Author Archives: admin

Nov 2009 Internet of Things 2010 Conference

I have been invited and will serve on the Program Committee for the 2010 Internet of Things Conference. The Internet of Things (IoT) interlinks our physical and digital worlds hence bridging the digital-physical divide. This topic is very relevant to the emerging research projects within the Human Interface Technology Research Laboratory Australia (HITLAB AU).

“This conference will continue the success of the Internet of Things conference from 2008 in Zurich. It brings internationally leading researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry together to facilitate sharing of applications, research results, and knowledge. The IoT2010 particularly encourages research on infrastructure and applications facilitating environmentaly responsibility under a theme “IoT for a Green Planet”. The three-day event will feature keynotes from industrial and academic visionaries, technical presentations of cutting-edge research, reports on the user-experience from seasoned practitioners, panel discussions on hot topics, poster sessions summarizing late-breaking results, and hands-on demos of current technology.

The 2010 Conference will take place at the Royal Park Hotel in Tokyo from November 29 to December 1, 2010.

Sept 2009 Workshop at Pervasive 2010: What can the Internet of Things do for the citizen (CIoT)?

Thanks to Florian and Albrecht for inviting me to join the PC for CIoT.

************************* CALL FOR PAPERS ************************

Pervasive 2010 Conference Workshop on

What can the Internet of Things do for the citizen?

CIoT 2010

May 17, 2010

Helsinki (Finland)

http://www.autoidlabs.org/events/ciot2010/

******************************************************************

Topics

——

Submissions should address citizens needs. Topics are proposed but not limited to:

* Emerging applications and interaction paradigms

o using mobile phones and other mobile devices as

gateways to services for citizens

o integrating existing infrastructure in homes

(digital picture frames, smart metering of energy etc.)

o enabling end-user programming and service mash-ups

o embedding virtual services into physical artifacts

o developing emerging services and applications

* Infrastructure and network

o extension of existing network paradigms and web protocols (web of things)

o integration of social networks

o opportunities and limitations of standards

* Case studies and experience reports

o case studies on real-world deployments

o user studies on technology perception and acceptance

* Social impact and consequences

o discussion of anticipated behavioral changes of users

o security and privacy

Submissions:

————

We invite three types of submissions:

Research contributions introducing novel concepts and presenting new insight

may be between 6-10 pages. These submissions are supposed to discuss

experiences and lessons learned from applying as well as new applications

and internet of things interaction paradigms.

Case studies should be 3-5 pages outlining the deployment of pervasive

computing technologies in a real world environment. In particular, we

are looking for reports on the experiences collecting while introducing

internet of things technologies or sensor networks into productive

environments.

Position statements may be up to 2 pages. They should outline a person’s

interest and experience in the topic of the workshop. Position

statements will not be included in the proceedings but will serve as

introductions for panel discussions.

We are looking forward to your submissions!

Deadlines and Dates

——————-

Submissions due by: 15th of January 2010

Notifications due by: 8th of March 2010

Final papers due to LNCS: 31st March 2010

Workshop day: 17th of May 2010

PDF version of the call:

Click to access ciot2010_flyer.pdf

Workhop Chairs and Organizers

—————————–

Florian Michahelles, ETH Zurich

Associate Director Auto-ID Labs

Stephan Karpischek, ETH Zurich

Senior Researcher, Auto-ID Labs

Albrecht Schmidt, University of Duisburg-Essen

Chair of Pervasive Computing and User Interface Engineering

Technical Programm Commitee

—————————

Aaron Beach, University of Colorado

Aaron Quigley, HIT Lab Australia

Alois Ferscha, University of Linz

Anind Dey, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

Antonio Kruger, DFKI

Carsten Magerkurth, SAP Research

Christian Decker, University of Karlsruhe

Christian Floerkemeier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Christof Roduner, ETH Zurich

Dieter Uckelmann, University of Bremen

Dominique Guinard, ETH Zurich & SAP Research

Elgar Fleisch, ETH Zurich & University of St. Gallen

Enrico Rukzio, Lancaster University

Felix von Reischach, ETH Zurich & SAP Research

Florian Resatsch, ServTag

Frederic Thiesse, University of St. Gallen

Friedemann Mattern, ETH Zurich

Gaetano Boriello, University of Washington

Gregor Broll, NTT Docomo Europe Labs

Heikki Huomo, Center for Internet Excellence

Jens Str¸ker, University of Freiburg

Jin Mitsugi, Keio University

Juha Laurila, Nokia Research Center Lausanne

Kary Fr‰mling, University of Helsinki

Kristof Van Laerhoven, Darmstadt University of Technology

Lars Erik Holmquist, Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS)

Manfred Aigner, Technical University of Graz

Marcus Handte, University of Bonn

Martin Strohbach, NEC Europe Ltd.

