Interaction Design, 6th Edition

Epilogue

The first edition of our textbook came out more than 20 years ago in 2002. Glancing through the covers makes us realize just how much interaction design and human-computer interaction have changed—the number of topics covered and the many approaches, methods, and techniques now used has grown enormously. The amount of research that has been conducted has also expanded exponentially. When writing the first edition, it was possible to read all the papers published in the proceedings of the ACM's CHI conference—which was printed as a physical book. When writing the 6^th edition, the proceedings from 2022 had just come out but were available only in digital form, comprising a massive 637 papers. While we read quite a few of these to keep abreast of recent developments and trends, we certainly did not manage to read them all!

So, what does the future hold for ID and HCI? A good place to get a feel is to look at the ACM CHI Student Design brief, intended for students from all over the world to demonstrate their skills in interaction design and user experience. In 2023 the challenge set was to “contribute to one (or several) of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified by the United Nations” (see chi2023.acm.org/for-authors/student-design-competition). These include global societal problems, such as no poverty, zero hunger, climate action, and affordable and clean energy. That is broad! Where does a student begin? What can they hope to achieve? For example, how ...