Nov 30, 2010

Call for Participation - Large Displays in Urban Life: From Exhibition Halls to Media Facades (CHI 2011 Workshop)

Large Displays in Urban Life: From Exhibition Halls to Media Facades 
CHI 2010 Workshop May 7 or 8, 2011 (final date to be announced)


Call for Participation
Large interactive displays are now common in public urban life. Museums, libraries, public plazas, and architectural facades already take advantage of interactive technologies for visual and interactive information presentation. Researchers and practitioners from such varied disciplines as art, architecture, design, HCI, and media theory have started to explore the potential and impact of large display installations in public urban settings.


This workshop aims to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners from different disciplines such as art, architecture, design, HCI, social sciences, and media theory to exchange insights on current research questions in the area. The workshop will focus on to the following topics: how to design large interactive display installations that promote engaging experiences and go beyond playful interaction, how different interaction models shape people’s experience in urban spaces, and how to evaluate their impact.


Workshop Goals & Topics
The goal of this one-day CHI 2011 workshop is to cross-fertilize insights from different disciplines, to establish a more general understanding of large interactive displays in public urban contexts, and to develop an agenda for future research directions in this area. Rather than focusing on paper presentations, this workshop aims to trigger active and dynamic group discussions around the following topics:


Beyond Playful Interaction
A number of studies found that large display installations invite for playful interaction but often fail to convey meaningful experiences related to content. This raises the following questions:
  • How can we design installations that endure people’s attention past the initial novelty effect and direct the interest toward the content?
  • What design strategies can be applied to promote an active individual and social exploration and discussion of the presented information?
Character of Interaction
A number of interaction techniques have been explored for large displays in public spaces ranging from interaction via cell phones, to direct-touch or full body interaction. We would like to discuss:
  • How do different interaction methods shape people’s experience of large display installations in urban spaces?
  • How do interaction methods differ from each other in terms of triggering interaction and engagement with the presented content?
Evaluation
Different quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied to evaluate people’s experience and use of large display installations in public spaces. During the workshop we would like to discuss:
  • How can we evaluate the "success" of large display installations in urban spaces?
  • How can particular aspects of public large display installations such as engagement be evaluated?
  • What kind of evaluation methods are most effective in different progress stages (design phase/installment phase)?
We see this workshop as an opportunity to start thinking about a general framework that can inform the design and evaluation of large interactive displays in different urban contexts. With a diverse research community present at the workshop we hope to come up with an agenda for future research directions in this area.

For more details on the workshop please refer to our extended abstract and workshop proposal.

Submission Details
Submit a position paper (maximum 4 pages) to largedisplaysinurbanlife@gmail.com by January 14, 2011 using the CHI extended abstract format. The paper should describe experiences, works in progress, or theories around designing and/or evaluating large interactive displays in public urban settings. We plan to explore approaches and insights from different disciplines to this topic so submissions from art, architecture, design, HCI, media theory, and social science are highly encouraged. We welcome all methodological approaches and techniques centered around the topic of large interactive displays in urban life.


At least one author of each accepted position paper needs to register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI conference itself.


Important Dates
Submission Deadline: January 14, 2011
Notification of acceptance: February 11, 2011
Workshop: May 7 or 8, 2011 (final date to be announced)

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Uta Hinrichs is a PhD candidate in computational media design at the Innovations in Visualization (InnoVis) research group of the University of Calgary, Canada, under the supervision of Sheelagh Carpendale. Her research focuses on the design and study of large display interfaces to support lightweight information exploration in walk-up-and-use scenarios
Nina Valkanova is doing her PhD at the interaction group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain under the supervision of Ernesto Arroyo. Her research interest focuses on the design of urban media facades exploring the intersections between scientific and artistic design knowledge.
Kai Kuikkaniemi is a project manager in Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. He is currently leading a national research project focusing on public displays. His earlier research has focused on exploring novel multiplayer game designs ranging from pervasive gaming to biosignal adaptive gaming.
Giulio Jacucci is a professor at the University of Helsinki at the Dept. of Computer Science and director of the Network Society Programme at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. He leads several interactional projects on interaction design and ubiquitous computing, and is co-founder of MultiTouch Ltd. a company commercializing products for multi-touch screens.
Sheelagh Carpendale is a Professor at the University of Calgary where she holds a Canada Research Chair: Information Visualization and an NSERC/iCORE/SMART Industrial Research Chair: Interactive Technologies. She directs the Innovations in Visualization (InnoVis) research group and her research focuses on information visualization, collaborative visualization, and large interactive displays.
Ernesto Arroyo holds an associate teaching position at the Dept. of Information and Communication Technologies of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra  (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain. He earned his PhD at MIT Media Lab in 2007. His research at the Interactive Technologies Group  focuses on interaction design, visualization, and user-centered interfaces, enabling and preserving the fluency of user engagement.

