What took me to Japan? CHI 2025! by Sarah Dunn

Recently I had the amazing opportunity to attend the ACM Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference in Yokohama, Japan to present my paper “What Brings You Here Today?: Challenges for Clinicians Communicating Data to Patients”. CHI is a huge and broad conference, with over 5000 attendees from fields as diverse as healthcare technology, robotics, data visualization and computer security. This was my first experience at an international conference, and one I shall never forget.

I travelled alone and arrived a bit (ok, very) nervous, however, whether it was sheer adrenaline, or my wonky sleep schedule beforehand, I was fortunate not to be affected too much by jet lag. The opening performance was amazing – a Japanese Calligraphy Artist painted some art on the stage which expressed the theme of the conference – ‘ikichi’, a Japanese concept referring to what gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living. It certainly set the mood! Afterwards, I honestly considered going back to my hotel room though, because I felt so overwhelmed. Instead, my drive for caffeine meant I decided to go to coffee first and there I met other researchers who were so excited and passionate that after a few conversations, I’d forgotten my nerves.

My paper was submitted as part of the Student Research Competition track. This did make the conference experience more stressful, as I was competing with other students from across the world when presenting my work. The first round was a poster competition, in which we had to summarise our work in front of our posters to a panel of judges, then answer questions. I realised, when practicing in the hotel room the night before, that I had a typo on my poster… so there was a bit of improvising with sticky tape to cover that up! However, thanks to some reassurance from the DI WhatsApp group, I didn’t let this throw me and that evening I was told I had made it through to the second round – a full presentation with slides. The second round was held on the third day of the conference, so I had some time to prepare. Luckily, I had attended a SICSA pre-conference meetup for Scottish Researchers attending CHI (something I’d highly recommend to other students) so had a sort of half written presentation…

During the next few days, I attended some really inspirational sessions, and met some researchers whose work has greatly impacted my own. Before leaving for the conference, I’d arranged to meet several lecturers and post-docs from the health-related HCI community to discuss our work. It was an amazing opportunity, as these were researchers I’d never usually have the chance to interact with in person, from Canada, USA, Germany, Australia… I was initially nervous about contacting them, fearing they wouldn’t have the time to talk to a PhD student, but the majority were hugely receptive and some even came to my presentation! So my advice to other PhD students is to reach out, people can only say no and you never know what opportunities conversations can open up.

My full presentation on the penultimate day went well, but the standard was very high. In all honesty, part of me wished I’d not been selected for the second round so I could focus more on the CHI experience instead of staying up half the night finalising the presentation. However, it was amazing to have the opportunity to fully present my work to some of the researchers whose work has inspired and motivated me. We were told the winner would be announced during the closing ceremony, so after presenting I (tried) to put that out of my mind and made the most of the remaining activities on offer. There were interactive demo sessions to play with prototypes of emerging research creations including virtual reality, piano tutors and electronic textiles, as well as various industry sponsors looking to promote careers in their companies. However, I don’t think Google or Apple will be recruiting me anytime soon after I questioned their ethics and asked if they still felt they “did no evil…”

And before I knew it… it was all over. We were at the closing ceremony where I was informed I was awarded first place in the Student Research Competition! I am now invited to the grand final, in which the winners from all the different ACM conferences throughout the year compete to become the overall winner. Unfortunately, this is done remotely, so I won’t get any more exciting trips. Post-CHI I decided to extend my time in Japan and used the opportunity to travel round Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima and Kanazawa… all in 7 days!

I would really like to acknowledge the people who made this opportunity possible for me. The Precision Medicine PhD program, my supervisors Dr Benjamin Bach, Dr Areti Manataki and Dr Tara Capel and the clinicians who gave up their valuable time for interviews. I would also like to thank the DI community for responding to my annoying messages on WhatsApp (thank you guys – I really appreciated the advice and reassurance) and just generally being awesome company. Here’s to CHI 2026!

Link to my paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3706599.3719283