Workshops provide an opportunity to discuss and explore emerging areas of ubiquitous computing research with a group of like-minded researchers and practitioners. Workshops may focus on any aspect of ubiquitous computing, established concerns or new ideas. The goal of the workshop is to share understandings and experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other and to envision future directions.

Workshops will be held on Tuesday, 7 September, the day before the main conference. Opportunities will be available for the outcome of workshops to be reported to the rest of the UbiComp 2004 conference through posters.

Please note that, prospective workshop attendees require an invitation from the workshop organisers based on acceptance of submitted position papers or explicit request. Upon acceptance, attendees will need to explicitly register for the workshop, which will include a separate workshop fee, in addition to registering for the main conference.

Workshop titles and organizers are listed below. General questions about the workshops can be addressed to the Workshop Chair (Mike Fraser, fraser@cs.bris.ac.uk); specific questions about any individual workshop should be directed to the organizer(s) of the workshop.

Submission Deadline for all Workshops: 26 July 2004 Closed

[top]

LIST OF WORKSHOPS

   W1. AIMS 2004: Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems
   W2. Applications of Location-Aware Computing
   W3. Playing With Sensors
   W4. Ubicomp Privacy: Current Status and Future Directions
   W5. Giving Help at a Distance
   W6. 2nd International Workshop on Ubiquitous Systems for Supporting Social
          Interaction and Face-to-Face Communication in Public Spaces
   W7. UbiHealth 2004: 3rd International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing for
          Pervasive Healthcare Applications
   W8. UbiSys 2004: International Workshop on System Support for Ubiquitous
          Computing
   W9. UbiComp in the Urban Frontier
 W10. Ubiquitous Display Environments
 W11. When mobile, i-TV and web interfaces meet in the space of communication
          between users Cancelled
 W12. Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning and Management

[top]

W1. AIMS 2004: Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems

           Organizers: Jörg Baus (Saarland University, Germany)
                              Christian Kray (University of Lancaster, UK)
                              Robert Porzel (European Media Lab, Germany)
           URL: http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/~baus/aims04

Today's information technology is rapidly moving small computerised consumer devices and hi-tech personal appliances from the desks of research labs onto sales shelves and into our daily life. These include low performance PDAs, embedded computers in cameras, cars, or mobile phones, as well as high performance wearable computers and tablet PCs. Many of these devices are becoming essential tools that we rely on increasingly both in private and in professional settings. In addition, a growing number of locations are being outfitted with ubiquitous devices and networking access. This combination promises to enable new approaches to solve daily tasks and to open up new possibilities.

However, in order to use these systems new interaction metaphors and methods of control are required. Well-known interaction devices, such as mouse and keyboard are oftentimes unfeasible or even unavailable, thus rendering user interfaces that rely on them inappropriate. Other resources such as power or networking bandwidth may also be limited or unreliable depending on time and location. Moreover, the physical environment and context can change rapidly throughout the interaction with mobile systems and must be taken into account appropriately. Spatial and temporal relationships between devices and users are continuously changing as well and may be a key factor to be considered when interacting with a ubiquitous infrastructure.

In addition, we can expect a shift from single users towards groups, from single applications to multiple concurrent services, and from strictly personal to (semi-)public artefacts that can be configured dynamically. The resulting complexity needs to be addressed on all levels, from interface design to power issues. Within the field of Artificial Intelligence, several of these problems have been investigated for many years (such as how to make user interfaces more adaptive or how to deal with limited technical or cognitive resources). Therefore, AI methods are promising tools for building mobile and ubiquitous systems that are aware of the location and situation of their users, and that can unobtrusively adapt to these factors.

The AIMS 2004 workshop intends to bring together researchers working in various areas of (applied) AI as well as in mobile and ubiquitous computing systems. The workshop aims to explore recent research and findings in AI, the development of mobile systems and their seamless integration in ubiquitous computing environments. The main objective of the workshop is a lively discussion and exchange of ideas. The scope of interest includes but is not limited to the following items (in no particular order):

• location and context awareness as well as knowledge-based acquisition of contextual information
• spatio-temporal issues and methods in mobile and ubiquitous applications
• interaction metaphors and interaction devices for mobile and ubiquitous systems
• intelligent user interfaces for mobile and ubiquitous systems
• multi-modal interfaces for mobile and ubiquitous systems
• user interfaces that adapt to the current situation as well as to resource availability
• seamless integration of mobile systems in ubiquitous computing environments
• plan-based approaches for interaction and adaptation
• user modelling and cognitive modelling
• trade-offs between reasoning capabilities, resource consumption and real-time constraints

[top]

W2. Applications of Location-Aware Computing

           Organizers: Anthony LaMarca (Intel Research, Seattle, USA)
                              James Scott (Intel Research, Cambridge, UK)
                              Ian Smith (Intel Research, Seattle, USA)
           URL: http://seattle.intel-research.net/lac2004

