I was asked by my colleague a few weeks ago to create a poster for our (his really) Work-In-Progress submission to CHI 2011. I obviously agreed, but soon found myself feeling restricted. Most posters I’ve seen suck. They’re boring, contain too much text, and don’t have any color. They all seem to follow the tired ABSTRACT, METHODS, DATA, CONCLUSION format. So instead of fighting this, I threw it all out and developed something I could really call my own.

Hector’s Poster:

I think it’s fairly straight forward and to the point. Concepts are modularized, labeled, and directed. And it’s nice on the eyes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t submitted.

Colleague’s Poster:

My colleague submitted his version instead. I’ll let it speak for itself. His reasoning:

I Really liked what you did for the poster but I chose mine because 1) it conformed better to what I think is expected, and 2) didn’t feel liking adding a lot of text to yours.

So my question is: What exactly is expected? Conformity? The only requirements CHI makes regarding a poster is its dimensions. They say nothing else. Wouldn’t ACM CHI, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, be the most accepting venue for this sort of thing? Needless to say, I am disappointed with his decision. I’m going to print this poster out anyway. It’s probably the last academic writing I will ever do. HGP