An IIT Institute of Design student research paper has been awarded Best Paper by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2012 Conference.

“This is a very big recognition for our students,” ID Assistant Professor Anijo Mathew said. “DIS has an acceptance rate less than 20 percent, out of which five papers, three long, and two short, were awarded Best Papers.”

The short paper, titled “Interactive Philanthropy: An Interactive Public Installation to Explore the Use of Gaming for Charity,” was written by Tuduyen Annie Nguyen (MDes ’12), David Kodinsky (MDes/MBA ’12), William Skelton (MDes ’12), Parminder Kaur, Yu Yin, and Santosh Basapur with Assistant Professor Mathew.

The research began as part of Mathew’s fall 2011 class, Communication Design Workshop, which seeks to extend ID’s past projects, including installations in Chicago such as WishState, where State Street pedestrians could post wishes for the 2010 season, and UrbanForest37, an interactive display which was located on Block 37 and facilitated conversation between pedestrians.

“Through design interventions, students seek to understand what happens when we embed technology (mobile, large display, ubiquitous computing) into the street and allow passers-by to engage with other citizens through such installations,” Mathew said. “And most importantly, can we as designers, over time employ these technology installations as catalysts for user inquiry?”

ID students will present the paper at the DIS 2012 Conference in Newcastle, UK, in June. Min Lee, who is studying interaction design at ID, will also present a poster, “The Connec-table: Visualizing Social Information to Enable Proximal Interactions Between Strangers,” authored by Min Lee, Rebecca Serr, Santosh Basapur, Margaret McIntyre (MDM ’12), Zahra Tashakorinia (MDes ’12), Anthony Mallier (MDes ’12), and Anijo Mathew.

The ACM DIS Conference is the premier, international arena where designers, artists, psychologists, user experience researchers, and systems engineers come together to debate and shape the future of interactive systems design and practice.