ABOUT

OZCHI is Australia’s leading forum for research and development in all areas of Human-Computer Interaction. OZCHI attracts an international community of practitioners, researchers, academics and students from a wide range of disciplines including user experience designers, information architects, software engineers, human factors experts, information systems analysts, and social scientists.

Previous OZCHI Conferences:

• OZCHI2008
• OZCHI2007
• OZCHI2006
• OZCHI2005

A brief history of CHISIG, by Roger Hall (CHISIG medalist)

CHISIG was formally established at an Ergonomics Society of Australia & NZ (as it was then) conference in November (29-30th) 1984 - I had just stood down as President and handed over to Michael Patkin and it was his brainchild (along with an RSI SIG called REPSIG). The actual meeting where the SIGs were formed was at the end of the conference so it must have been on the 30th Nov, 84 - Michael Patkin may be able to confirm the exact date.

CHISIG did not get really going until Gitte Lindgaard took control in about 1987 (maybe 86) and the first CHISIG Seminar (New Ways with WIMPS) was held in Melbourne in November 1988, which I attended.

In 1989 the first CHISIG conference was held 23-24 November at Monash Uni supported by Telstra Res Labs and at which I presented a paper - Ilana also attended. I have copies of both the Seminar & Conf proceedings. The 2nd CHISIG conference (1990) was also held in Melbourne and the Procs are clearly labelled as the 2nd conf. When Ilana and I took on setting up the Sydney arm of CHISIG in 1990 and organising the 3rd CHISIG conf in Sydney in 1991, we gave it the name OZCHI because the Poms did not like us calling it HCI 91 which is what they call theirs.

In 1997 Judy Hammond ran INTERACT 97 and it was also badged as the 97 CHISIG conference but the Proceedings were clearly and only labelled INTERACT 97. So 2009 will be 25 years of CHISIG and last year must have been 20 years of OZCHI, but it was the 21st OZCHI conference.