[Air-l] New participation opportunities: Conference on Universal Usability

[Shari Trewin]

The 2nd ACM Conference on Universal Usability is seeking extended 
abstracts on late breaking research in Universal Usability.  We are 
particularly looking for papers from the social science, economics, 
communications and sociology community in order to build bridges between 
researchers in these disciplines and interface designers.  We are also 
seeking applicants for the CUU 2003 Doctoral Consortium.  The conference 
will be held in downtown Vancouver, Canada from November 10 ?11, 2003. See 
http://sigchi.org/cuu2003/ for conference details.  Special rates for 
early conference registration are available until October 13, 2003.

Doctoral Consortium

The CUU 2003 Doctoral Consortium provides an ideal opportunity for 
doctoral students to explore their research interests in an 
interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished 
research faculty.  The Consortium will be held on Sunday November 9, 2004. 
Ten (10) students will be invited to attend and discuss each student's 
work in turn. Student participants will have a poster of their work 
exhibited at the main conference. Students will receive complimentary 
conference registration, and reimbursement of travel, accommodation and 
food.  For application details, see the conference website at 
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/cuu2003/studentinfo.htm. The deadline for 
submission is Monday September 22, 2003, 5:00 p.m. (1700) Pacific Standard 
Time.

Abstracts on Universal Usability

The CUU conference is focused on understanding and guiding those elements 
of human-computer interface design that affect the ability of a universal 
collection of people to effectively use and gain benefit from computer 
applications.  Thus, the conference accepts papers in universal 
accessibility such as interface designs that support screen readers for 
the blind, but it is also keenly interested in the social nature of 
accessibility.  For example, CUU would like to attract research from those 
individuals working on the digital divide, in particular, details on the 
ways in which different socio-economic groups find it difficult to have 
access to computers and to the Internet.  Computers are currently designed 
for the western knowledge worker with an assumption of infrastructures 
that support complex exchanges and a robust power supply. A cultural and 
cost-based redesign has the potential of bridging the digital divide. 
Thus, research on the nature, extent and characteristics of this gap are 
solicited.  The conference is also interested in research on how different 
groups respond affectively to various interfaces and how specific 
applications leave users disturbed about potential invasions of privacy or 
control ? enough so that usage is avoided or limited.  A key belief in 
hosting this conference is that software and computers are cultural 
objects that have embodied in their design a set of features that clearly 
state ?who? the software and computers are designed for.  The focus of the 
conference is thus, to develop an understanding of how to create these 
cultural objects so that they speak to a universal audience.

Suggested topics for universal usability abstracts include the following:

1.      Digital divide issues in Africa, Indonesia, Poor America, etc.
2.      Affective or Emotional Computing 
3.      Designing interfaces for multiple languages and cultures
4.      Trust issues in networked applications
5.      Computer training for the computer illiterate
6.      Gender differences in responses to computerization, e.g., the 
automobile

Prepare a two-page extended abstract of your research in the ACM 
Conference Publications Format ( 
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html ), including: title, 
author information, abstract, keywords, research summary, and references. 
E-mail this abstract in PDF format to cuu2003-lbr at universalusability.org 
by the deadline of Monday, September 22, 2003, 5:00 pm (1700) Pacific 
Standard Time (PST).
Accepted abstracts will be available as part of the Proceedings on the 
conference website.  They will not be published in the print Proceedings.
At least one author from each accepted abstracts will be required to 
present the paper at the conference in November.   Presenting authors must 
register for the conference.

This call for extended abstracts is also available on the CUU 2003 web 
site at: http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/cuu2003/call.htm#Abstracts

Shari Trewin
CUU2003 Publicity Chair
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