The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international HCI conference, CHI, with over 3,000 attendees, and publishes ACM Interactions and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). It also sponsors over 20 specialized conferences and provides in-cooperation support to over 30 conferences. SIGCHI has two membership publications, the ACM TechNews - SIGCHI Edition and ACM Interactions. Until 2000, the SIGCHI Bulletin was also published as a membership publication.

History

SIGCHI was formed in 1982 by renaming and refocusing the Special Interest Group on Social and Behavioral Computing (SIGSOC). Lorraine Borman, previously editor of the SIGSOC Bulletin, was its first chair. The formation of the ACM SIGCHI was first publicly announced in 1982 during the Human Factors in Computer Systems conference in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US, organized by Bill Curtis and Ben Shneiderman. The inaugural CHI conference was hosted the year after, in 1983. In 1988, the UIST and CSCW conferences were added.

Awards

Each year SIGCHI inducts around 7 or 8 people into the CHI Academy, honouring them for their significant contribution to the field of human–computer interaction. It also gives out a CHI Lifetime Achievement Award for research and practice, the CHI Lifetime Service Award, and the CHI Social Impact Award. Since 2018, SIGCHI also awards the Outstanding Dissertation Award to recognize excellent thesis by Ph.D. recipients in HCI.

SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award

SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award

SIGCHI Social Impact Award

SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award

SIGCHI Executive Committee

SIGCHI is governed by a set of by-laws and SIGCHI’s Elected Officers are the President, the Executive Vice-President, the Vice-President for Membership and Communications, the Vice-President for Finance, and two Vice-Presidents at large. The Executive Committee (EC) also includes editors of membership publications and appointed officers including the Vice-President for Publications, the Vice-President for Conferences, the Vice-President for Chapters, the Vice-President for Operations, and the immediate past Chair.

2009–2012

President: Gerrit van der Veer

2012–2015

President: Gerrit van der Veer

2015–2018

From July 2015 to July 2018, the SIGCHI President was Loren Terveen of GroupLens Research at the University of Minnesota and the Vice President was Helena Mentis of University of Maryland Baltimore County

2018–2021

From July 2018 to July 2021, the SIGCHI President was Helena Mentis of University of Maryland Baltimore County with Vice President Cliff Lampe of University of Michigan.

2021–2024

The current SIGCHI President is Neha Kumar with Vice President Shaowen Bardzell. The President and VP run as a team and were elected to the positions for a three-year term.

Sponsored Conferences

Apart from CHI, SIGCHI sponsors or co-sponsors over 20 specialized conferences in topics related to HCI.

Grants

SIGCHI provides resources for the community to expand, grow and communicate in the form of Grants.