The focus in this work will be on the role of user in the Innovation Process. Despite of the little interest that has been shown on demand side approaches, compared to the supply side ones, approaching innovation from demand is crucial. Starting from the Eighties, a greater consideration has been paid by scholars who deal with Innovation, thanks to several empirical results supporting the importance of demand. Focusing on the demand side, one has to be aware that he has not anymore to deal with the "consumer" but with the "user". Using a new word to depict the individual located on the demand side means that a complete new dimension of analysis has been accepted. Talking about a "user" means that now the "neoclassical" consumer has gained an active role and, above all, he is therefore able to affect the Innovation Process in a more conscious and systematic way. The purpose, here, is to show the influence user has on Innovation. In order to do so, a deeper understanding of him, of how he uses to think, of how he acts in the real world and how he represents it, is needed. Therefore, it is useful, if not necessary, to recourse to other disciplines, such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, psychology, philosophy ... Interesting it will be to analyse user cognitive maps in presence of radical innovations, because this kind of innovations represents a discontinuity in the real world. This kind of innovations is better than incremental ones because what the latter brings about on the demand side is just a fine tuning of the cognitive maps already existing and not a shift towards completely new ones. In this context it seems to be important to see how user's cognitive maps and producer's ones match and how their differences are overcome. In an Innovation Process stimulated by demand it is interesting to discover how cognitive maps are generated, if they are typical of the user, how knowledge presents on demand side is transferred on the supply one. To have a pragmatic feedback it would be interesting to focus on the photographic sector and in particular on the analysis of the innovation brought by the arrival of the digital camera. Several problems arise studying this sector, in particular in relation to the fact that digital camera presence remarkably changes the way to interpret reality. In particular, the arrival of digital, forces people to abandon the sentimental, emotional and nostalgic way to deal with pictures. Digital photography has cut all the ties with a reality having a strong emotional connotation. Obviously this lack of ties is subjected to strict technological and cultural constraints and in the last resort, to legal imposition. Dealing with digital means to be willing more than before to accept several "aids" and tips coming from other disciplines. It is necessary to recourse to social sciences, because in dealing with users one deals with people and not numbers. Digital photography, much more than the traditional, cuts transversally across a cosmopolitan society, a society in which gender, sex and age differences do not exist. According to forecasts the digital camera was supposed to eliminate basic traditional cameras from the market, or at least it was strongly believed that it was going to substantial erode market shares. This happened but only partially. An explanation could be found in the growing presence on the photography market of mobile phones equipped with digital cameras. These are attacking the digital market share from the bottom. The purpose of the research should be an analysis of what kind of changes are brought about by the arrival of digital in photography. This means an analysis of the interrelation between analogical and digital camera, trying to point out not only empirical evidence, but mainly what is happening at a user level, with particular attention devoted to the role played by cognitive maps. Data are supposed to be used to understand what is the impact - real and potential - of digital photography on the market and how it is not affecting only the photography industry, not only vertically, but even horizontally. The focus should be the printing, because it sees to be at the battle field and convergence point of all of these changes. In my opinion, the one who is going to be able to meet before and in the most effective way user's needs in printing is going to trounce the concurrence. In this case it is even more important to understand how users are involved in the innovation process, in particular how they - if they do - pull it. « Short abstract

The aim of this presentation and discussion is to lay out some initial thoughts regarding a class of 'systems' that can fall under the rubric of Socially Beneficial Computing (SBC) and to explore (leveraging off the learned audience!) how to approach design problems in this type of system. These will be contrasted with other classes of system (e.g., nuclear power plants, military systems) and my background in Cognitive Systems Engineering will be drawn upon as part of this process. Concepts of domains, constraints and affordances will be used to set the scene. The specific case of smoking cessation (as part of an ongoing NH&MRC funded research project, between The Cancer Council (VIC) and The University of Melbourne) will be used as an illustrate case. « Short abstract

