Russian ACM SIGCHI Chapter

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Russian ACM SIGCHI Chapter

• Victor Andreev
• Vice Chair of RusCHI

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History of Russian local SIG (1)

• 1991-96 Annual East-West Conferences on
  Human-Computer Interaction (EWHCI), in
  particular, sponsored by the ACM
• Overall quality of presentations was very high
• Proceedings of EWHCI 93, 94 and 95 were
  published by Springer-Verlag in their Lecture
  Notes in Computer Science series
• 1993 MosCHI (later renamed Russia SIGCHI)
  chartered by ACM
• 1997-99 Complete collapse of the organized HCI
  community in Russia

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History of Russian local SIG (2)

• 1999-2004 Formation of the new community (has
  been formed around a web site www.usability.ru
  launched by a group of enthusiasts in 1999)
• 2001 The First Russian Workshop on Usability
  (Moscow)
• Now the community is preparing to organize the
  18th workshop in this series
• September, 2004 Russian SIG (RusCHI) was
  officially chartered by ACM

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RusCHI Members (1)

• 34 membership applications
• 18 persons have already paid their membership fee
• RusCHI membership fee is 30
• The proposed RusCHI budget for 2005 is 1000
• Main items of expenses
• New RusCHI website (www.sigchi.ru) design,
  development and maintenance
• SIGs logistics
• Workshops logistics

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RusCHI Members (2)
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Members profile

• The vast majority of RusCHI members works in the
  software industry
• Academy is underrepresented

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Russian Usability Workshops (1)

• The main activity of RusCHI is conducting regular
  workshops
• 17 thematical workshops and 2 organizational
  meetings were organized during 2001-2005
• Usually about 25 to 40 people from the European
  Russia participate in the workshops, with a
  constant core of participants of approx. 20
  persons

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Russian Usability Workshops (2)

• The usual place for the workshops isthe RTS
  Stock Exchange Meeting Room

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Russian Usability Workshops (3)

• Sample topics of presentations at the
  workshops
• In-house usability in Russia current state of
  the market and prospects
• Peculiarities of the usability work for a large
  Western company experiences from Borland
• Rewiew of the book The ethnographic interview
  by James Spradley
• Usability life cycle in Nokia
• Usability of alerts and alarms
• My experiences of working as a usability engineer
  in Germany

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Russian Usability Workshops (4)

• Some of RusCHI workshops were attended by foreign
  participants (Germany, Sweden and USA)
• Working language of 16th Usability Workshop
  (December 2004) was English
• There is an idea idea is to resurrect the
  East-West Conferences on HCI (EWHCI) that would
  serve as a forum for communication and
  collaboration of professionals from Eastern and
  Central Europe with their colleagues from the
  West

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Example RusCHI Educational Committee activity
plan for 2005
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Observable growth of interest to usability

• Growth of usability market in Russia (expert
  evaluation)
• 2003 45
• 2004 80
• Growth of jobs such as UI designer, user
  experience specialist etc.
• 2000 3-4 per year
• 2004 15-20 per year
• More publications in business media
• More HCI/usability books are being translated
  into Russian

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Books translated into Russian

• Mandel The Elements of User Interface Design,
  2001
• Nielsen Designing Web Usability, 2001
• Krug Don't Make Me Think, 2001
• Nielsen Tahir Homepage Usability, 2002
• Torres Rudd Practitioner's Handbook for UI
  Design and Development, 2002
• Raskin The Humane Interface, 2003
• Cooper About Face, 2004
• Rosenfeld Morville Information Architecture
  for the WWW, 2004
• Wodtke Information Architecture, 2004

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Main obstacles to usability development in Russia

• Relatively small number of trained professionals
• Absence of professional standards and
  certification
• Lack of understanding of the role and functions
  of usability specialists in the software industry
• Technological concerns to IT systems development
  still predominate
• Low salaries of many end users
• Low demand for the quality of UI from the
  customers (users do not complain)

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What assistance we expect from ACM SIGCHI

• Help in preparation of the curriculum for
  graduate education
• Lecturers (eg, within the TTG program)
• Help in the development of professional standards
  and certification, and methods of professional
  experience assessment
• Support of collection of the professional library
  (books and tutorials available to all members of
  RusCHI)
• Participation in international research projects
  (eg, in cross-cultural research)
• Support of the revival of EWHCI conferences

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ACM SIGCHI membership in Russia (1)

• A paradoxical situation
• Professional ACM membership for the members from
  economically developing countries is 43 (a
  discount of approx. 80)
• This includes full access to the Digital Library,
  discounts on conferences, and other benefits
• SIGCHI membership is 50
• This adds only one more or less useful thing to
  an ACM membership a printed copy of interactions
• As a result, we cannot explain people why they
  should become SIGCHI members (instead of or in
  addition to ACM membership)

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ACM SIGCHI membership in Russia (2)

• Our suggestion to SIGCHI
• To introduce a discounted membership for the
  members from developing countries 10 (the same
  discount of 80)
• A discounted membership would include only two
  really important things(1) access to
  SIGCHI-sponsored content in the Digital Library
  and (2) discounts on SIGCHI-sponsored conferences
• No printed interactions perhaps, no overseas
  physical mailings at all
• SIGCHI would be able to enroll new members from
  developing countries

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Thank you for your attention!

• For contacts
• Ivan Burmistrov, RusCHI Chair ivan_at_psychology.ru
  
• Victor Andreev, RusCHI Vice Chair
  vandreev_at_rtsnet.ru
• www.sigchi.ru