SCOPE & AIMS

The goal of this workshop is to bring together top researchers from academia and industry to facilitate the exchange of ideas and the fostering of collaborations on location-aware applications. The workshop will discuss new location-aware applications, debate the challenges and capabilities offered by new technologies, and reflect on the drivers and barriers to deployment of location-aware applications. Topics of interest include:

• The end-user value that location information adds to different classes of applications
• The reasons some applications are sufficiently compelling that users are willing to disclose their location
• Which devices and platforms will prove the most "location-aware"
• The dependence of location-based applications on the social actions that it may engender or replace
• Applications that require location-infrastructure that allows users to mask, blur or even lie about their location
• Ways of conducting feasible, yet meaningful, evaluations of location-based applications
• Techniques for quantifying the value of location information in particular applications
• The role that centralised-server applications (e.g. web-based applications) will play in the location-aware computing space

PARTICIPATION

Selection of workshop participants and presentations will be based on refereed submissions. Authors are invited to submit a one-page position statement in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format. Position statements should have only one author, and should include a brief biography in addition to a discussion of a viewpoint or experience with location-aware computing applications. Please email submissions in PDF format to lacworkshop2004@intel-research.net no later than 26 July 2004.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The workshop will be highly interactive, and include six short talks with panel-based discussion periods, as well as "whirlwind" sessions in which every participant will be asked to present 2 slides concerning their work.

PROCEEDINGS

A workshop proceedings will be distributed to participants, and will also be available online in PDF format. This will contain all the participation statements, and the six speakers will be invited to include 3-page extended statements.

COMMITTEE

Workshop submissions will be refereed by a team of leading researchers from both industry and academia, including:
George Coulouris, Uni. Cambridge, UK
Paul Dourish, UC Irvine, USA
Bill Griswold, UC San Diego, USA
Mike Hazas, Uni. Lancaster, UK
Tristan Henderson, Dartmouth, USA
Jason Hong, CMU, USA
Scott Klemmer, Stanford, USA
John Krumm, Microsoft Research, USA

IMPORTANT DATES

July 26th Deadline for position statement submission
August 2nd Position statement acceptance notifications sent
August 2nd Speaking invitations sent in response to strongest participation statements
August 15th Website updated with final program, talk abstracts, and position statements

[top]

W3. Playing with Sensors: exploring the boundaries of sensing
         for playful ubiquitous computing

           Organizers: Steve Benford (University of Nottingham, UK)
                              Steffan Bjork (PLAY Interactive Institute, Göteborg, Sweden)
                              William Gaver (Royal College of Art, UK)
                              Regan Mandryk (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC, Canada)
                              Carsten Magerkurth (Fraunhofer IPSI, Germany)
                              Matthew Chalmers (University of Glasgow, UK)
           URL:  

This workshop will explore how emerging sensor technologies can be used to create new playful ubiquitous applications. It will focus in particular on how the inherent uncertainties of sensing technologies can be deliberately exploited as part of games and entertainment, rather than being seen as a problem to be solved or ‘swept away under the carpet’.

The workshop will be structured around a series of subgroup discussions each of which will take one sensing technology, one playing application and one design approach, and will produce a ‘design pitch’ to be presented back to the workshop as a whole.

BACKGROUND

Ubiquitous computing employs a wide variety of sensing technologies to capture rich and dynamic information about people and environments so as support reactive, embedded and contextually aware applications. There is a bewildering array of sensing technologies available including global positioning systems, video-tracking, load-sensing, ultrasonic tracking, embedded accelerometers, light sensors, sound sensors, electrostatic field sensors, pressure sensors and many others.

A common issue in using these technologies is their inherent unpredictability. Compared to familiar input devices such as keyboards, mice and joysticks, ubiquitous sensing technologies often deliver uncertain results – their range may be unclear, their measurements may be noisy, they may be subject to interference, or it may be difficult to reliably derive descriptions of high-level human activities from low-level sensor data that they provide.

These uncertainties raise new challenges for application designers, especially with regard to user interface design. However, we suggest that they also present new design opportunities, especially for artistic and playful applications such as art installations, performances and games, which are becoming increasingly visible applications of ubiquitous computing. Such applications might deliberately exploit uncertainty, ambiguity and the seams in technologies to create engaging and provocative experiences.

This workshop will bring together researchers who are developing sensing technologies with the designers of playful applications – artists, product designers and games designers – to exchange perspectives and to engage in a series of focused design sessions based upon specific combinations of technologies and applications.

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE

The workshop will involve several focused discussions in subgroups, each of which will take:

• an emerging sensing technology
• a playful application area
• a design approach or framework

and will work up an outline ‘design pitch’ for a specific playful application that makes an innovative and engaging use of the sensing technology – and in particular the copes with or even better, exploits the uncertainties in the sensing technology.

The workshop organizers will act as facilitators, guiding the subgroups and ensuring that they remain on focus. Each group will pitch its ideas back to the other groups as part of a final discussion. The overall workshop will be structured as follows:

• one and a half hours of introduction and initial presentations of short papers on the technologies, application areas and design frameworks;
• four hours focused design sessions in subgroups (including lunch);
• one and a half hours of final presentation of pitches and discussion.

