To me, HCI is an art world - a system that produces creative work through the collective activities of a vast, interdependent, distributed community. To be an hci practitioner, and to do “hci work” is similar to wanting to be a Surrealist painter, where it’s helpful to look at Magritte and Dalí’s work— or becoming a hyperpop musician — where it helps to listen to Charli XCX and dance at a 100 gecs concert. HCI is about making stuff, for sure, but it’s more about creating stuff in context with a particular community.
Even moreso than other “academic research” fields, HCI is vast and diverse –– if you think anything can be an HCI project, you might be correct— and it’s really easy to get lost. It’s also a huge community; >5000 people attended CHI 2025, and yet it didn’t even come close to representing the entire HCI community. If you’re as socially anxious as I, this may be intimidatingly overwhelming. This community is full of many cool people (artists, sociologists, computer scientists, anthropologists, developers, ethnographers) who tend to form smaller subcommunities and peer-groups around more niche and specialized interests — and they all tend to do very different kinds of work. Some of this work may be very useful and inspiring to you, and some of this work may be cool but not very useful to you at all, and some of this work may repel you or make you feel upset that it even exists in the way it does. (lol)
Knowing the names of the people you can look to, and knowing what work they’ve done that inspires you [or repels you], is a really great way (in my opinion, perhaps the only way?) to navigate the space — they become like beacons that can guide you on your way — drawing you in when you want to pursue similar stuff, or pushing you away because you know their interests or vibes are just not for you, for whatever reason.
These are inspirational and helpful beacons for my work. I will not be sharing a list of work I dislike but I will tell you about it if you ask lol
Some of the items on this list are HCI researchers and research projects, and some are artists and art projects, and some are both!
If you find someone (on this list, or beyond) whose work really inspires you, your first job is to engage and understand their work. Your next job is to go have a conversation with them, and the people (e.g. students, peers) around them.
The best way to have good and productive conversations with researchers (or anyone you want to learn from) is to...
1. spend time trying to understand their background, engaging with their work (if they've written stuff, read it! if they've made videos, watch them! etc.)
figure out who is doing the kind of work/art/research that you might also be interested in, and what "parts" you are interested in (does their work make you feel inspired, or intellectually curious, or intrigued? do you think their job sounds cool? do you think the job they had in 2009 sounds cooler?)
from that, figure out what kinds of questions you should ask them so they can best help you do what you want to do in the future! For example...
These are all viable questions that could take the conversation in wildly different directions depending on who/what you ask. so knowing what kind of questions/answers you're specifically interested in can be extremely helpful!)