The sixth annual Irish Human-Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference took place at NUI Galway on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st June. Organised by the School of Education, NUI Galway, it was the first time that the conference was hosted in the west of Ireland. The theme of iHCI 2012 was ‘Poetics of Design, Narratives of Use’, looking at the broad array of creative methods and tools used to design different technologies for a range of user contexts and application domains, including healthcare, education and mobile work. Highlights of the iHCI 2012 conference included: a keynote lecture ‘Between Film and Digital Media’ by Professor Rod Stoneman, Director of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media; a tour of the National Computer & Communications Museum, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), NUI Galway; and an Alan Turing commemorative lecture. Saturday 23rd June 2012 marked the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of modern computing and mathematics. The conference featured presentations and technology showcases from academia and industry, with speakers from UL, GMIT, TCD, DCU, UCC, UCD, Dundalk IT, Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden and NUIG.
A novel aspect of the iHCI conference is the IxDA presentation by industry on experience design and technology. The industry presenters this year were from Cisco Systems, iQ Content and Logitech Ireland. Karen Young, Discipline of Information Technology, NUIG won the prize for best conference presentation for her collaborative research with Elise Karlsson in the development of an app for musical notation on mobile devices: ‘MicroStave – Music Notation for the Mobile Screen’. The conference was chaired this year by Dr. Tony Hall (School of Education, NUI Galway) and Dr. Julie Doyle (Centre for Affective Solutions for Ambient Living Awareness (CASALA), Dundalk IT). The iHCI 2012 conference committee comprised Jim Lenaghan, Bonnie Long, Seán Ó Grádaigh and Tony Hall (School of Education), Dr. Fiona Concannon (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, NUIG), Dr. Enda Fallon (Industrial Engineering, NUIG), Dr. Edward Curry and Dr. Krystian Samp (DERI, NUIG), and Dr. Sean Duignan (Department of Computing & Maths, GMIT). NUI Galway was delighted to host iHCI 2012; and the chairs and conference committee would like to wish next year’s host institution(s) the very best in organising this key event in Irish HCI and Interaction Design research. Further information on iHCI 2012 can be found at: http://www.conference.ie/Conferences/index.asp?Conference=180; and conference proceedings will be published shortly as an eBook: iHCI 2012: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Irish Human-Computer Interaction Conference: Poetics of Design, Narratives of Use. ISBN 978-1-908358-07-3.