Matthias Kranz, TU Munich

Matthias Wagner, NTT Docomo Europe Labs

Michael Beigl, University of Braunschweig

Michael Rohs, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Berlin

Osamu Nakamura, Keio University

Paul Holleis, NTT Docomo Europe Labs

Rene Mayrhofer, Vienna University

Rick Han, University of Colorado

Rob van Kranenburg, Founder of Council

Trevor Bubridge, BT

Sanjay Sarma, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Sarah Spiekerman, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Tom·s S·nchez LÛpez, University of Cambridge

Wontack Woo, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)

for further questions please contact: ciot2010@ethz.ch

Sept 2009 Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals

I have a chapter on UbiComp User Interfaces in a new book called “Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals” Edited by John Krumm in Microsoft and published by Chapman & Hall/CRC; 1 edition (September 18, 2009) ISBN: 978-1420093605. [ Amazon ]

The user interface represents the point of contact between a computer system and a human, both in terms of input to the system and output from the system. There are many facets of a “Ubiquitous Computing” or ubicomp system, from the low-level sensor technologies in the environment, through the collection, management and processing of the context data through to the middleware required to enable the dynamic composition of devices and services envisaged. These hardware, software, systems and services act as the computational edi ce around which we need to build our Ubicomp User Interface, or UUI. The ability to provide natural inputs and outputs from a system which can allow it to remain in the periphery is hence the central challenge in UUI design.

While this chapter surveys the current state of the art to the user beyond the classical keyboard, screen and mouse, it is important to also acknowledge that UUIs represent a paradigm shift in human computer interaction with input and output technologies not yet envisaged. UUIs are built around a next generation technological paradigm which in essence reshapes our relationship with our personal information, environment, artefacts and even our friends, family and colleagues. The challenge is not about providing the next generation mouse and keyboard but instead making the collection of inputs and outputs operate in a fuid and seamless manner.

Chapters
1. Introduction to Ubiquitous Computing Roy Want
2. Ubiquitous Computing Systems Jakob Bardram 
and Adrian Friday
3. Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing Marc Langheinrich
4. Ubiquitous Computing Field Studies A.J. Bernheim Brush
5. Ethnography in Ubiquitous Computing Alex S. Taylor
6. From GUI to UUI: Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing 
Aaron Quigley 7. Location in Ubiquitous Computing 
Alexander Varshavsky and Shwetak Patel
8. Context-Aware Computing Anind K. Dey
9. Sequential Sensor Processing John Krumm

Sept 2009 Proceedings of the 3rd Irish Conference on Human Computer Interaction I-HCI 2009

Along with my colleague (and former classmate) Dr. Gavin Doherty we are the conference chairs for the 3rd Irish Conference on Human Computer Interaction (I-HCI 2009) held in Trinity College Dublin on the 17th and 18th of September 2009. The program chair for I-HCI 2009 is Dr. Saturnino Luz
 from Trinity College Dublin.

Registration for the conference is now open. The conference proceedings, all 142 pages, contains the papers presented at (I-HCI 2009). As the Irish HCI community is evolving there isn’t a specific theme for I-HCI 2009 but instead we aim to draw together the research community through this conference. 
I-HCI 2009 presents new research on human computer interaction. We sought short and long technical papers and student papers describing original, previously unpublished research results including:

– Collaborative System UIs
– Computer-Mediated Communication and Online Communities
– Design Methods
– End-User Programming and Adaptation
– Ethnography and design-oriented fieldwork
– Evaluation Methods
– Human-Centered software engineering
– Hypermedia and Web Design and Usability
– Intelligent User Interfaces and User Modeling
– Location-aware Interaction
– Ubiquitous and Context-Aware Computing
– Speech and Natural Language
– Information Visualisation

Special topics of interest include
– Human Factors in Health Care Informatics
– Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing in the wild
– Evaluation Methods suitable for study in home, workplace and mobile settings.

The program includes an IxDA Industry Session, a tutorial on Inclusive Design for Older and Disabled Users offered by Prof. Helen Petrie and colleagues from the Univ. of York, a workshop on experience, usability, and functionality: exploring the components of interaction, organised by HFRG, UCC and UL along with a keynote presentation by Professor Barry Smyth from the University College Dublin.

