Interactions

Authors:
Pedro Santana-Mancilla, Luis Castro, Monica Tentori, Mario Moreno Rocha, Marcela Rodríguez, Tuomo Kujala

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The human-computer interaction (HCI) research community in Mexico started in the mid-1990s, when university curricula in computer science and informatics began offering courses that taught HCI concepts. In 1999, several HCI researchers created the local ACM SIGCHI chapter, CHI-Mexico. Over the past 18 years, the HCI community has grown steadily and since 2006 has held a biennial conference. This conference, the Mexican Conference on HCI (MexIHC), is the premier HCI forum in Mexico. Gathering researchers, students, and practitioners from Mexico and abroad, it is CHI-Mexico's flagship event. Since its creation, CHI-Mexico has been promoting HCI and exploring approaches to HCI research and professional practice grounded in Mexican context and culture. Here, we reflect on our experiences organizing MexIHC and provide an overview of how the MexIHC conference has evolved over the years.

In 2006, the first MexIHC was organized in Puebla. Despite this being the inaugural conference, we received a good set of submissions, two of them from abroad. In 2008, MexIHC was organized in collaboration with the Mexican International Conference on Computer Science (ENC), which allowed us to publish our papers in proceedings edited by the IEEE Computer Society. For MexIHC 2010, a few of the top-quality submissions were published in the ACM Digital Library, and the conference began to be held in cooperation with ACM. In 2012, MexIHC was jointly organized with the Interactión conference organized by AIPO, the HCI association in Spain. For MexIHC 2014, we had an excellent program selected by an international technical program committee. The same year, Mexican researchers working in institutions abroad partnered with colleagues based in Mexico to coordinate some of the leading roles of the conference, which strengthened connections.

Last year, MexIHC celebrated its 10th anniversary. MexIHC 2016 took place in Colima, with 160 participants from Mexico and abroad. In addition, the Graduate Consortium and the Student Design Competition were funded by ACM SIGCHI with the goal of partially covering the costs of travel and accommodations, conference registration, and meals. Needless to say, this support has been instrumental in promoting student participation in the conference.

Over the past 10 years, MexIHC has helped to grow the Mexican HCI community. The generous support of SIGCHI has made this possible, enabling us to invite renowned speakers, as well as helping us to increase student participation. We are aware that our community is still consolidating and are working toward improving the quality of the submissions and the overall conference program. Going forward, we would like to have more participation at an international level to increase collaboration opportunities between Mexican researchers and international scholars. Toward this goal, the CHI-Mexico chapter has begun collaborating with the ACM SIGCHI Latin America HCI Community (LAIHC) to increase the participation of researchers working in Latin America. This collaboration can be key in improving communication between researchers and practitioners to publicize the high-quality HCI research in Latin America, which may provide different—and perhaps challenging—points of view from a developing region with very special HCI contexts.

  Authors

Pedro C. Santana-Mancilla is affiliated with the School of Telematics at the University of Colima, Mexico. He serves as chair of the SIGCHI Latin American HCI Community and on the board of the Mexican Association on Human-Computer Interaction. He has served as an officer of the Mexican SIGCHI Chapter for several years. [email protected]

Luis A. Castro holds a Ph.D. in informatics from the University of Manchester, U.K. He is affiliated with the Department of Computing and Design at the Sonora Institute of Technology (ITSON), Mexico. He currently serves as the president of the Mexican Association on Human-Computer Interaction (AMexIHC). [email protected]

Monica Tentori investigates the human experience of ubiquitous computing through the development and evaluation of prototypes for healthcare and urban living. She was the first Latin American woman and first Mexican to be awarded a prestigious Microsoft Fellowship. She is an active member of multiple academic associations. [email protected]

Mario A. Moreno Rocha is a professor and researcher in HCI and the leader of UsaLab in the Institute of Computing at the Universidad Tecnológica de la Mixteca in Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca, Mexico. He has experience in the development of usability studies, contextual studies, and cross-cultural usability. [email protected]

Marcela D. Rodríguez is a professor and researcher in usability studies in ambient assisted living in the Faculty of Engineering at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC), Mexico. She has served as the president of the Mexican Society of Computer Science (SMCC). [email protected]

Tuomo Kujala is ACM SIGCHI vice president for local chapters. [email protected]

 

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