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12 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to HCI research

even consider, and unless an individual is working in an industrial research lab or as
a practitioner (where the goal is often to influence design and development) it is just
perceived that the goal is to be cited by other researchers. However, there are other
audiences for HCI research, aside from other researchers. Doing research targeted at
other audiences requires different approaches to research, and different ways of com-
municating the findings of that research.
Outside of HCI researchers, the other audience that most HCI researchers would
be familiar with, is the audience of individuals who do systems development and
interface design, as practitioners. Often, industrial HCI labs focus on HCI systems
research, with the goals of doing good, publishable research while testing out designs
and/or influencing the next generation of product interfaces at the company or orga-
nization. Researchers at universities, may also partner with industry, to influence the
interaction design in corporations or nonprofit organizations. Unlike HCI research
aimed at researchers taking place in a university setting without industrial partners,
there may be issues about disclosure, about sharing results publicly, about corporate
secrecy. There also may be much more concern about the control of intellectual prop-
erty resulting from the research.
Furthermore, the types of controls or inclusion criteria used in HCI research tar-
geted at industrial impact, may differ from the types of controls utilized in HCI re-
search targeted at other researchers. For instance, it can be expected that a company
would be most interested in evaluating aspects related to their own products. So,
when doing research to impact design and development, the company might only be
interested in their own products and the specific configurations that the product is de-
signed to work with. As an example, a company, researching how their new software
application might be utilized for blind people, might only test it on certain operating
systems (e.g., iOS only, rather than Windows, or only Windows 8 and later), or with
certain screen readers (e.g., JAWS 14 or later, or Window-Eyes, but not VoiceOver).
The product being evaluated by users, may have a specific configuration that it is
designed to work with, and so the research may need to be limited to that configura-
tion, even if that is an unrealistic configuration. For instance, a configuration may be
unrealistic, either because no one is currently using that configuration, or because the
configuration would bias the research since it would only allow for very advanced us-
ers who are on the cutting edge. Companies often face this challenge—there is a large
installed base of users who utilize old versions of software or operating systems, yet
this is not represented in the user research which involves only advanced users utiliz-
ing only the newest technologies, a situation that is not very representative.
Another potential target audience for HCI research is policymakers. Public policy-
makers need to have data to inform their decisions related to HCI issues, in the areas
of statutory laws, regulations, executive orders, and everything from legal cases to
human rights documents such as treaties. While many areas of science and technol-
ogy have well-developed policy outreach, such community infrastructure does not yet
exist for public policy issues related to HCI. There are a number of areas, where in
the past, individual HCI researchers have been successful in informing and guiding
public policy, and these include accessibility and ergonomics (Lazar et al., 2016).
Furthermore, individuals from the HCI community have taken leadership roles as