Nine questions for HCI researchers in the making

A set of shared questions that might be useful, particularly for new HCI researchers, are discussed. The selection of research problems should be done against longer-term, even career-level goals. It's hard but worth pursuing. Researchers must take time to understand the intellectual as well as practical history of their research group, its merits and strengths as well as its weak spots. HCI spans a bewildering range of research genres. Researchers should explore relevant literature for conceptual/theoretical contributions that can help them get started. They must consider whether they need to look beyond HCI's mainstream for conceptual inspiration. They must think about how to summarize their contribution before committing to their topic. HCI is diverse, encompassing multiple and discontiguous perspectives. For this reason, one can never rely on his work's presumed brilliance to be obvious to everyone. So, researchers need to clearly communicate the significance of it to others, and also must explain why they should care, and at the same time identify who those others are. HCI researchers must consider making a long-term research plan, one that helps them situate their current work. They must consider whether their work is generative and what kind of generativity it offers.