“Doherty G., Quigley A. and Luz S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd Irish Conference on Human Computer Interaction (I-HCI 2009), ISBN: 9781871408485, Dublin Ireland, Sept 17-18 2009 ”

For more details on the program of events visit the conference program.

Sept 2009 Congratulations to Dr. Bennett

It is with great pride that I congratulate Mike Bennett on passing his Viva on Wednesday the 2nd of September 2009. Mike or (Dr. Bennett designate, as we should call him) is my second PhD student completed. He came to work with me in mid 2005 on a startup scholarship UCD afforded me and Mike was awarded for his studies. Amusingly, we met while both a little drunk at an MLE farewell party where he had been a researcher. He was the third student I’d convinced to come work with me after a bout of heavy drinking which is thankfully a habit I’ve managed to break. (Large grants or lovely scholarships or my insane desire to stay upto 3am working on our nth+1 paper are the attractions to work with me now 😉

Mikes’ keen intellect and curiosity impressed me greatly then as it does now. It’s been my great pleasure to have had the chance to work with Mike over the past few years. Dr. Bennett is now a postdoc researcher with the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies and is moving onto bigger and better things in his research. I wish him all the very best for the rest of his very bright research career.

Mike’s thesis work is on designing for an individual’s eyes with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction, Vision And Individual Differences. Mike’s examiners Professors Alan Dix and Paddy Nixon said his work demonstrated clearly his mastery of the area of his thesis. And that he clearly has a deep understanding of human vision and the application of the knowledge to design and has applied strong methodological rigor to his work.

The abstract of Mike’s Thesis.
When a user interface, information visualisation or graphic designer is conceiving and creating design mockups how does the designer know whether the intended audience is able to perceive the design? When a designer does know how well an intended audience can or cannot see, such as with a design targeted at an aging audience, how does that knowledge influence the visual layout of the design?

There are rules of thumb about font size, contrast, and the interaction between unused space that are learnt and handed down as design lore. If a designer follows good use of font size, with good contrast then a proposed design should be readable as long as its not too cluttered. Unfortunately “good usage”, “good contrast” and “not too cluttered” are subjective measures. What one designer defines as good another could find distinctly lacking, though experience and training do help a designer acquire knowledge of what visually works.

This thesis is concerned with examining and showing how the experience of seeing a design can be non-subjectively quantified. Then it demonstrates how the quantifications tied together with individual differences in the Human Visual System (HVS) can be used to evaluate and adapt the designs, such that they are customised to individual eye sight.

In order to non-subjectively quantify the experience of seeing a design we introduce, evaluate and demonstate two measures of perceptual stability. Perceptual stability is defined by us as a measure of how stable or unstable a visual design or image is due to differences in a perceiver’s perception. The first measure PERSva evaluates how easy or difficult it is for people to see visual detail in a design. While the second measure PERScp evaluates how different forms of colour perception effect the legibility of a visual design.

Objective quantifications which are capable of modelling individual differences are useful for automating design judgements, i.e. automatically compare a range of potential interface designs and make a decision about which is best for a specific user. Demonstrated in this work are automatic evaluations of text and font styles, network graph designs and layouts, and the pseudocolouring of scientific visualisations.

In the longer term, as we move into a world where Mass Customisation and Product Personalisation become common place, objective design quantifications are useful for adapting and customising designs to suit individual physiologies, capabilities and preferences.

Congrats once again. His site has copies of his papers and thesis.

ps. Mike your gift is in the post 😉

Aug 2009 Invited Trinity Long Room Hub Talk


On October 1st 2009 I will give an invited talk at the Trinity Long Room Hub entitled ‘Using Information Visualisation as an Analytical Tool’ at 1.00 p.m. – 2.30 p.m. IIIS Seminar Room, C.6002, 6th Floor, Arts Building, TCD.

The following is the working abstract for the talk.

Abstract:
A byproduct of the explosive growth in the use of computing technology is that organizations are generating, gathering, using and storing data at an increasing rate. Consider the amount of data a Government census collect, the amount of data Google gathers and uses or details of all the transactions eBay must handle on a daily basis? To make this concrete the last US Census includes details of 304,059,724 people (US Census Bureau) with data on age, gender, ethnicity, household make up, home structure, income, farms, business and sales available. In July 2008 Google found 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once and eBay handles in excess of 1 billion payments per year. While Google and eBay and indeed their customers gain value from the applications on offer, simply storing the raw data after the fact is of little value unless useful high level information and hence knowledge can be derived from it. Many researchers and commercial organisations are facing similar tasks with large amounts of image data, video, geographic data, textual data or statistical data.

