CHI 2010: HCI At The End of Life (10 – 15 April 2010)

Opa! My weird obsession with going to the CHI conference is finally being realised. I’m going to be presenting the work done so far and the concepts and issues with the Spomenik project with Dave Kirk of the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University.
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mikem/hcieol/

The ways in which people use technology in practices concerning mortality, dying, and death are areas of HCI research which have historically received little attention. This lack of scholarly research is precipitated by both practical and theoretical problems emerging in the HCI community and computer use at large. For example, families have begun to grapple with issues of how to distribute digital assets upon the death of a loved one, leading to “digital wills.”

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This workshop, which intends to break new ground by bringing together, for the first time, researchers and practitioners interested in the interfaces between end-of-life practices and technology. Because these issues cut across the entire span of work in human-computer interaction, practitioners and researchers in all areas of HCI can benefit from considering these issues in this forum.