After the workshop the organisers will produce an archive website for dissemination of the original inputs and a summary of the final outputs.

IMORTANT DATES

Submission deadline for two page position papers: July 30th
Notification deadline: August 9th 2004

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Participants should submit a position paper describing a sensing technology, a playful application or a design approach. Each position paper should be no more than two pages in length and should be in ACM SIGCHI format (www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chipubform). Papers should be submitted in PDF format on or before 30th July to Steve Benford (sdb@cs.nott.ac.uk) with a subject field “Ubicomp 2004 Playful Workshop submission”.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This workshop is supported by the Equator project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Integrated project on Pervasive Games (iPerG), funded by the European Commission.

[top]

W4. Ubicomp Privacy: Current Status and Future Directions

           Organizers: John Canny (University of California at Berkeley, USA)
                              Jason Hong (University of California at Berkeley, USA)
                              Alessandro Acquisti (Carnegie Mellon University,USA)
                              Marc Langheinrich (ETH, Zurich)
           URL:

The main goals of this workshop are to review the current state of ubicomp privacy; to share actual experiences in designing, implementing, deploying, and evaluating systems; and to sketch out a roadmap of future directions that we as designers, researchers, and developers should be heading in.

Papers should be submitted to in PDF or MS Word format on or before July 26, 2004 to privacyworkshop@guir.berkeley.edu . It is recommended that authors limit their submissions to no more than 4 pages, A4 or letter size. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by August 02 2004 .

Areas of interest to this workshop include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• What kinds of design methods are most effective for understanding the privacy concerns of a given community, especially while early in the design process?
• What kinds of tools are useful here for prototyping and implementing privacy-sensitive systems?
• What progress is needed in core technologies such as cryptography, trusted systems, AI inference and user modeling to implement better privacy-sensitive systems?
• What incentives work best for ubicomp systems? How can weaker parties (individual users) respond to organizations' desire for information? How should this shape design?
• What are the best methods for evaluating privacy concerns? What kinds of qualitative approaches work well?
• What are end-users' conceptions of privacy and how do they shape their attitude towards ubicomp technologies? How do they change over time, as they use and become more familiar with systems?

This workshop will last for 1 full day and will be limited to 20 participants (not including the workshop organizers) to enable lively and productive discussions. Participants will be invited on the basis of position papers. Such position papers should be no longer than 4 pages excluding references, and they will be selected based on their originality, technical merit and topical relevance.

The workshop will be organized into panels and breakout sessions. Depending on the submitted position papers, the workshop will consist of 3 to 4 panels. Each panel lasts about an hour, and includes presentation of 5 or 6 position papers that share a similar topic, followed by organizer-moderated discussions. Also in the afternoon, there will be breakout sessions lasting about 1.5 to 2 hours, followed by reports to a plenary session. In addition, coffee breaks and lunch will serve as opportunities for informal discussion. To the extent possible, participants will have lunch together within short walking distance of the workshop location.

This workshop builds on two previous workshops at Ubicomp run by some of the current organizers: The first workshop was titled "Socially-Informed Design of Privacy-Enhancing Solutions in Ubiquitous Computing" at UBICOMP 2002 and the second is "Ubicomp communities: Privacy as boundary negotiation" at UBICOMP 2003.

Please address all correspondence about the workshop to: privacyworkshop@guir.berkeley.edu

[top]

W5. Giving Help at a Distance

           Organizers: Peter Tolmie (XRCE Grenoble, France)
                              Antonietta Grasso (XRCE Grenoble, France)
                              Jacki O'Neill (XRCE Grenoble, France)
                              Stefania Castellani (XRCE Grenoble, France)
                              Andy Crabtree (University of Nottingham, UK)
                              Boriana Koleva (University of Nottingham, UK)
           URL: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/work-
                              practices/workshopcall.html

Xerox Research Centre Europe's Work Practice Technology Group and the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University are together organising a workshop at UbiComp 2004, on Tuesday 7th September at Nottingham University, UK.

The workshop is entitled: 'Giving Help at a Distance: Ubiquitous Computing to Support Remote Problem-Solving'.

We would like to invite the submission of position papers from researchers in the area of ubiquitous computing and mixed reality who have a particular interest in both studying and developing technology in support of remote problem resolution across a wide range of application areas, including the office, the home, and mobile environments. Contributions from those who are already using work-practice studies to inform their research, or who have an active interest in doing so, will be especially welcome.

Position papers can be addressed to topics including:

• Understandings that emerge from work practice studies of the fundamental interactions carried on in remote collaboration where these may have relevance to problem solving, including problem visualization and intervention.
• Critical design issues for mixed reality revealed by studies of existing work practice.
• User acceptance and accomplishing the fit with existing practices, with particular attention to deriving requirements for transparency where equipment might otherwise be deemed to be invasive.
• Understanding what differences there are between technological support for remote interaction between experts, and where an expert may need to guide an 'unskilled' person remotely.
• Understanding also what differences may accrue to two-party or multi-party interactions using mixed reality technologies.

