Panel: Institutionalizing HCI – What Do I-Schools Offer?
This panel was a discussion of the trend towards the formation of “I-Schools”: schools of Information, Informatics, Information Science, or some similar derivative of the “I” word, and the issues that this trend raises for the CHI community as a whole. As HCI matures and becomes more institutionalized, we need to consider what sort of institution we want to be, and this panel was about exploring that question. The panelists were representatives of I-Schools from around the world – John Carroll (Pennsylvania State, US), Paul Dourish (University of California – Irvine, US), Batya Friedman (University of Washington, US), Masaaki Kurosu (Soken-dai, Japan), Gary Olson (University of Michigan, US), and Alistair Sutcliffe (University of Manchester, UK).
The main ideas that the panelists raised were that:
- I-schools explicitly focus on the intersection of information, people, and technology, which leads to a more central role for HCI than is usually the case in schools of Computer Science or Engineering.
- I-schools are interdisciplinary in nature, which:
- provides a supportive and rich work environment within the school itself
- encourages faculty and students to take a broad perspective — asking a wide range of questions, drawing on a wide range of theories, and reaching out to other areas of the university in order to deepen their work.
- As independent units within the university, I-schools have a high level of autonomy, which gives HCI an institutional clout that it usually does not have when it is a less central component of a larger school.
- I-Schools raise questions regarding the evolution of the relationship between HCI and CS, and not all of these questions are easy or pleasant.
These ideas combined to make the general point that I-Schools present both opportunities and challenges to the HCI community, and the decisions that are made regarding the institutionalization of these programs will likely affect us all.
Is the additional institutional clout that a separate school offers worth the creation of an additional administrative entity? Or are we just muddying the waters? Should we focus on strengthening the presence of HCI within existing programs, rather than creating another group of people to add to a mix that is already sometimes overwhelming? What are the real benefits of starting from scratch?
The general consensus of the panel was that a separate school with an interdisciplinary focus is worth the work because it provides a unique environment wherein the gaps between disciplines are more likely to be bridged, and bigger, boundary-pushing questions are more likely to be asked. This environment seems a natural home for HCI, and, if we keep our wits about us, it could help us guard against the splintering of the discipline into many weakly connected chunks by offering a central gathering place that encourages us to strengthen our connections from within.
I sat next to Marty and Erik during this panel (the Associate Executive Dean of our school (of Informatics), and the Director of our HCI program, respectively), which was a fun touch. They didn’t say that much, apart from Marty reading over my shoulder and joking with me about my desktop background, a bit of whispering and fingercounting when one panelist dropped “Indiana, for example, has three faculty members with culminating degrees in design” (“well…” [count, whisper, count, count] “sort of” they ended up agreeing), and Marty poking me to point out Ben Schneiderman during the Q&A. Their strongest reaction to the panel itself came when the Japanese professor – Maasaki Kurosu – was up, and they weren’t the only ones.
While I stand by my “general consensus” summary above, Kurosu was singing a slightly different tune. The main thrust of his schpiel was that Informatics (yes, he used that word!) and HCI are such fundamental skillsets in the new economy that he thinks that a basic knowledge of what they entail should be incorporated into the general curriculum for all students. I don’t think that this idea, in some form, really struck anyone as bad or contentious, but his presentation consisted of what were basically syllabus proposals, complete with course breakdowns and hour requirements, and, for me at least, it came off as a little bit off topic. The question of how to raise information literacy amongst the general student body is a good one, but it’s not the same as the question of how to best institutionalize HCI, and it doesn’t speak much to the role that I-Schools may or may not play in that process. I felt a little bad, because in some ways it seemed like it was a language barrier issue, but then I felt bad for thinking that, which is the problem with these “to PC or not to PC” conversations in our brains. Regardless, every time he spoke he just plugged away at the same few points — The place of informatics is to instill a certain amount of technological literacy in society, and the best way to do this is to educate everyone, not hole away in a separate school.
