SIGDOC'23: The 41st ACM International Conference on Design of Communication TBD Orlando, FL, United States, October 26-28, 2023 |
Conference website | https://sigdoc.acm.org/conference/2023/ |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sigdoc23 |
The ACM Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (ACM SIGDOC) invites proposals for its 2023 in-person conference in Orlando, Florida, October 26–28, 2023. SIGDOC 2023: On Methods and Methodologies
See conference website for submission instructions and more CFP context. Submit proposals and papers.
When we are struck with wonder, we often think “how did they do that?” and then ask, “how can I do that?” It happens when we hear about innovative research approaches, exciting classroom tales, and new ideas that make us rethink our positions. For SIGDOC 2023, we invite researchers and practitioners to share “how it’s done”—to discuss the methodologies and methods for their innovations, research, and experiments. Discussing methods helps us innovate; it also gives others a view into how we think and makes a personal process social.
Research integrity is built on trust and confidence in the methodologies used to design and conduct research and reliably report findings. Designing, conducting, reporting, and reading research requires understanding the exigency and context of the research, including research questions and how they are answered. Such critical intellectual work also requires heeding advice from Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate scholar Kim TallBear (2014), whose approach to research is to “ponder the politics that run through knowledge production at every stage—how authors and researchers begin where they do, which audiences they imagine will receive their knowledge production, and what leads them to assume that they should research a subject or object.” Doing so makes apparent tensions between methodological standard knowledge and practice. SIGDOC 2023 is a space to articulate and examine research methodologies and methods; their ethics across designing and conducting research, credibly reporting results, and offering sensible findings.
The methods section is argued as the “conceptual epicenter” of a manuscript where scholars tell us “how it’s done” (Smagorinsky, 2008). Methods and methodologies include intersectional dimensions across race, gender, sex, class, disability, environments and ecologies, decolonization, multilingualism, and more, whether such dimensions are named and taken up explicitly or not. When adjusting and refining our ways of knowing, we must continue interrogating power and how it operates in our field (Walton, Moore & Jones, 2019). For instance, McKinley Green (2021) notes “traditional usability and UX methods often fail to account for the complex material circumstances” that impact communication design. Natasha Jones (2016) and Emma J. Rose (2016) remind us our methods and designs are important forms of advocacy. Furthermore, Walton, Zraly, and Mugengana (2015) describe how such research is messy work, where values and validity always intertwine. Such concerns necessitate timely discussions about methods and methodologies. We encourage proposals discussing methods and methodologies of all sorts that center those on the margins and imagine new realities for building more inclusive, accessible, equitable spaces.
Guiding questions
As you write your proposals, we invite you to consider the following questions. We include additional questions in the full CFP on the conference website. The question list is not exhaustive, yet it represents ongoing and emerging challenges posed by methodologies and methods in our field. We also invite submissions that do not adhere to the conference theme, or that extend beyond these questions.
- What research methodologies and data collection methods are used to answer our research questions? To what end?
- What do research methodologies and data collection methods do, what can they do, what can’t they do, and what should they do?
- How do we negotiate the ways methods and methodologies reify, reinforce, or combat unbalanced power dynamics?
- How do we write up thorough descriptions of methods and methodologies? What information is most pertinent to different audiences?
Program co-chairs Joseph Bartolotta and Kristin Marie Bivens invite questions related to the CFP at sigdocconference@gmail.com.