November 30, 2006
CHI's Interactions Magazine has turned into a travesty
About 5? 6? months ago, I let my membership to ACM's SIGCHI lapse, pretty much for exactly the reasons Todd details in his recent post on the Adaptive Path site.
Even though I had not attended a CHI conference since 2001, I kept my membership until this year because Interactions was pretty much the only printed publication that addressed my area of professional interest. But in the last year or so, Interactions has suffered a precipitous decline in quality, only partly mitigated by OK/Cancel and Don Norman.
It's a travesty, really. As the field has grown, expanded, and gotten more interesting, Interactions has retrenched into an overly academic, dull, and wonky tome that addresses topics of startlingly little relevance. Or, if the topics are relevant, the articles do a terrible job of commentary.
It's a shame, because interaction design deserves a thoughtful publication.
