Qian Yu on Computer Relationships at CHI 2019
Qian Yu received a Spring 2019 BCNM Conference Grant to help cover her costs attending the Human Factors in Computing Systems conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Qian presented "I Almost Fell in Love with a Machine: Speaking with Computers Affects Closeness and Self-disclosure." Read more about her experience in her own words below!
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the most important global academic event for the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community. The research project – “I Almost Fell in Love with a Machine: Speaking with Computers Affects Closeness and Self-disclosure” – led by me was luckily selected for the Late Breaking Work session of this year’s conference that took place in Glasgow, UK from May 4 to 9. As the lead researcher, I travelled to Glasgow to present a poster of the research project.
The poster of my research was scheduled to present twice on May 8. I talked with more than twenty conference attendees from different academic institutions and tech companies during the presentation. I received questions which are helpful as well as inspirational for the further research. For example, a researcher who also works on exploring the interactive affordance of the voice generated by the computing machines was curious about if the computing agent could recognize the level of closeness and self-disclosure from the user so as to establish a close relationship that adapts to the user’s needs. What’s more, I got the opportunity to learn the cutting edge trends and interesting research in HCI that are relevant to my project in the conference. Last but not least, I really appreciate the travel grant supported by the BCNM.