Case Studies: Call for Participation

A schedule of all due dates can be found on the Submissions page.

Quick Facts

• Submission Deadline: 7 October 2011 (5:00pm PDT) using the PCS Submission System. Case studies do not need to be anonymized.
• Notification: 30 November 2011
• Camera-Ready Deadline: 20 January 2012
• Submission Format: Case Studies can be submitted as either Long Case Studies (16 pages maximum) or Short Case Studies (4 pages maximum) in Extended Abstract Format. Supplementary materials that authors deem appropriate may also be submitted.
• Selection process: Juried
• At the Conference: Accepted Case Studies will be presented at the conference. Long Case Studies have a 20-minte slot (including questions, stop after 17 minutes) and short Case Studies have a 10-minute slot (including questions, stop after 8 minutes). The Award for Best Case Study and honorary mentions will be announced.
• Archives: Extended Abstracts; DVD and ACM Digital Library.

Best Case Study Award

The SIGCHI “Best of CHI” awards honor exceptional submissions to SIGCHI sponsored conferences. The CHI Case Study committees nominate submissions for the Best Case Study Award. A separate Case Study Awards Committee then selects one of the nominees as the Best Case Study and a small number for Honorable Mention, as appropriate.

Message from the Case Studies chairs

Case studies are part of CHI "Contemporary Trends" - they are Juriedcontent that provoke, intrigue, and inspire the CHI audience. These submissions record the history of HCI practice and innovation outside of the scope of traditional archival research papers.

Case Studies provide an excellent means of presenting results that address particular phenomena, especially in real-world contexts. A Case Study could involve, for example, an in-depth study of a specific event or a particular problem encountered and solved. We expect the author(s) to have gained a better understanding – perhaps even a radical redefinition or reframing – the phenomenon, and to convey their insights and new understandings in a way that advances the field. We envision that the insights will enable practitioners to improve their practice, that they can seed further research into practice, and overall will enhance our understanding of HCI.  

HCI practice can set new standards and forge new paths for the broader field of HCI. We know you're doing ground-breaking work out there. The CHI community needs to hear about it!

We look forward to receiving your submissions and seeing you at CHI 2012.

Case Studies chairs:
Daniela Busse, Samsung Research
Elizabeth Buie, Luminanze Consulting

casestudies@chi2012.acm.org

What is a Case Study?

Case Studies are examples of HCI practice based on real-world experiences that will be instructive and of interest to other members of the community. Case studies provide a substantial contribution to the field and move it forward.

Case Studies can illustrate, explore, report, analyze, summarize, debunk, challenge, or simply describe. They might focus, for instance, on the following topics:

• Application, critique, or evolution of a method, process, theory, or tool
• Unfolding trends within any area of HCI Practice or specific domain
• Innovation through Research or Design (disruptive or otherwise)
• Design of a specific experience, discussing its rationale, any issues, and lessons learned
• Research of a specific domain, user group, or experience, discussing its insights and lessons learned
• Management and Strategy of research and design in organizations
• HCI Teaching and Learning in education, training, or knowledge sharing.
• Great designs and 'Big Ideas' - and how to make them happen
• Domain-specific topics, especially lesser known domains of interest
• Pilot studies preceding and informing larger-scale investigations
• Critical instances that explore particular cases of interest with little concern for generalization
• Related works that may have been completed at different times but do form a coherent whole
• Challenges to existing notions of Research, Design, Theory, and Practice
• Revisiting definitions of HCI practice

Case Studies differ from archival research papers in that Case Studies do not define themselves as part of the potentially longer term body of academic research. They might not have as extensive a literature review as archival research papers, or might not explicitly add to HCI theory within an academic school of thought. 

 The key success criteria for case studies are that they must present novel and original insights, and show potential for real impact on the HCI body of knowledge and HCI practice. Case study submissions will not be constrained by traditional academic expectations, but will be judged by their significant contribution to the field of HCI as judged by an expert jury of HCI practitioners or practitioner researchers.