In many ways, text messaging is a revolutionary technology for the Deaf community. Instead of a visual, face-to-face communication system such as sign language, Deaf individuals are now free to use lightweight, text-based communication devices such as mobile phones or pagers. In this talk, I will discuss background, cultural information about the Deaf community as well as some information about current, mobile communication technology in the United States. The focus of my talk will be on a six-week, exploratory study we carried out in the Spring of 2005 to study the effects of electronic communication technologies in a population of Deaf teenagers. This study utilized qualitative techniques such as focus groups, social networks, and diary studies. I will discuss the findings and conclusions from this study and what the Deaf community has to teach us about mobile technology design. Valerie Henderson is a 3rd year PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. She is specializing in Human-Computer Interation with a minor in Assistive Technology. Before Georgia Tech, she worked for IBM as a verification engineer on the Power4/Power5 line of PowerPC chips for four years. She graduated from Duke University in Durham, NC with BSCS and a specialization in Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing. Her current collaboration with the University of Melbourne is being sponsored by a National Science Foundation East Asia Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. « Short abstract

Chen Liaoyu graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1994 and he is now one of the most important professors in its animation college. Chen Liaoyu is a pioneer in China in the use of mobiles to shoot films, and his work "The Apple"(2005) is called the No.1 Chinese mobile movie and was selected as one of the "2005's Top Ten Issues of China Mobile Media". Chen Liaoyu is the chairman of the "BFA"s Academy Award" jury. The BFA "Academy Award" is the highest and most influential contest for Chinese young animators. Chen Liaoyu is also the CEO and the chief director of the Blackbox Technical Developing Limited Company. Blackbox is a commercial animation company, and now specializes in producing mobile entertainment videos. Chen Liaoyu created the website www.blackboxtv.cn to exhibit mobile movie work, and is a major resource for studying and exploring the possibilities of this new shooting tool. Zhang Ai Hua is a media educator with over two decades of cross-cultural professional teaching experiences in both the East and West. Aihua (Tina) is currently teaching at the Department of Film Studies of Beijing Film Academy, the largest film institution in Asia. She is also visiting Professor of New Media and Art at the highly-esteemed Harbin Institute of Technology. Aihua's works have received numerous honors, including her essay "Art Theory and Practice in the 'E' era", which was awarded as the "Outstanding Academic Essay of the Year of 2005" by Chinese Ministry of Broadcasting, Film and TV. She is the co-author of the book New Technologies, New Creations. Her forthcoming book is Engaging a Glocal Dialogue: A Comparative Study; and her PH.D. Dissertation was on Dao in the Western Landscape.  « Short abstract

The research focuses on developing methods and tools to support the early design process, when designers are typically exploring alternatives that differ significantly from one another. The research seminar will discuss three main research strands are: (1) using simulation systems to evaluate the the sustainability of building design, (2) using generative systems and to help explore alternative configurations of building design, and (3) combining simulation systems with generative systems to allow alternative building design configurations to be evolved. Bio: Dr Patrick Janssen works in the area of digital design methods and focuses on three key areas: design simulation, design generation, and design evolution. He completed his Bachelors at the University of Manchester and his Diploma at the Architectural Association in London. During his diploma years, he became fascinated with the used of digital techniques in architectural design. He subsequently studied Cognitive Science and Intelligent Computing at Westminster University, and completed his Ph.D. in generative and evolutionary design methods at Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the supervision of Professor John Frazer. « Short abstract

Task Analysis has been widely used in HCI, but rarely used outside HCI, such as people's daily life. Among the various task analysis methods, DIANE+ is significant and has been commonly used due to its rich information representation. In this research, we studied the expressive adequacy of DIANE+ by applying it to represent visitors' experience in a museum. Data regarding visitors' activities and behaviours were collected from the Melborune Museum. Task models were built based on DIANE+ notations. The evaluation was taken, leading to suggestions on improving the describing power of DIANE+ notation. In this presentation, I will generally go through my research design and show some data collection results and model diagrams. More importantly, I will expose people's concerns on my current evaluation criteria and process. Hope the feedback from you could help me to make my evaluation criteria more convincible. « Short abstract

A range of technologies can now be used to locate individuals as they go about their daily activities including the near ubiquitous mobile phone. The availability of such technologies enables a new class of location-aware information systems that link People-to-People-to-geographical-Places, which we call P3-Systems. Urban enclaves, which are physically compact and utilized by community conscious individuals, can greatly benefit from P3-Systems. This is because P3-Systems by design, aim to improve geographically contextualized user communication, coordination and social connectivity. However, to maximize such benefits to enclaves and to enable rich functionality, data regarding the socially meaningful places that exist over time in any urban environment, enclave users' social relationships, and social event histories need to be collected, analyzed and shared between applications. This requires 1) the utilization of emerging ubiquitous computing infrastructure and social software paradigms for data generation, 2) the creation of enclave middleware that can glue together a range of enclave deployed P3-Systems, and 3) the overcoming of numerous usability challenges, including privacy management. In this paper, we describe the requirements for next generation urban social connectivity in detail and our exploration of these issues through our SmartCampus initiative. « Short abstract

