Ben Shneiderman receives CHI Lifetime Achievement Award at CHI2001 Conference


The CHI Lifetime Achievement Award is for: Cumulative contributions to the field, Influence on the work of others, Development of new research directions


For Immediate Release (revised) February 16, 2001
Ben Shneiderman to be honored at CHI 2001

Ben Shneiderman, Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Laboratory has been selected to receive the prestigious CHI Lifetime Achievement for his commitment to the HCI field of study. The award will be presented to Shneiderman during the CHI 2001 conference to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA from 31 March through 5 April 2001.

For over 25 years Ben Shneiderman has promoted human-computer interaction by writing, lecturing and researching about HCI. His landmark book, Software Psychology, made the world aware of the human aspects of computing while his internationally-acclaimed book, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, significantly shaped the HCI field for graduates, researchers, and practitioners all over the world. His widely-cited 1983 paper described the nuances of direct manipulation. He soon applied these concepts to mouseable text links, called embedded menus, which are now commonly known as hot links on the World Wide Web.

This is the second year that the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award has been presented. According to Marilyn Tremaine, Executive Chair of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), "The award was established to honor those who have made a major contribution to the field of human-computer interaction. Ben's pioneering work is key to our mission to integrate human concerns in order to accelerate technological advancement."

During the CHI conference Shneiderman and Dr. Catherine Plaisant will conduct a full-day tutorial called "Information Visualization", which emphasizes visualization concepts and current research results, and their application to interface design. The CHI conference is held annually and is sponsored by the special interest group in the field of computer-human interaction (SIGCHI). The conference theme -- anyone. anywhere. -- reflects the growing and universal influence of technology on our lives and the concept that technology should be accessible to everyone, everywhere. The six-day event features 32 tutorials sessions, 15 workshops, a two-day state of the science exchange on the accessibility of technology for those with disabilities, a design expo, and three full days of technical sessions. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, will be the keynote speaker on Tuesday, April 3. CHI 2001 sponsors include Microsoft, Motorola, Siebel eBusiness, Sun Microsystems, UNISYS, WebCriteria, Yahoo!, AT&T, Cisco Systems, FXPAL, HP Invent, IBM, Lucent Technologies, MONKEYmedia, Nokia, Noldus, ORACLE, Sapient, and User Interface Engineering.

For more information go to www.acm.org/chi2001
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Ben Shneiderman's thank you speech at the close of the CHI2001 conference April 5, 2001:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I'm grateful for the recognition you have given me today. It is an honor and a pleasure to accept this award -- and it makes me reflect with satisfaction on the 18 years of SIGCHI history and conferences. I think of how many people have been part of and contributed to SIGCHI's success. Last year Stu Card received this award and today others on the stage are also rightfully honored for their roles and creative contributions.

Hilary Clinton wrote a book called It Takes a Village, to describe the extensive community that is needed to raise a child. If I were writing a book about what it took to create our new discipline of human-computer interaction I might use the title "It Takes a Listserv"... because the rich interaction with academic colleagues, students, industrial researchers, and other professionals by electronic means and in person is what it took to create our new discipline.

In addition to the many SIGCHI connections, my close colleagues at the University of Maryland have included Kent Norman in Psychology, Gary Marchionini in Information science, my research partner for 14 years Catherine Plaisant... also my dear buddy Charles Kreitzberg of Cognetics Corporation, and Jenny Preece who has become a wonderful intellectual partner and emotional supporter - a special hug goes to her. In the past 3 years our Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland has been energized by Allison Druin and Ben Bederson, for whom we all wish a happy outcome in his thus far successful fight against cancer.

I am especially appreciative of my PhD students starting with Andrew Sears whose leadership of this conference with Julie Jacko has made it not only the biggest but also one of the best. Other doctoral students included Brian Johnson, David Carr, Eser Kandogan, Richard Potter, Chris North, and Egemen Tanin. Then there were the many grad and undergrad students who have been collaborators. I ask them to please stand and be acknowledged.

As I reviewed my resume in preparation I found that only about a third of my 300 books, papers, articles, and videos were written by me alone... the others emerged from collaborations with 165 people who should share in this honor.

...and there is enough honor to go around...during these past twenty years, the SIGCHI community has provided a rich environment for forming the new discipline of HCI and new profession of usability engineering. The world has admired and applied our products... we are a growing part of the culture, from the web's hot links to the iMAC colors to Hollywood's interpretation of You've got mail.

We have lots to be proud of...BUT there's lots of work to do. Many of you continue to struggle in your universities and organizations as you seek to promote greater attention to the users and their needs. We need each other to provide a rigorous intellectual foundation and an emotional support system for these struggles....this is what SIGCHI does best - this conference offers more new ideas and more hugs per hour than any other professional event I attend.

But now we have to also go beyond our circle of colleagues and engage researchers in related disciplines and workers in other professions to broaden awareness of the importance of the users and their experiences. The old computing is about what computers can do; the new computing is about what people can do. We have to fight for the users and raise the quality of user experiences so that doctors, teachers, and students, can be more successful more of the time. But we also have to think about job seekers finding work, the single parents looking for community services, and the patients who need healthcare information and emotional support.

Our profession will be best remembered for speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves. The theme of this conference is "Anyone Anywhere," and that is a big step towards a firm commitment to universal usability. This term was the title of a new SIGCHI conference that we held last November. The 250 attendees shared a passion for design strategies that enable disabled, elderly, children, minority, low education, low income, and users from diverse cultures to find services that are useful and usable.

So I close by encouraging you to reach out to people around you to find collaborators and build a better world - to empower users to be more creative, decision makers to be wiser, doctors to be more effective, and teachers to be more inspiring. I hope you'll have the satisfaction of helping to make the world a little safer, a little more peaceful, and a little more joyous.