As per normal, my short and mostly unheard rant about HCI and WWW! This year we did have some HCI under the title ‘Social Web UI’. Two other session did look promising, ‘User Behavior in OSN’ and ‘Behavioral Analysis’, but alas no, miss titled in mine, and other HCI’ers opinion. These were mostly ’throw tweets at ML/AI’ and wait. Social Web UI was the only viable option.

So what did we get?

- [Perception and Understanding of Social Annotations in Web Search](http://www2013.org/program/perception-and-understanding-of-social-annotations-in-web-search/) Presenters: Jennifer Fernquist, Ed H. Chi[**](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www2013.org/program/perception-and-understanding-of-social-annotations-in-web-search/)   

- [Google+ Ripples: A Native Visualization of Information Flow](http://www2013.org/program/google-ripples-a-native-visualization-of-information-flow/) Presenters: Fernanda B. Viegas, Martin Wattenberg, Jack Hebert, Geoffrey Borggaard, Alison Cichowlas,Jonathan Feinberg, Jon Orwant, Christopher R. Wren[**](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www2013.org/program/google-ripples-a-native-visualization-of-information-flow/)

- [Do Social Explanations Work? – Studying and Modeling the Effects of Social Explanations in Recommender Systems](http://www2013.org/program/do-social-explanations-work-studying-and-modeling-the-effects-of-social-explanations-in-recommender-systems/) Presenters: Amit Sharma , Dan Cosley[**](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www2013.org/program/do-social-explanations-work-studying-and-modeling-the-effects-of-social-explanations-in-recommender-systems/)

- [Saving, Reusing, and Remixing Web Video: using attitudes and practices to reveal social norms](http://www2013.org/program/saving-reusing-and-remixing-web-video-using-attitudes-and-practices-to-reveal-social-norms/) Presenters: Frank Shipman , Catherine Marshall[**](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www2013.org/program/saving-reusing-and-remixing-web-video-using-attitudes-and-practices-to-reveal-social-norms/)

And while not stellar, these are much better than last year. Indeed, there is some (if not outstanding) HCI work - whereby I mean NOT computation applied to the humanities, or social science applied to the Web, or Psychology applied to the Web - but a real balance of contributions, coming together in a unique way which makes HCI it’s own discipline. Of these my personal favourite was ‘Google+ Ripples: A Native Visualization of Information Flow’. A good innovative paper without over-claiming and while also acknowledging a myriad of caveats which goes with qualitative analysis. They find that:

Based on the public reaction, it seems that there are two sets of users who express interest in Ripples. First, in the immediate post-launch periods, a highly visible set of people seemed to appreciate the visualization on the basis of aesthetics and novelty. A second more focused group is made of people who routinely analyze social media, typically for purposes of marketing and publicity. Within this group, we saw strong public enthusiasm, along with explanations (blog posts, YouTube videos, etc.) of how they used the system.

Makes me wonder how we can convey the same information in audio, by focusing on the underlying concepts as opposed to the way the information is presented.