In a booming field with its origins in academia, why do Human Computer Interaction (HCI, UX) practitioners and academics not engage? @gilescolborne's talk from CHI 2019 tries to answer that question, discusses why previous attempts have failed, and shows how we can learn from other people's successes.

1. Bridging the relevance gap
@gilescolborne

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9 million
@gilescolborne

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10 million
@gilescolborne

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12 million
@gilescolborne

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Academia Practice

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Rigour?

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Relevance?

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The future is already here.
It’s just not evenly distributed.
William Gibson

11. @gilescolborne@gilescolborne
We found few potential translators, and none from a primarily academic perspective.

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When someone says they have
a problem, that doesn’t mean
they want you to fix it.

14. @gilescolborne
Academia Practice
Status within academia
Audience: other researchers
Seek open sharing
Research = primary activity
Well defined answers
Empirical
Status within corporations
Audience: non-practitioners
Seek strategic advantage
Little time for research
Good enough answers
Pragmatic

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Do we want change?

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Academia Practice

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Academia Practice

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What goal do we share?

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Academia Practice

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A common goal: improving access to higher education
A compelling reason to work together: impact
A new space: not within academia or practice
Embracing vulnerability: a willingness to admit ignorance

23. @gilescolborne
A common goal: improving access to higher education
A compelling reason to work together: impact
A new space: not within academia or practice
Embracing vulnerability: a willingness to admit ignorance

24. @gilescolborne
A common goal: improving access to higher education
A compelling reason to work together: impact
A new space: not within academia or practice
Embracing vulnerability: a willingness to admit ignorance

25. @gilescolborne
A common goal: improving access to higher education
A compelling reason to work together: impact
A new space: not within academia or practice
Embracing vulnerability: a willingness to admit ignorance

26. @gilescolborne
My take home:
You can open up spaces for new kinds of learning and
sharing without needing to change whole systems.
This isn’t about changing structures,
it’s about ways of being, mindset.
It isn’t about who’s right, it’s about how we can learn
together.
I take this with me. Always.
Rae Tooth, CEO, Villiers Park

27. @gilescolborne
How could we create a shared space for academics and practitioners
to work together?
• What important goals do we share?
• What value are we looking for?
• How do we create a shared space and embrace vulnerability?
• What do we have to let go of?
• What’s the simplest way we can make this happen?
How do we move from prototyping this, to delivering it at scale?
• What can we learn from familiar models?
Discover-Alpha-Beta-Live
Kotter’s Change Model

28. Thank you!
@gilescolborne

29. @gilescolborne@gilescolborne
If you’re interested in supporting disadvantaged
students to access higher education here’s where you
should send your cash:

30. @gilescolborne@gilescolborne
Kotter’s 8 step change model
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1
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From the very early days of this work
http://instone.org/uxrpi-update
The CFP for the CHI 2010 workshop
http://luminanze.com/blog/conferences/cfp-chi-2010-workshop-on-researcher-practitioner-interaction/
Don Norman’s thoughts at about the same time
http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/july-august-2010/the-research-practice-gap1
Five years old but a good analysis of the situation then
http://instone.org/uxrpi-blogtopic
CFP for a CHI 2013 SIG
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/354136/1/354136.pdf
More recent
https://www.slideshare.net/instone/instone-uxrpi-decipher-summary
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszsr/files/hci-ux-symposium-report.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317487141_In_Search_of_UX_Translators_Analyzing_Researcher-
Practitioner_Interactions_on_Twitter
https://faculty.washington.edu/garyhs/docs/colusso_dis2017_researchpractice.pdf
How academics and practitioners successfully integrated in another field
https://novaojs.newcastle.edu.au/ceehe/index.php/iswp/issue/view/9