What makes a good CHI design paper?

What We Mean By ‘Real Design Papers’In the last issue, we suggested that the ‘perfect CHI design paper’ is a myth, not just because it is all but impossible to achieve but because there are so many ways to pursue and report design research. In this article, we suggest that there are a few ingredients that seem to be present in all, or at least nearly all, submissions that the subcommittee considered successful enough to accept for this year’s CHI. Each of these are key factors in delivering design practice as design research. We hope that describing them here will help replace the imaginary ‘perfect CHI design paper’ as a guide both for authors and – equally importantly – for reviewers trying to identify valuable contributions to CHI.