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We are extremely proud to share the exciting news that Paulo Reis (Overleaf), John Lees-Miller (Overleaf), and Sven Laqua (Digital Science) have been awarded the SIGCHI Best Case Study Award at the ACM CHI2021 Conference for their case study on “Merging SaaS Products In A User-Centered Way - A Case Study of Overleaf and ShareLaTeX”.

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. CHI has been held annually since 1982 and attracts thousands of international attendees.

Paulo and Sven presented the Case Study on 10th May 2021: you can see a recording of Paulo below, and the conference programme page is online here.

If you'd like to read the full case study, it's available for download here.

About the Case Study

Mergers and acquisitions pose complex organizational and technical challenges. A user-centered approach can help ensure the success of a merger. By prioritizing the management of user expectations, by addressing change aversion and by ensuring users feel heard, a merger cannot only be made more successful, but also be perceived as a positive change by end users. This case study describes and discusses the user-centered approach taken to successfully merge two established online LaTeX editors: Overleaf and ShareLaTeX. A mixed methods approach was used to simultaneously ensure broad coverage of the user base (quantitative; relevant because these were established products) and also in-depth understanding of their issues, opinions and motivations (qualitative; relevant to making informed design decisions). This user-centered approach was successful in helping the company to set a path for the merger, to adapt in the face of new data, and to create the foundation for sustained growth.

About CHI

CHI is a special interest group chapter of ACM - the Association for computing machinery. It’s the World's Largest Association of Computing Professionals.

Within ACM, SIGCHI is the leading international community of professionals interested in research, education and the practical application of human-computer interaction (HCI). SIGCHI provides a forum for the discussion of all aspects of HCI through over 20 sponsored and over 40 in-cooperation conferences, publications, web sites, and other services.

The SIGCHI "Best of CHI" awards honor exceptional submissions to SIGCHI sponsored conferences. Based on reviewer recommendations, the CHI Case Study chairs nominates submissions for the Best Case Study Award, as appropriate. This year, we selected two Case Studies to receive the Best Case Study Award, representing the top 2% of all submissions.