Sixth Workshop on
    User-Centred Design and Evaluation of Adaptive Systems
                  in conjunction with UMAP'09


You are kindly invited to contribute to the Sixth Workshop on User-Centred Design and Evaluation of Adaptive Systems (UDEAS), which will be held in the context of the UMAP'09 conference, and follows in the tracks of five successful workshops held in conjunction with UM2001, UM2003, AH2004, UM2005 and AH 2006.
The workshop's guiding perspective is that novel design approaches, adequate evaluation methods, and reliable assessment criteria and metrics are prerequisites for improving the quality and usability of the next generations of adaptive systems. This instalment of the workshop has a special focus on the user-centred design of adaptive systems, and early formative evaluation studies that inform and guide the development process.  This includes the re-use or tailoring of
usability- and requirements- engineering methods to facilitate the design and assessment of concepts and prototypes in all phases of system development.

Workshop web site:
http://www.easy-hub.org/hub/workshops/umap2009/

Web sites and proceedings of the five previous workshops:
http://www.easy-hub.org/hub/workshops.jsp


Thematic Areas

The workshop, continuing in the steps of its predecessors, will focus on the following general themes:

Design

* Which user-centred design methods can be used to inform
  different development stages of adaptive systems? And how?
* How do you account for adaptivity during requirements
  engineering?
* Are there examples of design patterns for adaptive systems
  and their employment in the design of new adaptive systems?
* How can potential trade-offs of adaptivity and usability
  be resolved (e.g., consistency vs. context-sensitivity)?
* How do you account for typical user problems that come
  with adaptive systems (e.g., privacy, reduced control over
  system behaviour, reduced levels of predictability) during
  design?
* Case studies on the design of an adaptive system which
  involved end-users.

Evaluation

* What new criteria need to be introduced to specifically
  cater for the presence of user modelling and adaptation in the
  evaluated systems?
* Which criteria can be used during the evaluation of a
  specific sub-class of adaptive systems (e.g., adaptive search
  engines or adaptive learning systems) and the underlying user
  models?
* How can we evaluate variables like perceived and real
  privacy, system scrutability, user trust, user satisfaction,
  system effectiveness, system efficiency, learnability and
  enjoyment?
* Which user-centred evaluation methods can be used or
  adapted to inform different development stages of adaptive
  systems? And how?
* How do you evaluate adaptivity without a full-working
  system?
* Case studies on the evaluation of an adaptive system which
  involved end-users.

Experiences, problems and plans

* What problems did you run into while conducting design
  activities with users for an adaptive system or while
  evaluating it with users? And, if applicable, how did you solve
  them?
* If you have a user-centred design approach or evaluation
  plan, but have not conducted the activities yet: What does the
  design look like and why did you choose for a certain method
  and the variables to assess?
* Do you have any preliminary insights regarding user-
  centred design or evaluation of previous experiences that you
  want to share with the community?
* Are there still open issues in your design approach or
  evaluation plan and you want to discuss with the community,
  what are they?


Workshop Format

The workshop will be divided into two parts. One part will include an introduction delivered by the workshop organizers, on the state of the art in formative evaluation methods for adaptive systems. This talk is intended as a condensed overview of the results of previous workshops, and will serve both as a mini "tutorial" on the subject of empirically evaluating adaptive systems, and as a basis for further discussion among participants.

The second part will be devoted to paper presentations and discussions. In order to allow as much time as possible for interaction between participants during the workshop, the allowed duration of presentations will be kept short.
Discussions will be organized around the general research themes outlined above. Participants of the workshop are expected to share their experiences and discuss the issue of what constitutes good and bad practice in studies targeting adaptive systems. To encourage as much interchange as possible, participants will be divided in smaller groups, each addressing a different topic; topics will be derived from the workshop themes and questions, as well as from the workshop submissions to ensure the highest possible relevance to the people present.
Furthermore, the group discussions aim to provide the participants that have questions about their design or evaluation studies with answers.


Solicited Contributions

Submissions will be evaluated in regard to their relevance to / contribution towards the themes. Two types of submissions will be solicited to achieve this goal: studies and position papers.
Each study will be discussed in terms of experience gathered.
The submission of case studies is explicitly encouraged, as these can be very informative for other participants. This is also true for "unsuccessful studies", which can help share insights about potential pitfalls and how these may be avoided.
Persons with a paper in the main conference that contains a design or evaluation study are encouraged to send an elaborated discussion of this study as a paper.

Papers reporting studies are expected to describe the design or evaluation activities and their outcomes. Furthermore, they must report 'lessons learned' which can be valuable to others who are about to design or evaluate an adaptive system.

Position papers are solicited on the design and evaluation themes. Authors of such papers are expected to build upon related experience to discuss and propose either new (or, reworked existing) metrics / approaches for user-centred design or evaluation of adaptation, or, address other related methodological or organisational issues.

Papers on 'experiences, problems and plans' are expected to shortly summarize the (planned) study and the experiences the authors gained from it, or the problems they were confronted with.


Submission Format

Submissions should not exceed 10 pages for studies / position papers and 4 pages for "experiences, problems and plans"
papers, and should be formatted according to the Springer LNCS guidelines. Please refer to the submission section of the workshop's web site for more information on the submission format.

Workshop papers will be published in full length in the workshop proceedings and presented in talks at the workshop.

Please, submit your paper by e-mail to umap2009-workshop at easy-hub.org until Monday, March 30th, 2009.

Portable Document Format (*.pdf) and Postscript (*.ps) files are preferred.


Important Dates

March 30th, 2009:  Submission of papers
April 30th, 2009:  Notification of authors
May   15th, 2009:  Delivery of camera-ready copy
June  22nd, 2009:  Workshop day; the conference lasts from June 22nd
                   to June 26th, 2009


Programme Committee

1.  David Chin, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA 2.  Betsy van Dijk, University of Twente, The Netherlands 3.  Christina Gena, University of Turin, Italy 4.  Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center, Germany 5.  Anthony Jameson, DFKI, Germany 6.  Judith Masthoff, University of Aberdeen, UK 7.  Alexandros Paramythis, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria 8.  Lex van Velsen, University of Twente, The Netherlands 9.  Gerhard Weber, University of Education Freiburg, Germany 10. Stephan Weibelzahl, National College of Ireland, Ireland


Organizers

Dr.Stephan Weibelzahl
National College of Ireland Dublin
Mayor Street IFSC
Dublin 1
Ireland
+353 1 4498 579
sweibelzahl at ncirl.ie
http://www.weibelzahl.de/

Dr.Judith Masthoff
Department of Computing Science
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen AB24 3UE
Scotland, UK
+44 1224 272299
j.masthoff at abdn.ac.uk
http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~jmasthof/

Alexandros Paramythis
Institute for Information Processing and Microprocessor Technology (FIM) Johannes Kepler University Linz Altenbergerstr. 69 A-4040 Linz, AUSTRIA
+43 732 2468 8442
alpar at fim.uni-linz.ac.at
http://www.fim.uni-linz.ac.at/staff/paramythis/

Lex van Velsen
Department of Technical & Professional Communication University of Twente P.O. Box 217 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands
+31 53 4892416
l.s.vanvelsen at utwente.nl
http://www.lexvanvelsen.nl


The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013683.

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