Workshop on The Role of Emotion in HCI

Objectives:

Emotion is underrepresented in HCI, despite its obvious and demonstrated importance. It has been shown that emotions influence people’s attitude towards products and their own current and next action. There is evidence that emotion play an essential role in rational decision making, perception, learning, and other cognitive functions. HCI activity, both commercially and academically, should reflect this fact.
Any attempts to expand the field have suffered from being anecdotal or lacking a systematic approach. There seems to be no rigorous footing for HCI-related emotion research, nor a general concept of how emotions should be treated within HCI and its sub-disciplines. But it is necessary to clear up those theoretical issues in advance before any other steps towards affective computing can be sensibly made.

This one-day workshop wants to take on the challenge by discussing theoretical fundamentals of HCI-related emotion research, emotions’ function in HCI, and also practical implications and consequences for the HCI community.

Topics (non-exclusively) addressed by the workshop are:
- How do HCI people define "emotion", and are all emotions of interest
  to HCI?
- Which opportunities and risks are there?
- Which function do emotions have in HCI and can we develop an
  actionable framework to support it?
- Are there reliable and replicable processes to include emotion in
  HCI design projects?
- How applicable are research results from other disciplines, is there
  need for HCI specific emotion research?
- Can we solve emotion related issues within the HCI domain, or do we
  need support from other fields of computer science or other sciences?
- Are there new intersections between sub-disciplines concerning
  emotions, and is there need for a new sub-discipline?
- Do all HCI sub-disciplines have the same interest in emotions/
  who can benefit most from considering emotions?
- Which value might affective applications, affective systems, and
  affective interaction have?
- Which impact will emotion awareness have on HCI in general and the
  sub-disciplines in particular?

The workshop wants to draw together scientists and practitioners from a variety of disciplines: usability, task analysis, interface design experts, operating systems specialists, software architects, communication and network experts, sensor developers, and others. We want to discuss about the named topics in as wide an application spectrum as possible, such as internet applications, office work, programming, call centres, control rooms, mobile computing, mobile phones, virtual reality, presence, or home applications.

You are cordially invited to become part of this interdisciplinary forum. Your contribution can be three-fold:
   a) register and take part in the workshop
   b) as a) + give a short talk on your ideas, visions or concerns
      (5-10 minutes)
   c) as a) + present a demo, video, or interactive experience

In any case, we ask you to send us some thoughts of yours related to the topic prior to the workshop for best possible preparation of the workshop.

It is planned to produce a special issue of a journal on the results of the workshop, with accepted short papers and demos thought to become part of it.

Please note that registration to the HCI conference is required in order to take part in the workshop (at least for the 6th September).

For a more detailed description of the workshop visit the workshop's web site:

http://www.emotion-in-hci.net


Submit your comments, thoughts, concerns to
       comments@emotion-in-hci.net

Submit your position paper/demo description (about 800 words) to
       submissions@emotion-in-hci.net
New deadline: 19 June 2005

For inquiries use info@emotion-in-hci.net
or contact on of us directly:
       Christian Peter: cpeter@igd-r.fraunhofer.de
       Gerred Blyth   : gerred@amber-light.co.uk

The conference web site with regitration information is
http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2005/


Workshop committee:
Christian Peter, Fraunhofer IGD Rostock, Germany
Gerred Blyth, Amberlight Partners Ltd, London, UK
Prof. Bodo Urban, Rostock University, Rostock, Germany
Prof. John Waterworth, Umeå  University, Sweden
Lesley Axelrod, Brunel University, London, UK
Steffen Mader, Fraunhofer IGD Rostock, Germany
Nicola Millard, British Telecom plc., Ipswich, UK
Jörg Voskamp, Fraunhofer IGD Rostock, Germany