Posted on behalf of Stephen Brewster [[log in to unmask]]

Special Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing


MULTIMODAL INTERACTION WITH MOBILE AND WEARABLE DEVICES


Editors: Stephen Brewster, University of Glasgow, UK and Matt Jones,
University of Waikato, New Zealand


Mobile devices have been one of the major success stories of computing
in recent years. Large numbers of people now carry a sophisticated
computing device with them all the time in the form of a mobile
telephone or a personal digital assistant. More sophisticated and
powerful wearable computers are becoming available and in the future
will be embedded into the clothes and accessories a user wears; these
wearable computers have more power and flexibility for use in different
situations and with access to different media and services.

One of the key problems for interaction with mobile and wearable devices
is their impoverished user interface when compared desktop computers.
Screens are often small or non existent and head-mounted displays are
not always an option, so output is limited. Small keyboards or touch
screens can be hard to use for input when on the move, making
interaction hard. To make mobile and wearable devices more effective and
acceptable to users, and to allow a whole new range of services to be
delivered to people when on the move, the challenges of input and output
must be addressed. Multimodal interaction is one way to enhance
usability. 

The combination of vision, hearing and speech, and touch and gesture
have great possibilities for increasing the bandwidth of communication
between user and device (taste and smell are potential future
contributors too). Flexible multimodal interfaces may allow users to
interact in a more natural manner. This is particularly important for
mobile and wearable devices as they are used by a wide range of
different people in a wide range of different situations. They also have
great possibilities for users with disabilities as they provide
alternatives to the standard GUI model which can be problematic. 

Key issues remain about how the different senses should be used, what
each sense is good for, how they should be combined and how to assess
their performance in a mobile setting. For this special issue we are
keen to gather papers on the state of the art in multimodal interface
design for mobile and wearable devices to try and answer some of these
questions and to look towards the future of multimodal interface design.



Themes
We are soliciting papers that discuss novel multimodal techniques,
methods, models and tools to overcome the impoverished interfaces of the
current generation of mobile devices. We would like papers that bring
together the following sorts of issues in the mobile and wearable
context:-

.       Auditory interfaces using speech and non-speech sounds
.       Role and efficacy of speech recognition
.       Gestural, graspable, tactile, haptic and tangible interfaces
.       Vision based interaction (e.g. navigation through glancing)
.       Physiological input/output

.       Effective combination of multiple modalities (both in theory and
practice)
.       Evaluation of multimodal systems
.       Multimodal interfaces for disabled users
.       Novel sensors and output devices to facilitate multimodal
interaction
.       Novel mobile services using multimodal interfaces

This list is not exclusive; we are keen to receive papers on any novel
combination of modalities. 


Submission format and schedule
Submissions should be e-mailed as a PDF file (including images) directly
to the editors of the special issue. Information regarding journal
submissions and formats is available at:
http://www.personal-ubicomp.com/

The deadline for receiving submissions is 26th January, 2004. All
contributions will be peer reviewed to the journal's usual standard. We
encourage potential authors to contact the editors well before the final
deadline. 

For further information or to discuss a possible contribution, please
contact the special issue editors, Steve Brewster
([log in to unmask]) and Matt Jones ([log in to unmask]).


Deadlines.
Paper Submission: 26th January, 2004
Notification of acceptance: 9th April, 2004
Final Corrections to papers: 9th July, 2004
Publication of special issue: September 2004