Editorial

Dear reader!

Volume 23 (2024) of i-com has already seen two future oriented special issues – Issue 1/2024 on “CSCW – Past, Present and Future” and Issue 2/2024 on “The Future of Human-Computer Interaction”. In the latter special issue, we presented interesting but scientifically explainable and technologically sound forecasts for the next decades to discuss them further in our HCI community.

With this issue we finish Volume 23 of i-com. Initially, we had planned for another special issue – this time on “AI and Robotic Systems in Healthcare”. However, reviewing contributions for this special issue took longer than expected, and the revisions of the to-be-accepted papers for the issue were not ready in time. So, we only publish free submissions in this issue. The contributions for “AI and Robotic Systems in Healthcare” will be included in Issue 1 in Volume 24.

The first article in this issue is “Digitalization of Administrative Work at Home – Findings of an Online Survey” by Erik Dethier, Gunnar Stevens and Alexander Boden. The authors report results from an online survey on digitalization of domestic bureaucracy. The survey covers the devices, tools, special software, and common places people favor for accomplishing office-like household tasks. The results of the survey provide a solid empirical basis that not only quantifies previous qualitative results but also offers orientation for further in-depth research as well as design.

In “Consideration of people’s design preferences for the development of adaptive user interfaces” the authors Jessica Brandenburger and Monique Janneck report on a large online survey into design shape preferences. The results from the survey show that, overall, the shape of the circle appears to be the most attractive for young people (14–35 years). The identification of such preferences with regard to design shapes can provide developers of interactive systems with information for the design of (adaptive) user interfaces.

The third contribution in this issue is in the UX Professionals Forum. Andrea Miquel Massan reports about “Activating sustainability in the design process: Design principles for sustainable innovation implemented at Ergosign GmbH”. The goal of this paper is to outline what methods and actions a User Experience (UX) practitioner could use in order to support sustainable development. Existing design guidelines and design principles are reviewed to determine the relevance and usefulness of those frameworks in the User Experience Design (UXD) context. The analysis resulted in the creation of six guiding principles to introduce sustainability concerns into the design process. A first practical evaluation of the principles suggests that assessing impact and identifying preventive actions is possible at all stages of the design process.

In “People and Practices must be at the Center of IT Research and Development in a Digitized World” we finally provide a Discussion piece. The authors from the steering committee of the special interest group on HCI in the German Informatics Society (GI) provide some reflections on problems and solutions around (end) user orientation in IT projects. The article does not present finished research, but is inspired to be a first answer to questions UX researchers often get about the impact of their research, and would like to be the starting point to a discussion and more publications around this issue.

I hope you enjoy reading the articles in this third issue of Volume 23 of i-com – Journal of Interactive Media.

Michael Koch (Editor-in-Chief)