Case Studies are not considered academic archival publications, but can be republished as such, as appropriate.

Preparing and Submitting Your Case Study

Authors should submit the following:

Part 1: Extended Abstract

The primary submission material consists of an extended abstract in the Extended Abstract Format. Case Studies can either be submitted as Long Case Studies (maximum 16 pages) or Short Cases Studies (maximum 4 pages). Long Case Studies allow for richly detailed descriptions. However, authors should strive to be concise, and use fewer pages if possible; reviewers may take the page count into consideration when assessing the value of the contribution.

The extended abstract should describe the experience, focusing on the lessons you want readers to take away from the presentation. Your extended abstract must stand alone. Readers must be able to understand the Case Study with only this material.

Part 2: Supplementary Material

You may augment the extended abstract with additional material. The submission of any supporting material should take into account the demands of the reviewing process and neither be excessive in length nor require close scrutiny. Typical supporting materials comprise documents (pictures, etc.) or interactive media (e.g., Adobe Flash prototypes) that have been produced for other purposes, but which may help the reviewing committee to understand why this work is of interest to the CHI community. Our intent is to make submission of Case Studies lightweight by allowing practitioners to adapt material created during the activity, without the need to rewrite it completely for publication. Authors who submit supplementary materials should also include a list of the auxiliary documents in their submission. This should explain the nature and purpose of each item submitted.

Authors will submit and resubmit their materials to the online PCS Submission System as often as they please before the submission deadline of 7 October 2011 at 5pm PDT. Files must be combined into one single zipped document and submitted by the submission deadline.

Case Studies Review Process and Criteria

Case Studies offer narratives of the challenges of an activity, the processes/techniques used, and the results achieved (good or bad), including the impact on all stakeholders, such as the user community, the sponsoring organization, and technology providers. Accepted submissions will be chosen on the merit and contribution of the report, not only on the quality of the outcome that it describes. This means that a valuable lesson learned from a poor outcome is just as acceptable as a valuable lesson learned from a good result.

Case Studies are selected by a "jury" — a panel of experts selected by and including the Case Study chairs. Each juror will take the role of Case Study Associate Chair (AC) for part of the submissions and will inform their assessment from a number of reviews by CHI reviewers. The jury will make the final decisions, led by the Case Studies chairs. Authors will receive the reviews of their submissions after the decisions are announced, and should keep in mind that the Case Studies program is a Juried contribution and thus does not follow the strict peer-review process as applied to Papers or Notes. In particular, the Case Study review process does not allow authors the opportunity to submit rebuttals.

Specifically, the review criteria will be the extent to which the case study report meets the following:

• is of interest to a broad segment of the CHI community, or redefining what should be of interest
• advances the state of the practice
• is described in a way that others can replicate the activity in their own environment
• makes a convincing argument that the experience is applicable beyond the specific example described
• clearly outlines any limitations of the report as well as of the activity described

Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. The supporting material will be kept confidential, though the committee expects that much of it will be communicated in the presentation. The extended abstract should contain no sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time.

Upon Acceptance of Your Case Study

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 30 November 2011. Authors of accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit the camera-ready version. These will be due on 20 January 2012.

Your Case Study at the Conference

Participants will present their report in a scheduled session. The committee will assign reports to talk slots depending on the length of the submission. Please see Standard Technical Support for information about the kind of technical and A/V support that will be provided by the conference. Best Case Study award and any Honorable Mention recipient(s) will be announced at the conference.

Your Case Study after the Conference

Accepted Case Studies will be distributed in the CHI Extended Abstracts. They will be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide. Selected supporting material may also be archived on the Conference DVD and the ACM Digital Library. Copyright is maintained by ACM Press for texts longer than 4 pages, which means that Short Case Studies can be republished as such at a late date, as appropriate, while Long Case Studies cannot.