media