However when trying to understand details about millions of customers, webpages or products the amount of raw data makes the analysis task difficult. One approach to the problem is to convert the data into pictures and models that can be graphically displayed. The intuition behind the use of such graphics is that human beings are inherently skilled at understanding data in visual forms. We refer to the use of computer graphics to visually represent and convey the meaning of abstract information “Information Visualisation”.

This talk will outline how various types of information is modeled, managed, mined and hence visually presented on screen for exploration. Several large scale data and information visualisation methods will be described and discussed along with the 7 key challenges we face as researchers and developers in using visualisation in an attempt to present information. These 7 key challenges are: Empowerment, Connection, Volume, Hetrogeneity, Audience, Dynamism and Discovery.

July 2009 Visualisation … 7 Key Challenges we face

The Digital Humanities Observatory is running a week long series of workshops on TEI, XSLT, Data Modelling and Data Visulisation from Monday the 13th to Friday the 17th of July. As part of this I was invited to present a lecture to all the workshop participants. I entitled my talk “Visualisation as an analytical tool, from networks to data streams. 7 Key Challenges we face.” Michael Maguire gave a very flattering description of my talk on his blog (thanks).


As I said during my talk, I normally give such a talk as an introductory session to information visualisation or visual analytics. However, this time I structured my talk around what I see as the 7 key challenges we (or anyone interested in visualising data) face. This blog post is a summary of the 110+ slides I presented (sans examples and mathematics!).

The ideas I presented are my view on the world of information visulisation and visual analytics. The key challenges were not presented in order of importance (as their relative importance is problem or domain dependent). There are also a number of challenges I personally feel (including multi-device and small screen visulisation) are crucial but I realise are not as pressing as the mainstream issues people face.

My ideas are informed by my ongoing research in InfoVis and from keynotes, lectures, online talks, toolkits and blogs that I’ve read or seen. Useful (and insightful) sources include, the visualizeit blog, the infosethetics blog by Andrew in the University of Sydney, the keynote Peter Eades gave at InfoVis 2006, the keynote Christian Chabot gave at the IEEE VAST 2008 and the ideas I could glean online from the VisWeek 2008 Panel on Grand Challenges for Information Visualization. If I’ve missed anything you feel is important do let me know!

So the 7 key challenges I see include:

  1. Empower: We must ensure the person using visualisation to understand data is empowered to gain insight or save time etc. To achieve this focus (long and hard) on identifying the questions that you need to answer with your visulisation. Do not just think about the data. If you think you have tool, method or technique to help empower a person (yourself or another) to gain insight or save time, can you validate this? What validation methods can you employ to ensure you are not just toying with pretty pictures?
  2. Connect: Ensure, based on the question at hand, you help the person using the visualisation build a connection between the data and any processing/analysis and the visual form presented. The question at hand and hence data drives what is an appropriate visualisation. Also, if you are using a particular visual form (eg. maps) how far can you stretch the metaphor or connection between data and display, before it breaks?
  3. Volume: Ensure if the data needed to help answer the question at hand has many elements that your visualisation method, tool or technique can support this. Voluminous datasets can break many desktop tools simply due to the time/memory/bandwidth needed to “load” the dataset. There are many sources of data with numerous individual elements to consider, 304,059,724 people in the USA (sources US Census Bureau) data on age, gender, ethnicity, household make up, home structure, income, farms, business and sales available. In July 2008 Google found 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once. This is ever increasing with user generated and automatically created content. One of our recent studies on extracting social networks from non-social network data started with 9,468,460 one-way flight passenger records. Clearly there are large datasets one might be faced with. Another problem (often overstated) is the dimensionality of the data (each element having multiple attributes to consider).
  4. Heterogeneity: Ensure if the data needed to help answer the question at hand consists of heterogenous data from multiple different sources or of “variant types” that your visualisation method, tool or technique can support this. If you need to consider a heterogenous data space then ensure the data-sets interlock so coupled or co-ordinated views are meaningful (and possible to display).
  5. Audience:Suit the word (display) to the audience. Ensure you match the visualisations to your questions and your audience. Know your user and don’t explore visualisation questions in a bubble. Engage and explore! Some methods, tools and techniques do not suit particular audiences. “You haven’t made impact with visual analytics until you help people with their own data” and I would add to this “in the particular sociotechnical context where they will use your tools, 
methods or techniques”.
  6. Dynamism: Data isn’t static. Ensure if the data needed to help answer the question at hand is a live source or the display is expected highlight changes over time that your visualisation method, tool or technique can support this.
  7. Discovery: Discover the new world once!: Ensure that your tools can store and capture and automate the process of pattern identification for subsequent data exploration. Convert identified patterns into “alerts” or stepwise mining, analysis, query and refinement into workflow.

