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Organizers:
Contact:
Maribeth Back Maribeth
Back Schedule (to come) Position papers |
Designing usability into next-generation
conference rooms In the UbiComp 2005 workshop “Ubiquitous computing in next
generation conference rooms” we learned that usability is one of
the primary challenges in these spaces. Nearly all “smart” rooms,
though they often have interesting and effective functionality, are
very difficult to simply walk in and use. Most such rooms have
resident experts who keep the room’s systems functioning, and
who often must be available on an everyday basis to enable the
meeting technologies. The systems in these rooms are designed for
and assume the presence of these human “wizards”; they are
seldom designed with usability in mind. In addition, people don’t
know what to expect in these rooms; as yet there is no technology
standard for next-generation conference rooms.
The challenge here is to strike an effective balance between
usability and new kinds of functionality (such as multiple displays,
new interfaces, rich media systems, new uploading/access/security
systems, robust mobile integration, to name just a few of the
functions we saw in last year’s workshop). So, this year, we
propose a workshop to focus more specifically on how the design
of next-generation conference rooms can support usability: the
tasks facing the real people who use these rooms daily.
Usability in ubiquitous computing has been the topic of several
papers and workshops [(see full proposal for references). Focusing on usability
in next-generation conference rooms lets us bring to bear some of
the insights from this prior work in a delineated application space.
In addition the workshop will be informed by the most recent
usability research in ubiquitous computing, rich media, contextaware
mobile systems, multiple display environments, and
interactive physical environments. We also are vitally concerned
with how usability in smart environments tracks (or doesn’t) across
cultures.
Conference room research has been and remains a focal point for
some of the most interesting and applied work in ubiquitous
computing. It is also an area where there are many real-world
applications and daily opportunities for user feed-back: in short, a
rich area for exploring usable ubiquitous computing. We see a rich
opportunity to draw together researchers not only from conference
room research but also from areas such as interactive
furniture/smart environments, rich media, social computing,
remote conferencing, and mobile devices for a lively exchange of
ideas on usability in applied ubicomp systems for conference
rooms.
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Selecting
participants Selection of workshop participants and presentations will be
based on refereed submissions. Authors are invited to submit a 1-2 page position
statement describing their interest, experience or ongoing research in the
field, and including a brief biography. Position statements should have only
one author, and admission to the workshop will be for that person only. We will strive to attract diverse viewpoints, including people
from different cultures, research areas, and disciplines, while maintaining a
cohesive line of inquiry throughout the workshop. We hope to engage people
with expertise in rich media, personal devices, smart environments,
multimedia communication, ubiquitous display systems, social networks and
software as well as in mobile and ubiquitous computing systems; and to draw
engineers, researchers, and designers from both industry and academia. Please send
1-2 page position papers in PDF format to back@fxpal.com. The paper deadline
is June 16, 2006. An
additional note: Since this is a workshop about conference rooms and the site
of the workshop will be, well, a *conference room*, we would like to explore
the possibility of trying next-generation technology in the workshop itself. Thus,
we would like to invite workshop participants to submit proposals describing
technologies that we can try to use, or perhaps just critique from a usability standpoint, during the
workshop. The
technology/usability proposals can employ technology that you (the participants) or
your institution have developed, and/or they can employ interesting or novel
3rd party software whose use you think would highlight interesting usability problems -- either solving them, or creating them.
Please note this is *not* a requirement for participating in the workshop!
Just an added opportunity for those with something to share. To propose a
technology or usability demo, please add a 1-2 page addendum to your position paper describing
the following:
Please note, we have no budget to speak of, so for each of the
accepted technology/usability proposals, we will have to work together creatively to
figure out how to set up your prototype/experiment/demo/application if needed. You may also show short critiques via video or ppt, without setting up the actual technology. |