Socio-technical Systems: Design and Use

The pervasiveness and ubiquity of Information and Communication
Technologies causes software-intensive systems to take over many,
previously 'human' tasks. The borders between the social and the technical
disappear progressively: while human-human relationships become more and more
technology-mediated, human-machine interactions create illusions and
expectations of sociality.<p>

In this symposium we want to address three interrelated fields in this
continuum of socio-technical systems:<p>

* 'Socio-technical systems in use': covering all aspects of social
interaction with intelligent systems, in particular conversational artifacts
(robots, ECAs, dialog systems etc.); technology's role in shaping and
changing human relationships in social computing; qualitative and
quantitative studies and evaluation of socio-technical systems and their users.<p>

* 'Designing socio-technical systems': covering all aspects of the
design of such systems in order to satisfy the social expectations of
users. A clearer understanding of both human practices and technological
feasibility is needed.<p>

* 'Socio-technical systems in a globalized world': socio-technical systems
allow and force people to cross cultural boundaries, be it in collaboration,
learning, entertainment or design. People both adapt to foreign cultures and
create new socio-technical subcultures. Design is faced with the problem of
accomodating multi-cultural user groups and of navigating between glabalization and localization, between simulating the old and fostering the new.<p><p>

For this symposium we solicit contributions covering one or more of above
issues. Papers providing a systemic, holistic view of these issues are
especially welcome. A non-exhaustive list of of relevant topics is:<p>

* Human-Agent Interaction<p>
* Embodying business and collaboration practices in agents<p>
* Emergent cultural practices in interaction with socio-technical systems; Social Computing<p>
* Legal and ethical issues of agents<p>
* Social identities, relationships and expectations in human-computer interaction<p>
* Gender issues<p>
* Socializing conversational systems<p>
* Cross-cultural human-computer interaction<p>
* Cultural differences with respect to work attitude and social behaviour<p>
* Outsourcing of work across cultural boundaries - advantages, limits and pitfalls<p>
* Issues of cross-cultural technology-supported collaboration<p>
* Embodying cultural differences in software intensive systems (Localization)<p>
* Mass-customisation across cultural boundaries<p>
* Designing multicultural systems<p>

... but any other topic related to the thematic area of the symposium is also welcome!<p><p>

Important Dates:<p>
Deadline for submission: November 4, 2007<p>
Notification of authors: December 16, 2007 (at the latest).<p>
Camera ready papers): January 30, 2008.<p>
Conference: March 25 - 28, 2008<p>

Symposium organized by: Gerhard Chroust, Sabine Payr