HCI International News, Number 12, September 2005

HIGHLIGHTS

• The State of Science in the Area of Human-Computer Interaction
• Call for Papers: HCI International 2007
• Book Review: Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Speech Systems
• Sponsorship of HCII 2007
• Recent Interesting Articles
• Upcoming Conferences and Events in HCI
• HCI International 2005 Photo Album
• Previous Issues of HCI International News
• Contribute to HCI International News
• About HCI International News

The State of Science in the Area of Human-Computer Interaction

Over 2,200 academics, scientists, researchers, and practitioners in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from 63 countries gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, from July 22 to 27, 2005, to share their recent findings in all areas of HCI during the HCI International 2005 Conference. This is one of the most important international and scientific conferences in the area of HCI.

Through over 250 parallel sessions, 270 poster presentations and 22 tutorials, participants presented their major findings in Cognitive Ergonomics, Usability and Internationalization, Virtual Reality, Universal Access, Augmented Cognition, Management of Information, Online Communities and Social Computing, and Health Aspects of Work with Computers. The Proceedings have been published on CD-ROM by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, and are structured in 11 volumes and a "Posters" section.

Dr. Gerald M. Edelman, Nobel laureate, was the keynote speaker and outlined prevalent views of higher brain functions and information processing. He discussed Neural Darwinism and neural correlates of consciousness, and presented supporting evidence on the neural correlates of consciousness obtained from MEG studies of human subjects.

It is obviously impossible to summarize the content of such a huge conference in a few sentences. However, the hottest topics at this year's conference seemed to be, in my opinion, Virtual Reality, Universal Access/Multimodal Design, and Augmented Cognition. A keyword search within the Conference proceedings on each of the first two topics (Virtual Reality and Universal Access) resulted in over 400 papers, and more than 200 papers were found on the topic of Augmented Cognition. Another particularity of this year's conference was the important presence of United States military research institutions, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Many contributions from DARPA indicated the importance of HCI in military projects and equipment design. A variety of equipment designs based on the findings of these research projects, from simulation equipment to sophisticated vehicles (DaimlerChrysler), was displayed during the Exhibition.

In software application design, numerous contributions reported a variety of findings, from design to implementation, design patterns, accessibility issues, and so on. Referring to these studies, which constitute a vast intellectual resource for every professional in the field of HCI, could save practitioners a lot of time in designing and evaluating enterprise software applications.

HCI International 2005 hosted an extensive and impressive Exhibition of over 60 booths representing a variety of enterprises, among them major companies such as Boeing, Sandia National Laboratories, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, DaimlerChrysler Corporation and Oracle Corporation.

HCI International 2007 Conference will be held in Beijing, P.R. China, 22-27 July 2007. For the Call for Participation and further information, please visit the Conference website.

Abbas Moallem

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Call for Papers: HCI International 2007

The HCI International 2007 jointly with the affiliated Conferences, which are held under one management and one Registration, invite you to Beijing, P.R. China, 22-27 July 2007, to participate and contribute to the international forum for the dissemination and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on theoretical, generic and applied areas of HCI through the following modes of communication: Plenary / Keynote Presentation(s), Parallel Sessions, Poster Sessions and Tutorials. You are invited to submit your proposal on all related topics. For more information, please visit the Conference website.

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Brief Book Review: Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Speech Systems

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in voice interaction design. The author, in a very descriptive and practical way, provides not only background knowledge about voice interaction design but also extensive and valuable guidelines for creating and designing voice interaction. After providing an ample description of several concepts, such as speech (chapter 2), sound and meaning (chapter 3), and language usage ("Doing Things with Words," chapter 4), the author extensively covers the principles of voice interaction design and provides guidelines–from building dialogues to evaluating techniques of voice interaction. A variety of case studies along with multiple examples makes the book very attractive to interaction designers. Occasional long, philosophical discussions and difficult vocabulary might frustrate some readers who are in a hurry to get to the author's point, but with patience they will discover the usefulness of the lengthy discussions. The book provides an extensive related bibliography and an excellent glossary of terms, especially useful for the novice reader in this field.

