computer science

SIGCHI

SIGCHI is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand SIGCHI rather than just read about it. In short: 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).

Key takeaways

SIGCHI belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect SIGCHI to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of SIGCHI from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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. In the year after, 1983, SIGCHI and the Computing Systems Group of the Human Factors Society co-sponsored the inaugural Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Boston. In 1988, the UIST and CSCW conferences were added.

Publications Apart from conference proceedings, SIGCHI publishes a number of periodicals.

SIGCHI Bulletin ACM Interactions ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

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 1998 - Douglas C. Engelbart (award called the SIGCHI Special Recognition Award in 1998) 2000 - Stuart K. Card 2001 - Ben Shneiderman 2002 - Donald A. Norman 2003 - John M. Carroll 2004 - Tom Moran 2005 - Tom Landauer 2006 - Judith S. Olson and Gary M. Olson 2007 - James D. Foley 2008 - Bill Buxton 2009 - Sara Kiesler 2010 Practice: Karen Holtzblatt Research: Lucy Suchman 2011 Practice: Larry Tesler Research: Terry Winograd 2012 Practice: Joy Mountford Research: Dan R. Olsen, Jr. 2013 Practice: Jakob Nielsen Research: George G. Robertson 2014 Practice: Gillian Crampton Smith Research: Steve Whittaker Special Recognition: Ted Nelson 2015 Practice: Susan M. Dray Research: James D. Hollan 2016 Practice: Jeff A. Johnson Research: Robert E. Kraut 2017 Practice: Ernest Edmonds Research: Brad A. Myers 2018 Practice: Arnold M. Lund Research: Steven K. Feiner 2019 Practice: Daniel Rosenberg Research: Hiroshi Ishii 2020 Practice: David Canfield Smith Research: Susan T. Dumais 2021 Practice: John T. Richards Research: Scott Hudson 2022 Practice: Steven Pemberton Research: Yvonne Rogers 2023 Practice: Deborah J. Mayhew Research: Gregory Abowd 2024 Practice: Elizabeth Churchill Research: Susanne Bødker, Jodi Forlizzi, James Landay, Wendy Mackay 2025 Research: Paul Dourish, Pattie Maes 2026 Research: Lorrie Faith Cranor, Joseph A. Konstan

SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award 2001 - Austin Henderson 2002 - Dan R. Olsen, Jr. 2003 - Lorraine Borman 2004 - Robin Jeffries and Gene Lynch 2005 - Gary Perlman, Marilyn Mantei Tremaine, Sara Bly, Don J. Patterson, and John Morris 2006 - Susan M. Dray 2007 - Richard I. Anderson 2008 - John Karat and Marian Williams 2009 - Clare-Marie Karat and Steven Pemberton 2010 - Mary Czerwinski 2011 - Arnie Lund and Jim Miller 2012 - Michael Atwood and Kevin Schofield 2013 - Joseph A. Konstan 2014 - Wendy Mackay and Tom Hewett 2015 - Michel Beaudouin-Lafon and Jean Scholtz 2016 - Gary M. Olson and Gerrit van der Veer 2017 - Scott E. Hudson and Zhengjie Liu 2018 - Maria Francesca Constabile and John C. Thomas 2019 - Bill Hefley 2020 - Gilbert Cockton and Catherine Plaisant 2021 - Wendy Kellogg and Philippe Palanque 2022 - Geraldine Fitzpatrick 2023 - Elizabeth Churchill and Loren Terveen 2024 - None 2025 - Kristina Höök, Yoshifumi Kitamura, and Aaron Quigley 2026 - Cliff Lampe, Helena Mentis

SIGCHI Social Impact Award 2005 - Gregg Vanderheiden 2006 - Ted Henter 2007 - Gregory Abowd and Gary Marsden 2008 - Vicki Hanson 2009 - Helen Petrie 2010 - Ben Bederson and Allison Druin 2011 - Allen Newell and Clayton Lewis 2012 - Batya Friedman 2013 - Sara J. Czaja 2014 - Richard E. Ladner 2015 - Leysia Palen 2016 - Jonathan Lazar 2017 - Jacob O. Wobbrock and Indrani Medhi Thies 2018 - Lorrie Faith Cranor 2019 - Gillian Hayes 2020 - Ronald M. Baecker and Bonnie Nardi 2021 - Maria Cecília Calani Baranauskas, Andy Dearden and Juan Gilbert 2022 - Liz Gerber, Jennifer Mankoff and Aaditeshwar Seth 2023 - Shaowen Bardzell, Munmun de Choudhury and Nicola Dell 2024 - Jan Gulliksen, Amy Ogan, Kate Starbird 2025 - Tiago Guerreiro, Alexis Hiniker, Kentaro Toyama 2026 - Jon E. Froehlich, Jacki O’Neill, Volker Wulf

SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award 2018 - Stefanie Mueller and Blase Ur 2019 - Chris Elsden, Anna Maria Feit and Robert Xiao 2020 - Katta Spiel and Paul Strohmeier 2021 - Josh Andres, Arunesh Mathur and Qian Yang 2022 - Aakash Gautam, Fred Hohman and Anna Lisa Martin-Niedecken 2023 - Megan Hofmann, Dhruv Jain, Kai Lukoff 2024 - Karan Ahuja, Azra Ismail, Courtney N. Reed, Nicholas Vincent, Yixin Zou 2025 - Leona Holloway, Katerina Stepanova, Anupriya Tuli, Zijie Jay Wang, Nur Yildirim 2026 - Humphrey Curtis, Martin Feick, Eunkyung Jo, Sukran Karaosmanoglu, Ben Zhang

SIGCHI Special Recognitions 2025 - Gregory Abowd, Cecilia Aragon, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Mark Colley, Gustavo Lopez, Jasmine Lu, Jooyoung Park, Nadya Peek, Anicia Peters, Christian Sturm, the Google/academia Android XR interaction team 2026 - AVELA, Sonya S. Kwak, Shaimaa Lazem, Maristella Matera, Brenna Schaffner, Phoebe Toups Dugas

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with SIGCHI

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what SIGCHI claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to SIGCHI before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about SIGCHI ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of SIGCHI

In research: SIGCHI appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses SIGCHI in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: SIGCHI is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Groups, Human–computer interaction, Organizations established in 1982, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for SIGCHI outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study SIGCHI in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what SIGCHI means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain SIGCHI out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is SIGCHI in simple terms?

Why does SIGCHI matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study SIGCHI?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on SIGCHI.