Please note that the deadline for submission to the HCI 2005 Workshop: "Understanding & Designing for Aesthetic Experience" has been extended to Monday 20th of June 2005. See the CFP with revised dates below: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION HCI 2005 Workshop: "Understanding & Designing for Aesthetic Experience" Organisers: Luigina Ciolfi, Michael Cooke, Olav W. Bertelsen and Liam J. Bannon Monday 05/09/2005 HCI 2005-The Bigger Picture, Napier University, Edinburgh (Scotland) BACKGROUND This one-day workshop aims at exploring the importance of defining and discussing conceptual and methodological tools for studying and understanding how aesthetic aspects can impact on human experience of technology and the role that user participation can have in this aesthetic design process. Issues such as pleasurable design, user experience design and aesthetics are increasingly being discussed within the HCI and interaction design community, due to the development of ubiquitous computing systems that can be embedded within the objects and environments in the physical world. In designing tangible artefacts and locales, researchers are facing issues related to aesthetic and experiential aspects of people's interaction. In the last decade or so the fields of HCI and Interaction Design have become less defined by an explicit work orientation regarding the design of technology, and increasingly concerned with issues of fun, enjoyment and aesthetics. This has occurred in parallel with a greater increase in consumer choice, and the proliferation of consumer electronics to the Extent that often the decision to purchase a product rests more on its visceral attractiveness than its technical specifications. For example the Apple iMac and iPod are seen as essential fashion accessories, and memory sticks are now being worn as items of jewellery, etc. However, while CSCW and interaction design have recognized the role of user participation in the gathering of requirements of a functional and usability nature, the issue of the users role in the terms of the aesthetic design of these technologies has not been discussed to the same extent. Interaction design has received direct inspiration from graphic design and industrial design and terms such as user engagement; experience design and seductive design now compete with usability as primary concerns for HCI designers. Product and industrial designers and artists have also become members of interaction design teams, bringing their expertise, skills and sensitivities regarding aesthetics and materiality. Also, the development of ubiquitous computing systems that are embedded within the objects and environments in the physical world has contributed to an increasing interest in topics such as design aesthetics and user experience. In designing tangible artefacts and locales, researchers are facing issues related to aesthetic and experiential aspects of people's interaction with their personal, material, and socio-cultural worlds. There has also been a body of theoretical work that has attempted to understand the nature of the aesthetic experience of technology, which has given us a set of conceptual tools for making sense of aesthetic experience coming from a variety of perspectives ranging across cognitive, behavioural, emotional and socio-cultural dimensions. However, the relationship between such conceptual tools and design practice is not always clear, leading to a gap between understanding aesthetic experience on the one hand, and how to design aesthetics into technology, especially interactive systems, on the other. This workshop aims to discuss some of these outstanding issues as well as bringing together examples of work dealing with the study of and design for aesthetic experience of technology. WORKSHOP AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners with concerns regarding the design of the aesthetic dimension of interactive technologies, to present and discuss their experience in using conceptual frameworks and/or specific methodologies for studying and designing for aesthetic experience. As well as acting as a forum for sharing design or research cases, the workshop aims at fostering debate on a number of issues that are currently emerging regarding aesthetic aspects of interactive technologies, but not well represented in the HCI literature. For example: - the role and importance of aesthetic concerns in the development of interactive systems that are not explicitly designed with aesthetics in mind, such as work technology; - the users' role in co-designing and authoring the aesthetic experience of technology (for example, in the case of interactive installations that respond to people's behaviour). Issues of user participation in the design process. - the relative importance of artistic insight and of conceptual Tools in the design of aesthetic experience, and role of artists and designers in co-design teams; - the importance of aspects of materiality in shaping the aesthetic experience. The workshop will feature a mix of discussions, short presentations, creativity stimulating activities; in plenary as well as in smaller groups. Planned result of the workshop is a collection of position paper. Participants will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for potential inclusion in a special issue of "CoDesign" Journal. INTENDED PARTICIPANTS This workshop aims to attract researchers and practitioners with backgrounds in art and design, HCI, psychology, sociology, anthropology, architecture, cultural studies, interactive systems design and communications. Prospective participants will have interests in issues such as theoretical frameworks, development of the design process, novel interaction techniques, multi-disciplinary and participatory approaches to design. SUBMISSION DETAILS Position papers (max 5 pages) due: 20th June 2005 (email to: [log in to unmask]; or [log in to unmask]) Notification of acceptance: 1st July 2005 Workshop date: 5th September, 2005 Information on HCI 2005 conference (registration and advance programme): htttp://www.hci2005.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send an empty email to mailto:[log in to unmask] For further details of CHI lists see http://sigchi.org/listserv ---------------------------------------------------------------