Intelligent agent architectures, initially drawn from AI, Robotics, Psychology, Software Engineering, Sociology and other fields, are predominantly cognitive models for building intelligent computational systems, generally known as multi-agent systems (MAS). Amongst the concepts that the architectures include, most of them model 'goals', initially at a high-level. However, focus upon low-level goals comes to the fore (during analysis and design), as actual applications are built using MAS - i.e. as agent paradigm concepts move from theory toward practise. The sort of computation that achieves a low-level goal can be called an action, or a task. Task Analysis (TA) within HCI, began at the other end of the spectrum - with a keystroke-level interest in the things that humans do with technology. There are several generic TA models that have evolved toward top-down models, approaching the sophistication we see in agent architectures and meta-models. My research draws upon Task Analysis and generic task models, and on Information Analysis (IA) techniques, to enhance an existing agent architecture and methodology, in order to make them more widely applicable to the many areas that require complex problem solving. As generic as the current agent architectures are, they are still being tested and refined, with contemporary research efforts exploring diverse new fields of application including but far from limited to: automatic narrative generation in interactive entertainment (e.g. Riedl and Young, 2004), social worlds and participatory design (Goschnick and Graham, 2006), augmented simulation in social-oriented design (Murakami et al., 2005) and predictive maintenance of the myriad of machines in non-stop factories (Yan et al., 2005). The enhanced agent architecture resulting from my research thus far, is now being informed and improved by applying it to certain problems encountered in the analyse, design and development of some computer games. « Short abstract

When designing mobile technologies for young people in social situations, there is a need for methodological approaches that allow the researcher to capture the intricacies of use within the context of day-to-day situations. As will be discussed in this paper, one of the most effective ways of achieving this is through the use of multi-disciplinary methodologies provided by HCI. However, while traditional approaches usually draw on ethnography or psychology for the sociology component, the study reported on in this paper, inspired by the work being conducted within the emerging field of Critical Technical Practice, introduces cultural theory into the multi-disciplinary mix of a user centered design project. The result is the development of the Swarm mobile phone prototype. « Short abstract

The design and evaluation of computing technology supporting a process of personal change presents both opportunities and challenges for HCI. Here we describe an existing program of ongoing smoking cessation support delivered via the Internet, and present the case for augmenting this system using messaging and 'social' technologies. A key concern in this enterprise is reconciling a model of human behaviour with models of technology interaction. This involves utilizing a model describing the health behaviour change process to inform present support (an interactive, Web-based 'coaching' system - the QuitCoach or QC) and future technologies augmenting this system. The two data sets we present (patterns of use of the QC and emails sent to the site) illustrate some broad requirements for interactive support programs, operating through several channels of communication, for smokers trying to quit. « Short abstract

The cultural probe approach is becoming a valuable observational method in social contexts. Based on cultural probe work on intergenerational play, this paper proposes a method for moving forward from these results towards a requirements analysis, while retaining valuable aspects of the cultural probe approach, like subjectivity and interpretation. Since requirements elicitation techniques are often determined by the modeling scheme used, we chose the most apparently appropriate modeling scheme for social contexts, the Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodology, ROADMAP. We believe to have contributed the ability to include AOSE in the cycle from cultural probe observation to production of informed technology, reflecting designer motivation and intention, for re-immersion into the situational context. The method facilitates the transition from data collection in social environments via cultural probes to socially oriented requirements analysis for informed technology production. « Short abstract

This paper proposes a new framework for applying Critical Technical Practice (CTP) to the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Through this paper the framework is developed, justified and explained. The framework is then demonstrated using three cases. Since the conception of CTP in the late 1990s it has attracted interest from various areas, and through research is helping to yield new ways forward for problem areas, design and products in HCI. However the application of CTP has always been up to individuals and their own interpretation. The proposed framework tries to add structure through a series of easy to follow steps that the CTP adopter can use to apply CTP to their problem area, design or product. The framework is motivated by the need to provide the adopter with a straight forward way to critically think about his/her HCI arena. Ways to enable this are provided and areas for future work are discussed. The use cases presented help to demonstrate how the framework can be applied to each of these different areas. « Short abstract