Further information on the call can be accessed at http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/work-practices/workshopcall.html.

Papers should not exceed two sides of A4 paper and should be submitted electronically to peter.tolmie@xrce.xerox.com no later than 26th July 2004.

Authors of accepted papers will be notified on 2nd August 2004.

[top]

W6. 2nd International Workshop on Ubiquitous Systems for
        Supporting Social Interaction and Face-to-Face
        Communication in Public Spaces

           Organizers: Harry Brignull (University of Sussex, UK)
                              Tanzeem Choudhury (Intel Research, Seattle, USA)
                              Shahram Izadi (University of Nottingham, UK)
                              Volodymyr Kindratenko (National Center for
                                                            Supercomputing Applications, IL, USA)
                              Norbert Streitz (Fraunhofer IPSI, Germany)
           URL: http://www.dynamo-interactive.com/ubicomp04/

Public spaces, such as conferences, museums, cafes, and workplaces present new opportunities for ubiquitous computing technologies. Such spaces represent important venues for social interaction and the informal exchange of knowledge, providing a place to find others who share common or complementary interests. As discovered in last year's workshop, we have only begun to understand the challenges and questions associated with situating ubicomp technologies within such spaces.

For example, how do people find others who share their interests and develop their social networks? How can technologies provide richer ways for people to communicate and engage with others? How can the serendipitous exchanges and interactions that often occur within public spaces be supported? How and where does the interaction between people happen? In view of these questions, the proposed workshop seeks to bring together like-minded researchers and practitioners to better understand the design, development and evaluation of ubiquitous systems for supporting social activities and social interaction in public spaces.

The main subject of the proposed workshop is the development and use of ubiquitous systems to support social interaction in public spaces and at public events, such as museums, conferences, trade shows, etc. Topics relevant to this subject include:

• Applications: existing commercial and experimental applications, e.g., ubiquitous systems in museums, at public gatherings, etc.
• Pattern Recognition: how to learn socially relevant features from raw sensor data and build computational models of the dynamics.
• User interface: how to provide a simple and intuitive user interface for novice users to a complex system.
• Presentation: how various types of information acquired by the ubiquitous system can be effectively presented to the end users.
• Scalability: how to accommodate a large number of simultaneous users at a potentially unlimited number of locations.
• Deployment: how to package the system so that it can be easily deployable in an environment that is not prepared for such type of applications.
• Reliability: how to build robust and reliable systems that can guarantee at least some minimal number of services.
• Privacy: if the system "knows" everything about everybody currently present in the tracked ubiquitous environment, what are the privacy concerns and how best to address them.
• Security: what happens if the system is defeated and the intruders gain access to all the accumulated knowledge. How to prevent this from happening.
• Social aspects: how the technology can be used to help forming social networks and how it can be used to study them.
• Evaluation: how the services provided by a system can be evaluated, what are the evaluation criteria, what does it mean to build a practical and useful system.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Participants are asked to submit position papers, no more than 6 pages in length, consisting of the author's vision and/or experience of the design and usage of ubiquitous systems for public spaces. Proposals for demonstrations and posters are welcome.

Position papers should be submitted electronically to kindr@ncsa.uiuc.edu on or before July 26th as a PDF or MS Word file formatted according to the ACM
SIG Proceedings Format (http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/). Papers will be selected based on their originality, merit and topical relevance. A review panel consisting of the workshop organizers and external reviewers will be assembled to evaluate the submissions. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by August 2nd, 2004. Accepted papers will be included in the workshop's proceedings.

IMPORTANT DATES

Position Paper due date: July 26th
Notification of Acceptance date: August 2nd
Camera-ready version due date: August 27th

[top]

W7. UbiHealth 2004: 3rd International Workshop on Ubiquitous
        Computing for Pervasive Healthcare Applications

           Organizers: Tim Adlam (Royal United Hospital, Bath, UK)
                              Howard Wactlar (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA)
                              Ilkka Korhonen (VTT Information Technology, Finland)
           URL: http://www.pervasivehealthcare.com/ubicomp2004/

The UbiHealth 2004 workshop is focused on bringing ubiquitous computing technology to bear on challenges in health and social care. It includes technology to support people at home or in care facilities, and to broadly improve the delivery of health and social care. The aim of pervasive care is to deliver continuous, appropriate and effective aids so that the recipient is provided with an improved quality of life. This spans assisting people with cognitive, perceptual and mobility impairments independent of age. If these aids are used by the care provider, the goal is further to deliver that care more efficiently, less stressfully, and always with compassion. The aim of the workshop is to build a global community of researchers who are working in this combined context. This year our emphasis will be to examine real world applications of ubiquitous computing to health and social care, considering how it can be introduced, evaluated and delivered for the benefit patients and caregivers within government regulatory frameworks. The workshop will explore these issues through the presentation of papers describing the participant's experiences with early deployment, their visions for future research and application opportunities, and a panel question and answer session. Experts will be invited to initiate the panel discussion with a talk on ethical issues.

