Call For Papers:
Workshop on IUI4DR – Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions
(in conjunction with IUI ’08)
Canary Islands, Spain
January 13, 2008
http://research.ihost.com/iui4dr
Organisers:
* Sheetal K. Agarwal, IBM Research, India
* John Canny, UC Berkeley, USA
* Apala Lahiri Chavan, Human Factors International, India
* Nitendra Rajput, IBM Research, India
Advisory Committee:
* Michelle X Zhou, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Program Committee:
* Ravin Balakrishnan, University of Toronto, Canada
* Michael Best, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
* Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft Research, USA
* Gary Geunbae Lee, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea
* Sougata Mukherjea, IBM Research, India
* Oscar Murillo, Microsoft, Colombia
* Shimei Pan, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
* Pearl Pu, EPFL, Switzerland
* Anxo Cereijo Roibas, Vodafone, UK
* Andy Smith, Thames Valley University, UK
* Andrew Thatcher, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Theme:
Information Technology has had significant impact on the society and has
touched all aspects of our lives. So far, computers and expensive devices
have fueled this growth. It has resulted in several benefits to the
society.
The challenge now is to take this success of IT to its next level where IT
services can be accessed by masses. “Masses” here mean the people who
(a) are not yet IT literate and/or
(b) do not have the purchase power to use the current IT delivery mechanisms (PC centric model) and/or
(c) do not find current IT solutions and services relevant to their life or business.
Interestingly, a huge portion of the world’s population falls in this category. To enable the IT access to such masses, this workshop aims to focus on easy-to-use and affordable, yet powerful, user interfaces that can be used by this population.
The workshop aims to bring together researchers in the industry and the academia to focus on user interface issues related to designing interfaces for this population.
Topics of Interest:
Considering the social, cultural, educational and economic diversity of
developing regions, the challenge is to develop appropriate and effective
interfaces/interaction techniques that will enable these users to access
services that currently remain elusive to them. The focus areas of the
workshop include, but are not limited to:
* Novel and effective interfaces that reduces the cognitive load on the
users who usually operate in chaotic environments:
People in developing regions often would access these interfaces
in noisy and crowded surroundings. Providing privacy through the
intelligent UI and handling the noise would be a challenge for such
interfaces.
* Interfaces for semi-literate and illiterate users:
Iconic interfaces, speech-based interfaces and multimodal
interfaces offer promising solutions to overcome literacy issues.
Any other interface that does not need language skills will be of
interest to this workshop.
* Designs tailored to factor social and cultural issues:
If an interface technology is culturally not acceptable to a
society, it may not have acceptability. So interfaces that reflect the
culture of the society are bound to be promising.
* Shared user interfaces and devices:
People developing regions seldom own a computing device on an
individual basis. Access to applications or services is mainly through
kiosks or phones. Most families now own a cell phone that is shared
among family members.
* Cost-effective interfaces:
Since the purchase power of this society is not high, expensive
and sophisticated interfaces may not be the right choice. Intelligent
use of cost-effective devices will therefore be more acceptable
for this population.
We seek original, unpublished papers in the following three categories:
(a) Position papers that describe novel ideas that can lead to interesting
research directions, (b) Early results or work-in-progress that has significant promise, or, (c) Full papers. Papers should be of 4-6 pages in length in the IUI publication format. The LaTeX (http://www.iuiconf.org/LaTeXclassfile.zip) and Microsoft Word (http://www.iuiconf.org/chi2008pubsformat.doc) templates are available through these links. All submissions should be in the PDF format and should be submitted electronically through the IUI4DR Easychair Conference site (http://www.easychair.org/iui4dr08). Since the submission deadlines are dependent on the IUI conference, we will not be able to grant any extensions in any circumstances.
Since the workshop also aims to be a meeting point for researchers working in this area, atleast one author of accepted papers should attend the workshop to present their work.
Demos:
In addition to the papers, participants are also invited to submit interesting demonstrations of working systems. These demos should reflect the usability of the systems for developing regions. A one page description of the system should be submitted through the workshop submission site by November 11, 2007. The description should also provide any equipment that is required for the demo. Needless to say, if accepted, the demonstrators should be able to travel to the workshop for presenting their work.
Key Dates
* Paper/Demo Submission Deadline: Nov 11, 2007 (11:59 pm Spain Time)
* Notification: Dec 01, 2007
* Early Registration Deadline: Dec 03, 2007
* Workshop: Jan 13, 2008.
Websites
* IUI4DR Workshop: http://research.ihost.com/iui4dr
* IUI ’08 Conference : http://www.iuiconf.org/