So in a strict sense, I guess it’s accurate to say that he was anti the whole I-School business, but I don’t feel like that is quite fair, because it really seemed like he defined the whole I-School concept very differently from everyone else on the panel. He seemed to view the question as one of technical skill, and the others viewed it as one of interdisciplinary cooperation. So they were basically talking past each other. I think that this is why Marty and Erik kind of shrugged their shoulders every time he talked, and the larger conversation kind of just went on around his comments, with the panel equivalents of polite nods after each point that he made.
So anyway, the larger conversation was pretty much what I summarized above, but the individual panelists made some noteworthy points:
Paul Dourish presented a “fish-scale” model of institutionalization (adapted from Campbell[1]), which basically says that the ideal distribution of disciplines in the knowledge space is like the scales on a fish – slightly overlapping so as to reduce the size of the gaps between each scale, but not fully overlapping, which allows for greater coverage. The reality, however, is usually much different. Disciplines clump together by rewarding work that is similar to work that is already being done, resulting in tight clusters that pile atop one another with a lot of space between other similar clusters.
He presented this model because he thinks that it is important that we don’t just think “iSchool” and “not iSchool” but that we consider the trajectories that different models of institutionalization are setting us on. What I took from this is the idea that intentional interdisciplinarity could be a good path to fish scaling, and that iSchools (that was how he wrote the word on his slide. everyone did it a little differently, which was interesting) could be a good way of institutionalizing interdisciplinarity, which would make our field stronger. But we can’t just take it for granted that separate school = stronger interdisciplinary ties. The main thing we should worry about is finding environments that support those ties.
Which is a good point.
The fact that I got to listen to his lovely Scottish accent for a while as he made it was just gravy.
:)
Batya Friedman was the one who had the most direct praise for the I-School as a place that has a unique ability to foster this golden child of interdisciplinary perspective and good dialogue, though she also said that the experience at Washington might be unique because the school itself is pretty open and collaborative.
Alastair Sutcliffe was the one who did the most direct talking about reconciling HCI and design, saying that HCI offers a place for the growth of a new discipline of theory-led design, and I-Schools can provide a good environment for this work. He talked about the concepts of ‘design in the small’ – basically specific product design, and ‘design in the wide’ – the larger sociological impacts of what we choose to create, and said that it is up to I-Schools to look at both sides of the picture. He said that a current problem with I-Schools is that they see information as the basis of the discipline, rather than design.
Erik wants to hire him. :)
I’m going on too long here, so I’ll wrap up. The elephant in the room at this panel was definitely the question of the changing relationship between I-Schools and CS. Everyone seemed to agree that it would be tragic if HCI lost its connection with the CS community as a result of the I-School movement, and not just because it is one of the disciplines that we want to capture with the interdisciplinary perspective. There was a recognition of the fact that HCI and CS need to work hand in hand to design and develop new technologies, but there was some debate over the best way for that to play out, and some not-always-latent tension at the thought of actually politicking it out (“I agree that it would be terrible if we grew apart, but they’re the ones who disowned software engineering! The one good thing that their discipline produced!!!” my oh, my… )
The general attitude is that HCI is coming into its own and can’t just live under the wing of CS anymore, but this raises some hard questions:
- How much technical knowledge should HCI aim to cultivate among it’s own?
- Will removing HCI from CS actually make it easier for CS to not think about the human side and become a narrower, more abstract discipline?
- How do we deal with different political situations at different universities – where CS is already its own school, or a part of engineering, and it would create divisions and confusion to have Two I-related schools. How do we make the case for independence and interdisciplinarity without making it seem like we are trying to take over the world?
A lot to do, there is.
On with the show.
[1] Campbell D. T. (1969), “Ethnocentrism of Disciplines and the Fish Scale Model of Omniscience”, in: M. Sherif and C.W. Sherif (eds.), InterdisciplinaryRelationships in the Social Sciences, Chicago: Aldine, 328-348.