OMUE2010: Intl Workshop on Observing the Mobile User Experience (Oct 2010, Reykjavik)

In Conjunction with NordiCHI 2010 – Reykjavik, Iceland, October 17, 2010
Submission deadline: 27 August 2010
Website: http://omue10.offis.de/

In this workshop we want to discuss the most important factors, parameters, and research questions about how to study and involve users in a truly mobile setting. The goal of the workshop is to provide an overview of available methods and techniques, but also to produce a set of guidelines for studying and interacting with users in a mobile setting. The workshop will focus on the process and methodologies and will not go into deeper technical details (e.g. algorithms for activity recognition).

Nowadays the number of sold smart phones as well as the number of features of those devices is steadily increasing. Mobile applications are one of the major driving factors, as they can easily be distributed through dedicated mobile application distribution platforms, e.g. Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Market. Additionally many smart phones have a lot of sensors integrated, which makes them more and more aware of the situation a user is in.

At the same time the usage of mobile devices is rapidly becoming an integrated part of everyday life. This means that in order to understand the user experience and the usability of a product it is in general not enough to perform studies in the laboratory. Instead the mobile context needs to be taken into account explicitly, and one needs to be able to study users and usage “in the wild”. The challenge of understanding a mobile user experience is a rapidly evolving field, and it is the purpose of this workshop to bring together people from industry and academia in order to exchange methods and experiences related to understanding the mobile user and the mobile usage.

Topics

Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Observing and interacting with a user on the move
• Unsupervised data gathering
• The mobile device as a platform for user studies
• Specific situations and key parameters
• Mixed methods in a mobile setting
• Ethical considerations
• Safety and security of study participants

Submission details

Anyone interested in participating is invited to submit a position paper or an industrial case study to the workshop organizers. Authors of accepted papers are expected to present their work at the workshop by giving a 10-15 minutes presentation.

Submissions of papers covering the topics of the workshop should be submitted by 27th of August 2010. Position papers (2 to 4 pages) and industrial case studies (1 to 2 pages) should be submitted in NordiCHI ACM format.

Notification of acceptance will be sent out 10th of September 2010. At least one author from each accepted submission is expected to attend the workshop. Accepted submission will be compiled in the workshop proceedings which will also contain the guidelines resulting from the workshop activity. The proceedings will be made available at the workshop website.

Submissions or other queries should be mailed to Benjamin Poppinga (poppinga@offis.de).

Schedule

August 27, 2010 – Submission Deadline
September 10, 2010 – Notification of Acceptance
October 1, 2010 – Camera Ready Deadline
October 17, 2010 – Workshop Date