THEMES & QUESTIONS (but are not limited to):

• New technologies and applications
  Participants will become aware of new technologies that are emerging, available and being applied in the field. Intended to facilitate collaboration between researchers developing similar technologies and inform them of developments outside their immediate field that may be relevant to their own work.
• Hospital records and pervasive information systems
  How to manage policy-driven access. Infrastructure for mobile devices for displaying patient records and detailed images on-demand.
• Community care
  How the infirmed can be effectively supported at home including personal aids, observational and alerting devices. How can relevant health data be collected and suitable care be delivered remotely.
• Residential assisted-living care
  Safety, monitoring and alerting systems and devices that can be integrated and deployed in these living spaces and how they are best presented to the users.
• Wellness, fitness and preventive care
  Longitudinal personal monitoring and evaluation of one's own condition, maintaining health, fitness and regulating exercise and diet. Storing the information over a lifetime and accessing it for evaluation.
• Ethical concerns
  Existing ethical frameworks that are appropriate and how their application impacts the methods currently used by field researchers. Determining appropriate ethical procedures for the evaluation of equipment by people with cognitive disabilities.
• In-context evaluation
  Evaluation of devices and systems by those with physical and cognitive impairments to influence future development.
• Service delivery
  How these technologies and services can be deployed, delivered and maintained for their end-users. Considerations from custom installations to off-the-shelf consumer products.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

• Ten to fifteen participants will be invited based on a position paper submitted prior to the workshop.
• Each position paper should be two to five pages in length and consist of the author's vision of the use of pervasive computing in healthcare, current work, expectations towards the workshop, and the author's research activities including a short bio of the author(s).
• Position papers should be formatted according to the standard Springer Verlag format and submitted in PDF format. A template file can be found at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html
• Papers should be submitted to the workshop program committee by email to Illka Korhonen [ilkka.korhonen@vtt.fi].
• This workshop website contains accepted submissions, workshop details, and the program. The results of the workshop will also be posted here.
  

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for paper submissions: July 26th
Date of acceptance notification: August 2nd

[top]

W8. UbiSys 2004: International Workshop on System Support for
        Ubiquitous Computing

           Organizers: Manuel Roman (DoCoMo Labs, USA)
                              Christian Becker (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
                              Roy H. Campbell (University of Illinois, USA)
                              Adrian Friday (University of Lancaster, UK)
           URL: http://ubisys.cs.uiuc.edu/

This workshop offers the opportunity to bring together researchers and practitioners involved in the development of systems support for general purpose ubiquitous computing environments. It provides a forum for exploring most recent research and findings in this area, comparing results, exchanging experiences, and promoting collaboration and cooperation among researchers in the field. The workshop aims at identifying the common abstractions and patterns found in the existing systems, as well as the core low-level services that are needed to build general-purpose ubiquitous computing environments. The workshop focuses on different aspects of system and middleware research and the challenges involved when applying them to support ubiquitous computing.

TOPICS

The workshop focuses on presenting state of the art and emerging research, as well as experience reports, in the following topics:

• System support infrastructures and services
• Middleware for ubiquitous computing
• Architectural structure, design decisions and philosophies
• Interoperability and wide scale deployment

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Paper submissions must be 5-8 pages long in LNCS format and have to cover one of the topics listed above. Furthermore, we will prioritize experience papers describing lessons learnt from built systems, including information about approaches that did and did not work, unexpected results, common abstractions, abstraction mapping among different systems, common building blocks present in different architectures, and metrics for evaluating ubiquitous computing infrastructures.

Submissions must be blinded for peer review (no author names and affiliations and no obvious references). Blinded submissions, in PDF format, must be emailed to ubisys@cs.uiuc.edu no later than July 26, 2004. Please include authors' names and affiliations in the email body only. You will receive a confirmation email within 24 hours. If you do not receive a confirmation for your submission, please email ubisys@cs.uiuc.edu.

Submissions will be reviewed blindly and selected based on their originality, merit, and relevance to the workshop. All accepted papers must be presented during the workshop.

Please visit http://ubisys.cs.uiuc.edu or email ubisys@cs.uiuc.edu if you have any questions.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission .......... July 26, 2004
Acceptance Notifications .. August 2, 2004
Camera-ready version ...... August 17, 2004
Workshop Date ............. September 7, 2004

[top]

W9. UbiComp in the Urban Frontier

           Organizers: Eric Paulos (Intel Research, Seattle, USA)
                              Ken Anderson (Intel Research, Seattle, USA)
                              Anthony Townsend (New York University, USA)
           URL: http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/UbiComp2004

UbiComp in the Urban Frontier is a one day workshop to be held at the 6th Annual Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Nottingham, England. This workshop will be focused on understand how the rapidly emerging fabric of mobile and wireless computing will influence, disrupt, expand, and be integrated into the social patterns existent within our public urban landscapes.

