Australian OZCHI 2006 Workshop Announcement

If any of you are interested in an excuse to go to Australia (or are already there) you might want to check out a cool workshop looking at some cutting edge methods, which are potentially applicable to mobile and community research.

The object of interaction - the role of artefacts in interaction design

Workshop website: http://hdm.acid.net.au/workshop.html

A day-long workshop at OZCHI 2006 - Sydney, Australia, November 20th - 24th.

This workshop explores the role artefacts play in informing or inspiring the design of interactive technologies. We are interested in the match between method and context, with the workshop exploring how ‘creative’ versus ‘engineering’ approaches in user centred design lead to different engagements between people, design and context. This workshop will build on discussions of Cultural Probes, Playful Triggers and in-situ methods like contextual design that support discussion between user and designer.

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit examples of their experiences of using or creating artefacts to support the interaction design process. In discussing the roles that artefacts play, we are interested in how design-led approaches make use of the artefacts in a generative way.

The workshop aims to provide ‘scaffolds’ to investigate the design space, led by the unique contexts provided by workshop participants. Through their submissions and attendance, we ask all participants to actively participate, experience and explore their own design space, in their own context of interaction design. Engagement in this experience will hopefully provide participants with a deeper insight and a greater awareness of their own design methods and processes, as well as informed knowledge gained from their peers.

Outcomes for participants

+ Playful, interactive and participatory activity based on open-ended conversations led by participants,

+ Experiential learning environment to understand design-led processes for interaction design,
+ A place to explore artefact-based interaction design methodology with a like-minded community.

Submission & Workshop Activities

Interested parties should submit a position paper on the nature of design process in their workplace or research context. Submitted papers should be up to 4 pages long, A4, and formatted according to the ACM SIG style. Templates and instructions are available from http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

Submissions should be in PDF format only, and sent as an email attachment to the Matthew Simpson

It is assumed that authors of accepted papers will present their work and participate in workshop activities. Accepted papers, propositions and artefacts will be displayed on the workshop website. An open discussion forum has been created at http://hdm.acid.net.au/community/ to enable discussion on this topic prior to the workshop and into the future.

Key Dates
Call for papers: 29th August 2006
Submission deadline: 22nd September 2006
Author’s acceptance: 6th October 2006
Final workshop paper submissions: 27th October 2006
OZCHI 2006 Conference: 20th - 24th November 2006

View the workshop website: http://hdm.acid.net.au/workshop.html

To view the full workshop proposal - http://hdm.acid.net.au/assets/OZCHIArtefactWorkshop.pdf

We hope to see you there,

The Organising Committee:
Matthew Simpson, Stephen Viller, Laurene Vaughan, Jeremy Yuille, Yoko Akama, Roslyn Cooper.


Matthew Simpson
Information Environments Program
School of ITEE
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia