Impact and recognition

It used to be said (and with some justification!) that academic researchers didn’t care about whether or not their work had an impact on the “real world” — they wrote, it was said, for other academics and cared far more about getting recognition from their peers and superiors (not to mention promotions at their institutions). In recent years, however, impact has become much more important. In the UK, for example, it has factored into the evaluation of research programs, by means of “the REF” — the Research Excellence Framework — which stresses “impact beyond academia” as one of the three pillars of evaluation. The first assessment of UK universities under the REF occurred in 2014.

I like to think that throughout this blog I’ve conveyed that I’ve always cared about making my research pertinent and applicable to user experience (UX) practice. But this particular blog post is about an entirely different kind of impact.

As I mentioned in my previous post about my talk at the CHI 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Lunch, an amazing number of people told me how it had inspired them to take action to change their own lives, and in some cases even the lives of their mothers. I am still receiving appreciation and recognition for Two organizations have re-published it (with my permission, of course). I’d just like to acknowledge and thank them here:

• Cambridge (UK) Women in Technology: Re-published it exactly as I wrote it.
• Association for Computing Machinery – Women in Computing – Europe: Added an introductory paragraph.

Thanks to the vibrant women in charge of both of those organizations for helping spread the word that it’s never too late to follow a dream.

About impact… Research impact is very important to me, yes. Personal impact is even more so.