Thanks to Uta Hinrich for sending this my way!

Call for Papers - Child Computer Interaction: Workshop on UI Technologies and Educational Pedagogy, in conjunction with CHI 2011, Vancouver, May 7th or 8th

CALL FOR PAPERS 
Child Computer Interaction 
in conjunction with CHI 2011, Vancouver, Canada
May 7th or May 8th 2011

Topic: Given the emergence of Child Computer Interaction and the ubiquitous application of interactive technology as an educational tool, there is a need to explore how next generation HCI will impact education in the future. Educators are depending on the interaction communities and to deliver technologies that will improve and adapt learning to an ever- changing world. In addition to novel UI concepts, the HCI community needs to examine how these concepts can be matched to contemporary paradigms in educational pedagogy. The classroom is a challenging environment for evaluation, thus new techniques need to be established to prove the value of new HCI interactions in the educational space. This workshop provides a forum to discuss key HCI issues facing next generation education.

We invite authors to present position papers about potential design challenges and perspectives on how the community should handle the next generation of HCI in education. Topics of interest include:

  1.  Gestural input, multitouch, large displays, multi-display interaction, response systems

  2.  Mobile Devices/mobile & pervasive learning

  3.  Tangible, VR, AR & MR, Multimodal interfaces, universal design, accessibility

  4.  Console gaming, 3D input devices, 3D displays

  5.  Co-located interaction, presentations, tele-presence, interactive video

  6.  Child Computer Interaction, Educational Pedagogy, learner-centric, adaptive “smart” applications

  7.  Empirical methods, case studies, linking of HCI research with educational research methodology

  8. Usable systems to support learning and teaching: Ecology of learning, any where, anytime, (UX of cloud computing to support teaching and learning)

Submission: The deadline for workshop paper submissions is January 14, 2011. Interested researchers should submit a 4-page position paper in the ACM CHI adjunct proceedings style to the workshop management system. Acceptance notifications will be sent out February 20, 2011. The workshop will be held May 7 or May 8, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. Please note that at least one author of an accepted position paper must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI 2011conference.


Contact: Edward Tse, SMART Technologies, edwardtse@smarttech.com


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Edward Tse, SMART Technologiess
Johannes Schöning, DFKI GmbH
Yvonne Rogers, Pervasive Computing Laboratory, The Open University
Jochen Huber, Technische Universität Darmstadt
Max Mühlhäuser, Technische Universität Darmstadt
Lynn Marentette, Union County Public Schools, Wolfe School
Richard Beckwith, Intel

TuioKinect, by Martin Kaltenbrunner: "A simple TUIO hand gesture tracker for Kinect"

More Kinect from Martin Kaltenbrunner:


Martin Kaltenbrunner's description of TuioKinect:
"TuioKinect tracks simple hand gestures using the Kinect controller and sends control data based on the TUIO protocol. This allows the rapid creation of gesture enabled applications with any platform or environment that supports TUIO tuio.org/​ You can download the application from: code.google.com/​p/​tuiokinect/​ Music: Jabon Jabon by El Club de los Astronautas (Institut Fatima)"


I've played around with Tuio and OpenFrameworks, but it has been a while.  I can't wait until I have time to dig into this with a Kinect. I think this has great potential for supporting learning and communication among students with special needs.

RELATED/SOMEWHAT RELATED
TuioKinect:  TUIO Hand tracker for Kinect
Martin Kaltenbrenner, Tangible Interaction Frameworks 11/27/10
Therenect: Theremin for the Kinect! (via Marten Kaltenbrenner)
Xbox Kinect Interactive Puppet Prototype, from Theo Watson and Emily Bobeille, creators of Funky Forest
Hacked Kinect Multitouch using libFreenect and libTISCH (via Florian Echtler)

Therenect: Theremin for the Kinect! (via Martin Kaltenbrenner)

Yet another reason why I need to get a Kinect!

Martin Kaltenbrenner's video demonstrates how the Kinect can be transformed into a virtual Theremin.


Therenect - Kinect Theremin from Martin Kaltenbrunner on Vimeo.

Here's Martin's description of the Therenect:

"The Therenect is a virtual Theremin for the Kinect controller. It defines two virtual antenna points, which allow controlling the pitch and volume of a simple oscillator. The distance to these points can be controlled by freely moving the hand in three dimensions or by reshaping the hand, which allows gestures that are quite similar to playing an actual Theremin."

"This musical instrument has been developed by Martin Kaltenbrunner at the Interface Culture Lab at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. The software has been developed using the Open Frameworks and OpenKinect libraries.
"

Nov 29, 2010

International Conference on Multimodal Interaction: ICMI 2011 Call for Papers

The information below was taken from the website for the 13th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. I'm excited about the range of topics that the conference will cover.  I look forward to sharing more about the work of the members of this group on this blog in the future!  (I've highlighted the topics that interest me the most.)

