2021, Linxen, Sebastian, Sturm, Christian, Brühlmann, Florian, Cassau, Vincent, Opwis, Klaus, Reinecke, Katharina

Computer technology is often designed in technology hubs in Western countries, invariably making it “WEIRD”, because it is based on the intuition, knowledge, and values of people who are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Developing technology that is universally useful and engaging requires knowledge about members of WEIRD and non-WEIRD societies alike. In other words, it requires us, the CHI community, to generate this knowledge by studying representative participant samples. To fnd out to what extent CHI participant samples are from Western societies, we analyzed papers published in the CHI proceedings between 2016-2020. Our fndings show that 73% of CHI study fndings are based on Western participant samples, representing less than 12% of the world’s population. Furthermore, we show that most participant samples at CHI tend to come from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries with generally highly educated populations. Encouragingly, recent years have seen a slight increase in non-Western samples and those that include several countries. We discuss suggestions for further broadening the international representation of CHI participant samples.

2015, Sturm, Christian, Oh, Alice, Linxen, Sebastian, Abdelnour Nocera, Jose, Dray, Susan, Reinecke, Katharina

A large majority of articles published at prominent HCI venues such as CHI and CSCW reports on studies with WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) participants, ignoring that the results might not apply to other subject populations. This workshop aims to have the following two main outcomes: (1) A list of major principles that HCI researchers often build on and that are unlikely to apply to users in other countries and cultures. (2) An action plan that describes how we can extend these previous findings, such as by collaborating across countries and cultures, conducting large-scale online experiments, or creating a culture of replications and extensions with more diverse subject populations. Furthermore, the workshop aims to establish an interest group with the goal to improve the external validity of HCI research and to inform the design of further research studies in this area.