As this was a masterclass I went on to point out the 10hr – 100,000hr guidelines to move from Trainee to Mastering visualisation. Gladwell spoke of the 10,000hr rule in his book Outliers which is important to consider when being introduced to a new topic like this. I pointed this out so people could help benchmark their own knowledge and skill level. My talk contained an introduction to cartography and GIS, multi-dimensional visualisation, parallel coordinates, paired parallel coordinates, graph drawing, force directed layouts and treemaps. As I’m currently learning iPhone application development myself, I know how dangerous and presumptive one can become moving from “Trainee” to “Apprentice” levels of knowledge. As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! I very much enjoyed giving this lecture to this DHO masterclass. I also gained some great insights with the director of the DHO Susan Schreibman on her experiences being a director there. Thanks to Shawn Day and Paolo Battino for inviting me to come along.

July 2009 Upcoming Conferences of interest.

My upcoming move has me thinking about conferences in areas of interest to the HITLab Australia.


The International Symposium on Wearable Computers 2009 will be held in Sept in Linz Austria. I aim to attend ISWC 2009 as well as visiting Vodafone research in Munich enroute to meet some colleagues and one of my students undertaking an internship there.

The Eighth International Conference on Pervasive Computing 2009 will be held in May in Helsinki Finland. Along with my role as workshop co-chair I’m planning with some of my students and colleagues to submit some papers. Pervasive is one the premier events showcasing state of the art research in Pervasive Computing. It’s a very good event to attend both to understand the developments within our field but also to engage the entire research community through workshops, demos, posters etc.

Along with colleagues I ran a Workshop on designing multi-touch interaction techniques for coupled public and private displays at AVI 2008 in Naples. AVI 2010 the biannual 10th International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces will be held in Rome in May 2010. I intend to run another workshop with colleagues to follow up on PPD08 along with submitting research papers based on our current and ongoing research.

Due to prior travel commitments one conference I cannot attend but would like to is this year’s International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2009) in Florida from October 19-23. I do however hope to attend ISMAR 2010 in Korea.

June 2009 HITLab Australia Director Designate

I’m very excited to announce that I am going to be the inaugural director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory Australia (HIT Lab AU) and an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Tasmania. The HITLab consists of three international research laboratories. The first is now a leading research lab formed in the University of Washington USA over 20 years ago and the second laboratory was started in New Zealand in 2002. This is the third research lab.

Since working at MERL (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories) Cambridge Massachusetts USA in ’01/’02 it’s been my long-term ambition to develop and lead a research lab such as this. The guidance I received from Joe Marks, then director of MERL, made me realise his was the type of job I would one day aspire to. He showed me the positive influence, excitement and vision a director can offer a lab and the type of creative environment that one can build. I hope to build just such an environment in the HITLab Australia for undergraduates, postgraduates, postdocts, researchers, collaborators and all our industry partners.

The process of applying for and getting this role is a long one and I want to thank Mark Billinghurst, the director of the HITLab New Zealand for first pointing me at this role and then giving me great feedback before and after I was made the offer. Our lab will be collaborating closely with Mark and the HITLab New Zealand over the next few years. My involvement in a number of major SFI funded activities here in Ireland has helped lay the ground work for my move into this role. As such, I want to thank all my colleagues in UCD and all my colleagues in Lero – The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (SFI CSET), CLARITY – the centre for Sensor Web technologies (SFI CSET) and Clique the research cluster for network analysis and visualization (SFI SRC) for their collaborations over the past 5 years. The HITLab Australia will be developing linkages to some of these and other international groups over the coming years.

In the international hunt to find someone to fill this post the Vice-Chancellor Professor Daryl Le Grew said: “I am looking for the inaugural Director to provide strategic leadership of the HIT Lab AU and its inter-disciplinary undergraduate and postgraduate courses and research higher degree programs. The Director will oversee exciting, cross-disciplinary collaboration in teaching and research activities with other UTAS schools and faculties; the development of consulting activities and commercial projects with business and industry; and the establishment of national and international partnerships with our partners the HIT Labs US and NZ, the Virtual Worlds Consortium, and other organisations.

The inaugural Director will have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to shape and guide the HITLab AU as a major research and teaching centre on the national and international stage.”

I am really looking forward to this challenge over the coming years and the opportunity to connect and collaborate with colleagues in Tasmania and across Australia while developing new and innovative undergraduate and postgraduate programs within the lab. My aim is to make this a major research and teaching centre on the national and international stage.