There is little doubt that laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones have enabled computing to become a truly mobile experience. With these new computing devices, we emerge from our office, work, and school into the urban fabric of our cities and towns. We often view these urban areas as in-between spaces obstacles to traverse from one place to another. However, not only do we spend a significant amount of time in such urban landscapes, but these spaces contribute to our own formulation of identity, community, and self. Much of the richness of life transpires within our own urban settings. Similarly, there is a growing body of work within the field of social computing, particularly those involving social networking such as Tribe, Friendster, and Live Journal. At the intersection of mobile and social computing, we seek to provoke discussion aimed at understanding this emerging space of computing within and across our public urban frontiers.

While toting a laptop around a city may seem a like an example of such city computing, the urban frontiers workshop will be more deeply concerned with addressing several sub-themes, including (but not limited to):

• Place What is the meaning of various public places? What cues do we use to interpret place and how will Urban Computing re-inform and alter our perception of various places?
• Community Who are the people we share our city with? How do they influence our urban landscape? Where do we belong in this social space and how do new technologies enable and disrupt feelings of community and belonging?
• Infrastructure How will buildings, subways, sidewalks, parking meters, and other conventional, physical artifacts on the urban landscape be used and re-appropriated by emerging technology tools?
• Traversal What is a path or route through a city using these new urban tools? How will navigation and movement, either throughout an entire city or within a small urban space, be influenced by the introduction of Urban Computing technology?

The timing of the Urban Frontiers workshop is aimed at capturing a unique, synergistic moment expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, and widespread influence of wireless technologies across our urban landscapes. The United Nations has recently reported that 48 percent of the world's population currently live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark by 2007, thus marking the first time in history that the world will have more urban residents than rural residents. Current studies project Bluetooth-enabled devices to reach 1.4 billion units in 2005 alone. Nearly 400 million new mobile phones are scheduled to be sold worldwide this year alone. WiFi hardware is being deployed at the astonishing rate of one every 4 seconds globally.

We are gathering for an event to expose, deconstruct, and understand the challenges of this newly emerging moment in urban history and its dramatic influence on technology usage and adoption. We invite position papers on topics related to these themes.

Selection of workshop participants and presentations will be based on refereed submissions. Authors are invited to submit a two-page position statement in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format. Position statements are encouraged to be provocative and will be used during the workshop to guide and disrupt our views of the urban frontiers. They may include personal experiences, performances, studies, or individual urban projects. Position statements should have only one author, and should include a brief biography. Further submission details will be posted on the workshop website in the coming week.

Please email submissions in PDF format to paulos@intel-research.net no later than 26 July 2004.

[top]

W10. Ubiquitous Display Environments

             Organizers: Gerd Kortuem (University of Lancaster, UK)
                                Antonio Krüger (Saarland University, Germany)
                                Alios Ferscha (University of Linz, Austria)
             URL: http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/workshops/ubidisplay04

IMPORTANT DATES

- Jul 26, 2004: Deadline for submissions
- Aug 2, 2004: Notification of acceptance
- Sep 7, 2004: Workshop at Ubicomp 2004

DESCRIPTION

Recent years have seen a dramatic improvement in display technology.Although not as pronounced as the advances in computer processing and memory capabilities, it has nevertheless created a situation where displays - ranging in form factor from very small to very large - are available at relative low cost and are being used for everything from digital picture frames to building-sized billboards. The large scale deployment and use of displays in public (airports, train stations, etc.) and semi-public spaces (home, hospital, etc.) raises important questions in the areas of human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, distributed systems, and networking.

This workshop intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines with the goal to identify and discuss issues related to the design, implementation, use and evaluation of biquitous display environments. The immediate objective is to foster a multifaceted investigation; the ultimate goal is to define a research agenda for the area as a whole and to stimulate new research initiatives. A particular focus of this workshop is to investigate the implications of new display technologies for system design and interaction.

The scope of interest includes but is not limited to:

• Novel display technologies
• Interaction techniques for ubiquitous display environments
• Applications and scenarios
• Toolkits and authoring tools
• General methods and guidelines
• Multi-display environments

FORMAT

The workshop is planned to bring together 10-15 people with various backgrounds and interests. We welcome participants from all disciplines that are related to ubiquitous display environments, including but not limited to engineering, human-computer interaction, industrial design, and economics. We are particularly keen on attracting people from industry as well as academic.

Prospective participants will be requested to submit possible topics for discussion. Communication between participants will be facilitated prior to the workshop, via e-mail, to begin discussion of the workshop topics. To maximize information and idea exchange and foster collaboration, we plan to spend most of the time on discussions rather than presentations. The primary activities at the workshop will take place in small working groups made up of 3-4 people.

SUBMISSIONS

The participants will be selected on the basis of a submitted paper (up to 6 pages in Springer LNCS format) describing their interest and experience in the field, or ongoing research. Submissions will be reviewed by the workshop organizers and outside experts.

