New Master Thesis Student

We welcome Javier Jiméndes that will write his master thesis in the LIREC project, during the Spring 2011. Javier has a background in interaction design, and will conduct an experience centred study on a robotic eating aid.

'Ethics, logs & videotape'. Large-scale ethics workshop at CHI2011

App stores have made distribution of research apps to thousands of users incredibly easy. There is more user-generated content around than we can manage to analyze; Millions of tweets, public status updates and shared locations are waiting for us. These are huge opportunities, but researchers now also run into some interesting ethical questions.

Procedures, regulations and ethics - especially in an international and intercultural setting - are unclear and the notion of informed consent is changing. Can we just use all data that is out there? Is someone's tweet intended to be quoted in a research paper? How do we deal with permissions if we use data from users of freely available applications? Do we need to tell people about all our research plans? Is anyone downloading our app a participant?

Asking a million users for a signed consent form is not a feasible option. Notices and messages in apps telling people about our research plans will probably be skipped. If they are read, there is no guarantee they are actually understood. Sometimes researchers cannot even know who the people providing content for their studies are.

Not studies would be missing a huge opportunity, but a discussion is in order. Do we have added responsibilities if we log people’s actions? Can we always be sure there will be no adverse effects for our unwitting ‘participants’?

Join us for a discussion at the CHI2011 workshop we're co-organizing in Vancouver, Saturday May 7th: ETHICS, LOGS, and VIDEOTAPE: Ethics in Large Scale User Trials and User Generated Content.

Position papers due January 14, 2011.
Co-organised by Donald McMillan, Alistair Morrison, Matthew Chalmers (Univ. Glasgow), Henriette Cramer, Mattias Rost (Mobile Life), Wendy Mackay (Univ. Paris Sud) and Adam Greenfield.

Meet us at NordiCHI'10!

Alex Taylor (Microsoft Research), Mattias Jacobsson, Ylva Fernaeus and Sara Ljungblad are organizing the:
2nd International DESIGNING ROBOTIC ARTEFACTS WITH USER- AND EXPERIENCE-CENTRED PERSPECTIVES We look forward to have lively discussions about existing myths in robotic designs, and what we as researchers and designers consider to be down-to earth research in the field! The Workshop is held on Oct 16, Sunday, at Reykjavik University.

SHORT PAPER presented on Tuesday Oct 19 at 15:00 in room H:
Blue-Sky and Down-to-Earth: How Analogous Practices can Support the User-centred Design Process, (Sara Ljungblad and Clint Heyer, ABB)
See you at NordiCHI'10!

Robots as our future companions?

32 robot researchers met up at Mobile Life Centre and SICS to discuss their current research on how people can live with robots and interactive agents in the future. The meeting is held within the EU project LIREC (Living with Robots and Interactive Companions), a collaboration between six universities, two research institutes and two companies spread across 7 European countries. The project also includes experts in etology, studying peoples relations to dogs and how this knowledge can be transferred into robot design.

Mattias Jacobsson, Ylva Fernaeus, Henriette Cramer, Lars Erik Holmquist and Sara Ljungblad (WP10 leader) from Mobile Life are contributing to the project. We are conducting studies of robots in naturalistic environments, collaborating with swedish startup robot companies, and are exploring user-centred robotic design. Read more about  LIREC activites at SICS.

UbiComp 2010

The whole Future Applications Lab will attend UbiComp 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark on September 26-29! We will present two posters, GeoLocation in the Mobile Web Browser and φ²: Exploring physical Check-Ins for Location-Based Services and organize the workshop Research in the large. We hope to see you there!

Mobile Mash-ups and a tribute to Marc Weiser at APPNATION

APPNATION is a new conference and exposition focusing on the burgeoning consumer applications economy. It will focus on social and mobile apps across all devices and platforms and the editorial focus will be on the business conversation including monetization, new media business models, advertising and marketing best practices, and consumer insights and analytics. APPNATION will take place September 13-14 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

Of particular interest is the closing keynote event:

A Tribute to Mark Weiser, the Father of Ubiquitous Computing, and the Rise of the Mobile Mash-Up

Panelists:

• Lars Erik Holmquist, Mobile Life Centre, Swedish Institute of Computer Science
• Mike Kuniavsky, Orange Cone, author of Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design
• Bo Begole, Principal Scientist and Manager of the Ubiquitous Computing Area, Palo Alto Research Center
• Mattias Rost, Mobile Life Centre, Swedish Institute of Computer Science

The panel will look back at the dawn of ubiquitous computing at PARC, and ahead with the rise of mobile apps and beyond.

The conference can offer a discounted academic rate with 50% off the regular fee for full conference passes ($397 net cost). Simply go to online registration at www.appnationconference.com and use the code: DIFC50

Most Wanted at Ung08

We have finished study of Portrait Catalog under the disguise as Most Wanted during the Ung08 youth festival! The festival lasted four 5 days during which a countless number of teenagers visited the tent, more than 400 had their picture taken and around 300 installed the app!
We are now analysing the data from the study.