HCI Index: Newsgroups and Mailing Lists

This section lists newsgroups and mailing lists which enable you to communicate about HCI on the Internet.

Lists of mailing lists

William Hudson maintains a list of discussion lists.
ACM SIGCHI Mailing Lists Includes archives for some of the lists.

For the CHI-WEB list there is a Best of chi-web collection of summaries of discussions.

Other HCI mailing lists

AIGAExperienceDesign The objective of the AIGA Experience Design is to build an interdisciplinary community of professionals who design for a world in which experiences are increasingly digital and connected.
accessibility Web accessibility and usability.
COLORCAT A forum for the discussion of color categorization. This forum explores how the color continuum is partitioned into categories by various human processes. Our approach is multi-disciplinary and draws from color studies in anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. Send a message containing "register COLORCAT your_name" to listserv@brownvm.brown.edu.
Experience DesignTo support and encourage the convergence of related disciplines - human factors, technical communication, HCI, information architecture, usability, ethnography, learning theory, cognitive theory, interaction design, experience design, etc. We gather together to discuss our commonalities and discover ways to move forward collectively.
FOGG |B|I|T|S| The formula for FOGG |B|I|T|S| is simple--just summarize the most interesting things going on in my research, my head, and my life. Although I can't specify exactly what FOGG |B|I|T|S| will cover, it will likely draw content from the people I talk to, the seminars I attend, and the stuff I read. I'll filter all this confusion and pass the best bits along to you (with citations and pointers to resources).
Topics you can expect: interactive technology, social trends, information design, internet, communication theory, interface/interaction design, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and juicy gossip. Subscription can be arranged by sending mail to BJ Fogg.
GOV-HCI This is a list for individuals interested in human computer interaction (HCI) and usability engineering in the government arena. To join, send a message to listproc@nist.gov with the following in the body of the message: subscribe gov-hci [your name].
HCI International NEWS is a free bimonthly electronic newsletter about HCI topics, news in the area of HCI, book reviews, specialized press reviews, upcoming meetings and conferences, HCI technology, the HCI International Conference & Exposition, and more.
HCI-LINK HCI-LINK was initiated by the Special Interest Group 2.1.2 "Interactive Systems" of the German Computer Science Society (Fachgruppe 2.1.2 Interaktive Systeme der Gesellschaft fuer Informatik). It is an informal, unmoderated medium for communicating interesting news items to the HCI community, mainly in Germany and German-speaking countries. Currently the list has 144 subscribers, which covers a large part of the community. We encourage to send us conference calls, open positions, HCI related questions, book reports etc. Subscription is done by sending a message to server@uni-paderborn.de containing only the line subscribe hci-link <your mailaddress> in the body.
hci-teaching For university faculty teaching human-computer interaction, a place to share syllabi, ideas for exercises, assignments, and projects.
humane-interfaces Jef Raskin's book, "The Humane Interface" presents many ideas about human-machine interfaces that are worthy of discussion. So let's discuss them.
informal-HCI Started by two student volunteers at CHI99, the informal-HCI list is made for SVs, former SVs, and non-SVs who want to keep in touch between the events. Our intention is to support informal personal contacts within the HCI community, hopefully leading to colorful discussions on all the different aspects of our common subject. However, to keep you clear from being flooded with mail, we decided to moderate this list rather than having the incoming mail distributed immediately.
Interaction Architects has the goal to form consensus on a single, uniform name for the human-machine interaction profession.
internet-usability This mailing list aims to advance usability testing for the internet.
Intranet User Experience This is a list dedicated to discussion on developing and maintaining Intranets, with an emphasis on elements of user experience design (information architecture, usability, navigation design, information design, etc.).
International Web Usability This forum is for Web Usability professionals from all over the world who would like to share documents of "best practices", guidelines, and methods that are used to review, evaluate, and test Web sites and applications for international use.
london_usability A group to provide a forum for all those working in Usability, HCI, Ergonomics, UI Design, Information Architecture and / or User Experience in London.
LUII: Library User Interface Issues LUII: Library User Interface Issues is a forum for librarians, usability engineers, user experience strategists and other professionals to discuss the issue of usability as it applies to online subscription resources in the library environment.
ML4UM: Machine Learning for User Modeling. The list is supposed to be a forum for news and discussion on the application of machine learning techniques to acquisition and update of user models or profiles in intelligent, user-adaptive systems. Feel free to interpret this focus description as wide as possible.
open-hci The open-hci mailing list is for discussion of usability in free or open software.
TANGIBLE-INTERACTION is a mailing list for Tangible Interaction News and Announcements.
TestFirstUserInterfacesDiscussion on writing Graphic User Interfaces using Test Driven Development techniques.
UCD User-centred design, user interface design, web design, HCI and usability.
UIETips UIETips is about designing user interfaces -- what works and what doesn't.
Usability Indonesia A discussion forum for the usability community in Indonesia.
UsabilityInOrgChart This is a discussion group for those interested in where Usability experts should be positioned in a company's Organizational Chart.
The aim of the User Modeling mailing list is sharing messages and news relevant to the research and development activities in the User Modeling and User-adaptive systems areas.
upa-evoting, a group dedicated to discussion of the use of technology in voting.
uvip - usability for visually impaired peopleThis mailing list is for people interested in usability and for people concerned with visual impairment issues to discuss in collaboration various aspects of the usability needs of people with visual impairments.
uvip-web-testThis mailing list provides a place where web page developers can get assistance for having their web pages tested by visually impaired users.
WebGUI a discussion list for people interested in talking about the present and future of building thin-client applications which are pre-dominantly but not solely distributed and displayed using the standard available technologies of the world wide web: HTTP, HTML++, Flash, Java, plug-ins, ActiveX, new W3C standards, new XML standards, etc.

Newsgroups

The newsgroups below are all related to HCI in some way.

comp.human-factors	Issues related to human-computer interaction (HCI). (Also see its FAQ)
comp.cog-eng	Cognitive engineering
comp.ai	Artificial intelligence discussions.
sci.cognitive	Perception, memory, judgement and reasoning.
comp.groupware	Hardware & software for facilitating group interaction.
comp.multimedia	Interactive multimedia technologies of all kinds.
comp.infosystems	Any discussion about information systems.
sci.virtual-worlds	Modelling the universe. (Moderated)
comp.graphics	Computer graphics, art, animation, image processing.
sci.psychology	Topics related to psychology.
alt.hypertext	Discussion of hypertext -- uses, transport, etc.
alt.comp.blind-users	Discussion of the needs of blind users.

The following newsgroups are related to the implementation of user interfaces:

comp.windows.misc	General issues regarding the use of windows
comp.windows.x	Discussion about the X Window System.
comp.windows.x.motif	The Motif GUI for the X Window System.
comp.windows.open-look	Discussion about the Open Look GUI.
comp.windows.garnet	The Garnet user interface development environment.
comp.windows.suit	The SUIT user-interface toolkit.
comp.windows.interviews	The InterViews object-oriented windowing system.

Newsgroups in other languages

de.alt.sci.ergonomie

German-language discussion