A preliminary analysis of the products of HCI research, using pro forma abstracts

A classification scheme for the products of engineering research is described, involving three principal categories of product: improved modelling techniques, solutions and tools. These categories can be linked to the contributions they make to engineering design. A set of pro forma abstracts are proposed as a reliable means of identifying the three categories. A preliminary sample of published engineering papers indicates that normally at least 90 percent of papers fall into these three categories. For recent CHI and InterCHI conferences, however, only about 30 percent can be thus categorized. The remainder appear mostly to describe radical solutions (solutions not derived from incremental improvements to solutions to the same problem), and experience and/or heuristics gained mostly from studies of radical solutions. Some comments are made about the reasons for these departures from normal engineering research practice.