AM

Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Speech Systems, Randy Allen, Elsevier-Morgan Kaufmann Publishing, 2005. 598 pages. ISBN 1-55860-768-4

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Sponsorship of HCI International 2007

Organizations wishing to sponsor a special event or to be a general sponsor of the Conference are welcome to contact the Sponsorship Administration.

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Recent Interesting Articles

• "Usability Is a Culture and Not Just a Service", July 2005, AIS SIGHCI Newsletter.
• "The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News", July 2005, Usability News.
• "Is Multiple-Column Online Text Better? It Depends!", July 2005, Usability News.
• "Microsoft Denies IE 7 Breaks Yahoo, Google Toolbars", July 29, 2005, internetweek.com.
• "Customer Storytelling at the Heart of Business Success", July 16, 2005, Boxes and Arrows.
• "Airline-Ticket Booking"
• "Agile Development and User Interaction: Moving Ahead", July 2005, HOT Topics!
• "Visio Tips & Tricks for Interaction Designers", May 25, 2005, welie.com.
• "How to learn from your mistakes", July 17, 2005, scottberkun.com.
• "Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design", July 25, 2005, Alertbox.
• "Scrolling and Scrollbars", July 11, 2005, Alertbox.
• "Organizing Qualitative Data from Lab and Field: Challenges and Methods", UPA 2005 Proceedings.

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Upcoming Conferences and Events in the HCI Area

• 19-22 September: MobileHCI 2005, 7th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, University of Salzburg, Austria.
• 26-27 September: TAMODIA 2005, 4th international workshop on Task Models and Diagrams for user interface design, Gdansk, Poland.
• 27-30 September: IHM 2005, 17e conference francophone sure l'Interaction Homme-Machine, Toulouse, France.
• 2 October: Model Driven Development of Advanced User Interfaces, Workshop at MoDELS 2005, Montego Bay, Jamaica.
• 4-6 October: ICMI 2005, International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, Trento, Italy.
• 9-12 October: Assets 2005, The seventh international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility, Baltimore, MD, USA.
• 12-14 October: sOc-EUSAI 2005, Smart Objects & Ambient Intelligence conference, Grenoble, France.
• 13 October: SIGCHI.NL Conference for Academics, Practitioners and Students, The Hague, The Netherlands. 22 August 2005
• 18-21 October: ISWC '05, Ninth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, Osaka, Japan.
• 19-22 October: WWW/Internet 2005, IADIS International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal.
• 23-26 October: UIST 2005, 18th annual ACM symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Seattle, WA, USA
• 23-26 October: CLIHC 2005, The second Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Cuernavaca, Mexico.
• 26-28 October: Learning and Technology at Work, Symposium and workshop, Liege, Belgium.
• 31 October-4 November: OnTheMove 2005, On The Move to meaningful internet systems and ubiquitous computing, Agia Napa, Cyprus
• 8 November: 1st Usability Symposium of the HCI&UE Workshop of the Austrian Computer Society, Vienna, Austria

Table of Contents | Top of Page

HCI International 2005 Photo album

Selected photos form HCI International 2005, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 22-27 July 2005, are now available from the Conference website.

Table of Contents | Top of Page

Previous Issues of HCI International News are available online

http://www.hcii2007.org/hcii_news.html.
Table of Contents | Top of Page

Contribute to HCI International News

We welcome your contribution to the HCI International News. Please send us
interesting news, short articles, interesting websites, etc. We will consider
your comments and contributions for upcoming issues. Please send your
contribution to the Editor, Dr. Abbas Moallem.

Table of Contents | Top of Page

About HCI International News

The HCI International News is a newsletter about Human - Computer Interaction topics, the HCII 2007 Conference deadlines and activities, the HCII 2007 Exhibition, news in the area of Human - Computer Interaction, and more. If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to contribute, please contact the Editor, Dr. Abbas Moallem. The opinions that are expressed in this Newsletter are the sole responsibility of its authors and do not represent any institution or company.

Table of Contents | Top of Page