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION CALL FOR PAPERS

The International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ICMI 2011, will take place in Alicante (Spain), November 14-18, 2011, just after the ICCV 2011 (in Barcelona, Spain). This is the thirteenth edition of the International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, which for the last two years joined efforts with the Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (ICMI-MLMI 2009 and 2010). Starting in this edition the conference uses the new, shorther name.

The new ICMI is the premium international forum for multimodal signal processing and multimedia human-computer interaction. The conference will focus on theoretical and empirical foundations, varied component technologies, and combined multimodal processing techniques that define the field of multimodal interaction analysis, interface design, and system development. ICMI 2011 will feature a single-track main conference which includes: keynote speakers, technical full and short papers (including oral and poster presentations), special sessions, demonstrations, exhibits and doctoral spotlight papers. The conference will be followed by workshops. The proceedings of ICMI 2011 will be published by ACM as part of their series of International Conference Proceedings and will be also distributed to the attendees in USB memory sticks.


Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Multimodal and multimedia interactive processing
    Multimodal fusion, multimodal output generation, multimodal interactive discourse and dialogue modeling, machine learning methods for multimodal interaction.
  • Multimodal input and output interfaces
    Gaze and vision-based interfaces, speech and conversational interfaces, pen-based and haptic interfaces, virtual/augmented reality interfaces, biometric interfaces, adaptive multimodal interfaces, natural user interfaces, authoring techniques, architectures.
  • Multimodal and interactive applications
    Mobile and ubiquitous interfaces, meeting analysis and meeting spaces, interfaces to media content and entertainment, human-robot interfaces and interaction, audio/speech and vision interfaces for gaming, multimodal interaction issues in telepresence, vehicular applications and navigational aids, interfaces for intelligent environments, universal access and assistive computing, multimodal indexing, structuring and summarization.
  • Human interaction analysis and modeling
    Modeling and analysis of multimodal human-human communication, audio-visual perception of human interaction, analysis and modeling of verbal and nonverbal interaction, cognitive modeling.
  • Multimodal and interactive data, evaluation, and standards
    Evaluation techniques and methodologies, annotation and browsing of multimodal and interactive data, standards for multimodal interactive interfaces.
  • Core enabling technologies
    Pattern recognition, machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition, gesture recognition.

Important dates

Workshops proposalMarch 1, 2011
Paper and demo submissionMay 13, 2011
Author notificationAugust 5, 2011
Camera ready deadlineSeptember 2, 2011
ConferenceNovember 14-16, 2011
WorkshopsNovember 17-18, 2011


General Chairs

Hervé Bourlard (Idiap)
Thomas S. Huang (Univ. of Illinois)
Enrique Vidal (Tech. Univ. of Valencia)

Program Chairs

Daniel Gatica-Perez (Idiap)
Louis-Philippe Morency (Univ. South. California)
Nicu Sebe (Univ. of Trento)

Demo Chairs

Kazuhiro Otsuka (NTT Comm. Sci. Lab.)
Jordi Vitrià (UB/CVC, Barcelona)

Workshop Chairs

Fernando de la Torre
(Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
Alejandro Jaimes (Yahoo! Research, Barcelona)

Publication Chair

Jose Oncina (Univ. of Alicante)

Student & Doctoral Spotlight Chair

Li Deng (Microsoft Research and Univ. of Washington)

Sponsorship Chair

Nuria Oliver (Telefónica I+D)

Publicity Chair

Helen Mei-Ling Meng (CUHK, Hong Kong)

Local Organization Chair

Luisa Micó (Univ. of Alicante)

Treasurer

Jorge Calera (Univ. of Alicante)

Local organizers

Xavier Anguera (Telefónica I+D)
A. Javier Gallego Sánchez (Univ. of Alicante)
Ida Hui (CUHK, Hong Kong)
Jose Manuel Iñesta (Univ. of Alicante)
Alejandro Toselli (Tech. Univ. of Valencia)



RELATED
Accepted Papers for ICMI-MLMI 2010


NOTE:  ICMI 2011 will be held after ICCV 2011, the 13th International Conference on Computer Vision in Barcelona.

Tech Product Placement & Embedded Advertising: Cisco Telepresence, Surface, Kinect, Windows 7 Phone, Apple, Apple iAd - Videos, Links - plus legal & ethical concerns

I was watching a DVR'd episode of NCIS tonight with my husband and noticed Cisco Telepresence video conferencing system was a player in the story line,  as well as a Cisco Cius touch-screen tablet.   It seems that on TV, laptops, desktops, and old-fashioned cell phones are history.    "Emerging" technologies are woven into the story lines of more television episodes,  including CSI, NCIS, Bones, Grey's Anatomy, and others.