ORGANIZERS

- Alois Ferscha (University of Linz, Austria)
- Gerd Kortuem (Lancaster University, UK)
- Antonio Krüger (Saarland University, Germany)

FURTHER INFORMATION

Workshop website: http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/workshops/ubidisplay04

Please contact:

Gerd Kortuem
Computing Department
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4YR, UK
email: kortuem@comp.lancs.ac.uk
web: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~kortuem

[top]

W11. When mobile, i-TV and web interfaces meet in the space of
           communication between users Cancelled

              Organizers: Anxo Cereijo Roibás (University of Brighton, UK)
                                Monica Chong (Yahoo! Inc. London, UK)
                                Riccardo Sala (HCI Designer)
                                Daria Loi (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia)
             URL: http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/staff/anxo/Ubicomp2004.htm

KEYWORDS

Ubiquitous communication, mobile, web interfaces, wireless communication, mobile communication, internet

ABSTRACT

This workshop presents an overview of feasible scenarios where mobile and web interfaces intersect in the space of communication between users, as well as illustrates how well designed integrated interfaces system between technologies may compliment mobile lifestyles. Although the technology is converging to make ubiquitous communication possible, HCI innovation in this area should arise in order to make an impact in its popularity and wide spread usage.

TOPICS

Rapid technological innovations in how we communicate have spurred a trend toward scenarios where ubiquitous communication scenarios are more common. With the advent of wireless communication network standards (such as 3G, 4G and blue tooth, WiFi) and the ever increasing adaptation toward a nomadic life style; communication between individuals, groups and communities now occur over networks and devices that are most suitable for an individual's location, time, and environment. People choose methods of communication with capabilities that best meet a specific circumstances. For example, wireless handsets have mobile and geographic qualities, such as context sensitivity, which make it ideal for those travelling and seeking local information; where as a person who is stationery at a workstation may find emailing or instant messaging on a key board more convenient.

As a result of so many choices to communicate, an eclectic system of devices (PC's, laptops, i-TV, mobile phones, PDA's, tablets, etc) and applications (such as, email, chat, instant messaging, SMS, MMS, etc) has emerged. This technological convergence of communication devices poses HCI issues where web and mobile interfaces intersect.

Historically, the popularity of the web based applications for communicating and the wide spread usage of mobile phones grew independently; however new innovations in technology, have converged functionality. Interface design must also converge and begin to address how the continuity of the user experience between these two mediums will fuse and avoid incompatibility. For instance, previously, if users of these two devices wanted to share photos with another, they may have had to take a photo with a digital camera, then had to wait till they were near a computer with internet connection to download pictures, then post them on the web. With the convergence of these technologies, however, it is possible for users to take, edit, send, and post photos on the internet, (and visa versa) or broadcast it on i-TV, all in one continuous processes on a single device. The challenge is to design interfaces that take into account a continuous user experience across mediums.

Innovative design patterns, human factor studies, behavioral theories and evaluation techniques in ubiquitous communication scenarios must arise in order for these technologies to enjoy wide spread popularity and usage.Topics are listed as blow:

Mobile scenarios

• Brief historic overview of wireless devices and internet applications for communicating
• Possible scenarios of communication technology convergence: an overview wireless devices and internet based applications
• Cultural scenarios: the nomadic culture and its development in the different everyday life environments
• Visual Identity and consistency

A new context of design

• Graphical issues: screen sizes restrictions, information visualization, icons design, colours, lettering
• Information architecture issues (searching vs browsing, layers of in depth information, users input and tailored output)
• Service design (the importance of personalised services, user profiling, adaptive interfaces, location based services)

Context sensitive Services

• Definition and overview
• Humanising interfaces
  - an awareness of why context sensitive services provide a value added performance in wireless communication
  - an overview of the different adaptive interfaces that can be implemented on mobile applications
  - an understanding of how the user centred design principles above can be applied to wireless applications and web in order to find the right interaction models

AUDIENCE

The workshop is intended for managers of HCI projects working in the web and wireless industry (telecom companies, i-TV broadcasters, device manufacturers, service providers, etc.) or industrial designers, event organisers, teachers and researchers in HCI, human factors practitioners, interface evaluators and testers, and for HF academics and students with interests in human computer interaction and mobile interaction. Although no particular skills are required, basic knowledge of HCI design issues is recommended.

The workshop intends to provide the attendees with:

• A reflection about the wireless technology development and potentialities and its intersection with internet technologies;
• An understanding of how the nomadic culture is affecting (and can affect in the future) our everyday life;
• An overview of what applications for ubiquitous contexts are and why they imply a specific design approach (analysis of the situations of use);
• A review of guidelines for designing usable, useful, enjoyable and profitable multi-platform applications (graphical- , information architecture- , user interface- and service-design issues) as well as the most appropriate evaluation techniques;
• An awareness of why context sensitive services provide add value to the performance in wireless communication;
• An overview of different adaptive interfaces that can be implemented on applications in a multi-platform environment;
• An understanding of how the user centred design principles above can be applied to wireless applications (mainly for leisure and entertainment) in order to find the right interaction models;
• An analysis of the strategic revenue potentialities of ubiquitous communication both for end users and service providers;
• An understanding of how privacy is regulated by law and must be guaranteed;
• A reflection about the problematic of usable multi-modal interfaces, relevant multi-access services, an efficient multi-platform architecture and a coherent multi-channel identity.

