Technical Programme Statistics
The technical programme included four excellent keynote speakers:
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In a presentation titled ‘Designing Hybrid Input Paradigms’, Prof Abigail Sellen, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge UK and Co-manager of Socio-Digital Systems, discussed recent adventures in trying to design and implement hybrid forms of input, layering new forms of input on top of existing systems and practices, and highlighted the challenges and the opportunities for future input paradigms.
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Dr Susan Dray, the founder of Dray & Associates, in her presentation addressed the topic ‘What Africa can teach the rest of the world (and what it can learn)’, levering her exhaustive international experience in user studies and designing products and services.
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Prof Yvonne Rogers, Director of the Interaction Centre and a Professor of Interaction Design at the University College of London, in a presentation titled ‘Mindful or Mindless Technology?’, argued for a radical rethink of our relationship with future digital technologies, one that inspires us, through shared devices, tools and data, to be more creative, playful and thoughtful of each other and our surrounding environments.
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In an inspiring closing address, Prof Johannes Cronje, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, talked about the collaboration between people and people and things, and the role of designers, researchers and educators play in designing for the future, including the ‘how to’.
A further 270 peer-reviewed contributions (full and short research papers, industrial programme papers, interactive posters, panels, SIG, tutorials, workshops, and the doctoral and masters consortiums) completed the technical programme. To ensure the high quality of the INTERACT Conference papers, all submissions were reviewed by members of an International Programme Committee of almost 700. The acceptance rate for the full and short research papers was 31% and 45% respectively.
Attendance Statistics
INTERACT 2013 was attended by participants from 37 countries, from all continents. A total number of 356 people attended the different events over the 5-day Conference week.
For the first time in the history of INTERACT, we had a substantial number of participants (59) from Africa. This clearly demonstrates the value of taking a conference of the stature of INTERACT to different parts of the world, including developing countries. We again provided support for 29 students from around the world to attend INTERACT 2013 through the student volunteer programme. The graph below provide the number of attendees by country.