The original intention of this post was to discuss the concept of emerging technologies and product placement/embedded advertising on television programs and movies, and share a few interesting examples related to his topic.  I quickly realized that there is much more to this story. Why?  More people access video and interactive multimedia content when they are on-the-go using laptops, smart phones, iPads, and similar tablets.   New televisions, such as Sony Internet TV, are internet-enabled, and many people already access the web content on their televisions through devices such as game consoles or Apple TV.

It is a marketer's dream. 

Unfortunately, we might not be ways to "opt-out" of all of the indirect (and direct) advertising that will come our way as we access video and related content across multiple platforms.   It won't be as easy as blocking pop-up ads or fast-forwarding the DVR!  

Below are some examples of ways some emerging technologies are "placed" in television/film, grouped by company.  In the "Apple" section, I've included video of Steve Jobs introducing iAds. Near the end of this post, I've included links that relate to ethical legal and ethical issues regarding product placement and embedded advertising.   

Food for thought.   I'm still digesting what I've found!

Cisco
The following links about CISCO's product placement are from CISCO on TV and in the Movies:
Cisco TelePresence and Video Phone on NCIS (links to video clips)
Cisco TelePresence Conferencing on 30 Rock
Cisco Telepresence on CSI: NY


MICROSOFT 
Microsoft Surface on Grey's Anatomy


Kinect on Chuck


Kinect on Entourage


Kinect is a New Advertising Platform for Microsoft
David Erickson, e-StrategyBlog 11/22/10

WINDOWS 7 PHONE
Windows 7 Phone Product Placement on Bones


APPLE
iPad Gets Half Hour of Product Placement on Modern Family



Apple iAD Mobile advertising that delivers interaction and emotion, 1 billion ad impressions a day, within your app. Apple's iAD isn't really product placement. It is about embedded ads in your mobile devices.
"Who wants to get yanked out of their ad?"-Steve Jobs




"iAd is a breakthrough mobile advertising platform from Apple. With it, apps can feature rich media ads that combine the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web. For developers, it means a new, easy-to-implement source of revenue. For advertisers, it creates a new media outlet that offers consumers highly targeted information." -Apple


iAd for Brands       iAd for Developers

HP TouchSmart
Annalyn Censky, CNN Money, 5/28/10
New Black Eyed Peas Video...or is it an AD for HP?
Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 4/19/10

RELATED

Ben Shaw, BBH, 7/16/10

Engaget's ScreenGrabs Posts
BrandCameo-Films  
Brand Cameo-Brands
On this website, you can search for product placement by brand, by film, and by year.
3D Technology: The End of Product Placement As We Know It?
Dan Nosowitz, Fast Company 3/5/10
Discusses the technical difficulties of embedding products in 3D movies.


Legal and Ethical Issues
As I searched for more information about product placement and embedded advertising, I came across a few posts/websites that suggests that in some circles, this is a hot/controversial topic:

Paul A. Cicelski, Common Law Center 9/2/10
Protection of Children Prompts FCC Regulation of Internet and Wireless Video PRogramming and Enhanced State Privacy Rules
Daide Oxenford, Broadcast Laww Blog, 8/26/09
Joseph Lewczak and Ann DiGiovanni, WLF Legal Backgrounder, 4/9/10
FIT Media FAQs (FIT= Fairness and Integrity in Telecommunications Media)
"FIT Media is a non-partisan coalition of health, media and child advocacy organizations and professionals supporting transparency and child protection in embedded TV advertising."
This is an interesting website - FIT Media covers topics such as "Advernews", "Embedded Propoganda", "Deceptive Advertising", and ways that embedded advertising might be harmful.  
Week ahead:  FCC meeting, Do Not Track hearing
Cecilia Kang, Washington Post 11/29/10
Giselle Tsirulnik, Mobile Marketer, 7/22/10
What is Apple's New Privacy Policy? "Amidst all the glitz of releasing a new mobile operating system and iPhone, Apple quietly updated their privacy policy. Why?"
Michael Kassner, Tech Republic, 6/28/10
FYI: If you have an iPhone running iOS 4 and wish to opt-out of iAD, you can do so at http://oo.apple.com

COMMENT
Xerox's new technology enables the alteration of content within a video or television program, based on specific information about the viewer/user:

Xerox Brings Behavioral Targeting To Television  (Interesting use of technology)
Go Rumors, 1/13/10
Xerox Patent Filing Make Product Placement Addressable
The Media Buyer, 1/12/10
"The patent describes the system (via GoRumors) as having the ability to alter content within a program based on the viewer. For example, if a character on a show mentions Macy’s, that content could be shown to general viewers. But that small portion of the broadcast could be “marked,” and the content could be changed so that the character instead says the name of sporting goods store Modell’s. That portion of the broadcast would be served to viewers who are into sports. Similarly, if the storefront was shown during the program, general audiences would see the Macy’s store, while sports fans would see the Modell’s store."