[Air-l] CFP: Universal Usability

[Nancy Baym]

Call for Participation - Abstracts on Universal Usability


  The Second Conference on Universal Usability is seeking extended 
abstracts on late breaking research in Universal Usability.  The 
conference will be held in downtown Vancouver, Canada from November 
10 -11, 2003.  See http://sigchi.org/cuu2003/ for conference details. 
 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.


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.

-- 
Nancy Baym	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org