FORMAT

The workshop is designed as a one-day relevant theoretical input with demonstrations, practical activities (tests and experience sessions) and group discussion. A half-day workshop, while less desirable, would also be possible, although it would imply a reduction of the content.
Due to the interactive format of some sections of the workshop, a group no bigger than 30 participants will be suitable to positive share knowledge and experiences. However, if the interest in this topic significantly increases and request to participate warrant, then
it would be possible to consider reformatting the workshop to accommodate larger numbers.

In the experience sessions, the attendees, divided in small groups, will be asked to identify situations of use, information and communication needs of different target groups of the same given mobile application scenario. The results will be discussed and compared in order to gather an understanding of the need of information differentiation and, further more, personalisation, providing new business opportunities.

Every instructor will actively interact with the audience to perform relevant exercises and hands-on experiences that will be useful for the whole group debate.

PARTICIPATION

Workshop candidates are requested to send a position paper (no longer than 4 A4 pages) about a research, a study, a reference on a product or application they have been involved with. before the 23/07/04 to a.c.roibas@brighton.ac.uk.
Participants will be selected on the basis of their interest in and familiarity with the topic.

DEADLINES

• 23/07/04 Workshop submission deadline.
• 02/08/04 Workshop acceptance/rejection deadline
  - Note that the authors of accepted workshop papers can register with a reduced fee, but the deadline for early registration is 05/08/04.
• 30/10/03 Authors submit to organizers camera-ready versions of papers. Workshop papers will be published with the Conference proceedings on CD-ROM.
• 07/11/04 Workshop at UBICOMP 2004.
  

[top]

W12. Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning and
          Management

             Organizers: Jadwiga Indulska (University of Queensland, Australia)
                                David De Roure (University of Southampton, UK)
             URL: http://pace.dstc.edu.au/UbiComp2004_ContextWorkshop.html

There is growing interest in the development of context-aware ubiquitous systems which can support seamless computing for mobile users in integrated, heterogeneous environments built from a variety of network technologies, sensors and computing devices. In addition, there is growing interest in context-aware applications that intelligently support user tasks by acting autonomously on behalf of users in these integrated, ubiquitous environments. However, there is also increasing recognition of challenges associated with context-awareness, including barriers associated with scalability and usability and novel software engineering problems. This workshop focuses on context models that provide abstractions to foster context reuse and ease of programming, and support development of scalable, robust, reliable and usable context-aware applications. The workshop also responds to the growing popularity of ontology principles and methods in ubiquitous computing systems, and examines the role that these can play in context modelling and reasoning about context.

This workshop offers the opportunity to bring together researchers involved in the development of context models and context-aware applications for ubiquitous computing environments. It aims at exploring the most recent research results and ongoing work in the areas of context modelling, reasoning about context, and management of context information. Special emphasis will be placed on presenting state of the art and emerging research as well as experience reports from the following research areas:

• formal or disciplined approaches to modelling context
• semantics of context models and expressiveness of different context modelling approaches
• ontology-based approaches to context modelling and reasoning
• comparison of different approaches to context modelling and reasoning, including ontology-based and alternative approaches
• advanced issues in context modelling and reasoning, including:
  - issues of imperfect context information, including ambiguity and incompleteness
  - issues related to temporal and spatial information
• distribution and structuring of context information
• scalability, integration and reuse of context models
• interoperability of context modelling approaches
• evolution of context models and versioning issues
• experiences with using context models to build ubiquitous computing applications

The workshop will be organized into panels and breakout sessions. The results of the breakout sessions will be presented in a plenary session at the conclusion of the workshop.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

This workshop will last for 1 full day and will be limited to 20 participants to enable productive discussions. Participants will be invited on the basis of position papers, which will be selected based on their originality and contribution to the workshop topics. Position papers should address at least one of the workshop topics and be in the form of a technical paper, experience report, or work-in-progress report. The papers will be refereed by the workshop Program Committee. We are seeking cooperation from an international journal to publish selected extended workshop papers.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Each position paper should be no more than 6 pages in length and should be in ACM SIGCHI format (http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chipubform/). The paper should show the author's vision on some of the workshop topics. Papers should be submitted in Postscript or PDF format on or before 26 July 2004 to Ted McFadden (mcfadden@dstc.edu.au) with a subject field "Ubicomp 2004 Workshop submission". In addition, the authors are requested to submit the title and a short abstract of the paper by 21 July 2004.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission: 26 July 2004
Acceptance Notification: 2 August 2004

ORGANISERS

Co-Chairs
Jadwiga Indulska (The University of Queensland)
David De Roure (University of Southampton)

Program Committee
Christian Becker (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
John Davis (IBM TJ Watson Research Center)
Ted McFadden (DSTC, Australia)
Karen Henricksen (DSTC, Australia)
Jadwiga Indulska (The University of Queensland)
Paddy Nixon (University of Strathclyde)
David De Roure (University of Southampton)
Albrecht Schmidt (LMU Munich)
Peter Steenkiste (Carnegie Mellon)
Thomas Strang (German Aerospace Center)