Four CHI '26 papers I wish I wrote

It's been a while since I've followed CHI, but didn't it used to be a slightly more technical conference? The second paper in particular ("It Didn’t Feel Right but I Needed a Job so Desperately’: Understanding People’s Emotions and Help Needs During Scams") seems like something that might be more appropriate for a sociology or applied psych journal.

Has it become more of a social-sciences adjacent tech research conference these days? (I'm not being critical, just curious.)

FMI (for my information)

The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. CHI 2026 will take [SIC] place in Barcelona.

"I’ve been avoiding GenAI research because I feel so conflicted about it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid it forever. As an educator, I’m still working out my own thinking on the role of GenAI in work by students and faculty."

It's the final quarter of 2026. Academics really do live in a self-created bubble.

So many papers from conferences like these fascinate me. Of course you get those who are clearly doing research that was easier to get funding for but then you get questions like these where people obviously have some interesting viewpoints on the world.

Computing within limits is another conference that I'm often reading all the papers for whilst being in awe.