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1. Supriya: Getting Together
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I am looking forward to getting together with colleagues within the SITCRC at the annual conference. It is always good to hear what they are doing, but it is the meetings before and during the conference that are meaningful. So the coffee and dinner dates are being made, as are plans for face-to-face discussions. With the Nymity project, as we are still in the early stages, there is a full day meeting before the conference. Important issues of design and resourcing will be discussed for the Virtual Café project. It is a good time to reach understandings. For all the usefulness of e-mail, we need to meet so that we know we understand each other.

The conference is also one of the rare occasions when the whole User Environment group gets together. Often we reach out more to the technology programs than to others with the UE group. These opportunities are so valuable, that we are having a pre-conference lunch as some of our people move from Adelaide to Sydney via Melbourne. Just goes to show that research is best done with a lot of fun, friendship and food.

Supriya

Assoc Prof Supriya Singh,
Project Leader
supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au

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2. SITCRC Conference Agenda
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The annual SITCRC Conference, “Towards Smart Internet 2010” will be held in room 9BC of the Australian Technology Park in Everleigh, Sydney, this Thursday and Friday (September 18-19, 2003). The conference agenda is as follows:

DAY ONE (Open to Public)

9:30 Registration and Morning Tea

9:50 Opening Remarks from the Chair
Chair: Professor Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC

10:00 Next Generation Networks and the Networked Economy
[45 mins + 15 mins questions]
Bob James, Telstra

Bob James is an independent consultant working with Telstra on emerging technologies and associated business models. He previously occupied Director level positions in the Convergent Business, Products and Marketing, and Network & Technology Groups.

He has also assisted the National Office of the Information Economy in examining options to accelerate development of the “Networked Economy” with leading ICT companies.

Bob will discuss the changing models for the application of Information and Communications Technology in everyday life and business – and address key areas of Identity, Payments, Web Services and Mobility.

11:00 Break

11:10 Envisioning the Reality for Users of the Future
Chair: Professor Trevor Barr, Program Leader Smart Internet Technology CRC

11:15 Smart Internet Best Student Paper [15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

11:40 Translating from User Studies to Design: the case of the Swarm
Christine Satchell, Supriya Singh and Peter Burrows
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:05 Trust Comes in Many Guises: Australian and Internet Transactions
Trevor Barr, Ann Knowles and Susan Moore
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:30 Context and Content: User Centered reflections on Technologically mediated interaction
Robert Cox, Christine Newell and Paul Turner
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:55 Lunch

1:55 Future Directions for Smart Internet
Professor Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC

2:20 Demand for Smart Internet Services of the Future
Session Chair: Professor Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC
Roger Kermode, Motorola
John Snare, Adacel
Belinda Ward, Telstra
Khimji Vaghjiani, Westpac

3:45 Afternoon Tea

4:05 Commercialisation through Smart Internet SME Partners
Session Chair: Dr. Gautam Tendulkar, Business Development and Commercialisation Director, Smart Internet Technology CRC

4:10 Commercialisation of Emerging Smart Internet Technologies
Dr. Gautam Tendulkar, Business Development and Commercialisation Director, Smart Internet Technology CRC
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

4:35 Two SME Partners current activities, and potential linkages with Smart Internet
[2 x 15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]
Dr Richard Jones, The Distillery
Brenton Lovett, Wizard Information Systems

5:25 Close of day one and wrap up from the Conference Chair

5:30 Reception and Poster Session for Students

8:00 Bus Transfer back to hotels

DAY TWO

8:00 Morning Coffee and Tea

8:30 Opening Remarks from the Chair
Professor Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC

8:35 Future Architecture of Smart Internet
Claude Sammut, Farzad Safaei, Roger Kermode, Stephen Smith on architecture and standards issues

9:35 Discussion

10:05 SN/IE Session: Beyond Next Generation Network Services
Session Chair: Professor Farzad Safaei, Program Manager, Smart Networks and Intelligent Environments, Smart Internet Technology CRC

10:10 Merino: An Intelligent Environment Architecture for Scalable Context Processing
Hexel, R., et. al.
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

10:35 Securing the future Internet
Safavi-Naini, R, et. al.
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

11:00 Smart Multimedia Context and Delivery
Drury, G., Burnett I.
Developing a Smart framework for the integration of learning objects and learning designs
Harper, B. et. al.
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

11:25 Break

11:40 Smart Pricing for Advanced Wireless Networks
Chapman, P., et. al.
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:05 Server and Network infrastructure for Future Services
Boustead, P., Safaei, F.
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:30 "Resource Optimisation for Content Distribution Networks in Shared Infrastructure Environment".
Nguyen, T. V., Chou, C. T., Boustead, P.,
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

12:55 Lunch

1:45 SPA/NAUI Session: Talking, Sensing, Thinking, Learning Machines
Session Chair: Professor Claude Sammut, Program Manager, Smart Personal Assistants and Natural Adaptive User Interfaces, Smart Internet Technology CRC

1:50 Framework for Knowledge Acquisition within Conversational Agents
Pauline Mac and Byeong Ho-Kang
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

2:15 Invented Predicates to Reduce Knowledge Acquisition
Hendra Suryanto and Paul Compton
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

2:40 Improved Learning Rates by Inducing the Transition Model
Robert Bridle and Eric McCreath
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]
3:05 A Role-based Methodology for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
Kevin Chan, Leon Sterling, Shanika Karunasekera, Adrian Pierce, Thomas Juan
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

3:30 Break

3:45 Symbolic Learning for Adaptive Agents
Joshua Cole, John Lloyd and Kee Siong Ng
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

4:10 Multimodal Input Fusion - A framework for multimodal integration
Anurag Gupta, Claude Sammut
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

4:35 Smart Internet Demonstrators
Session Chair: Prof. Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC

4:40 Emergency Services Demonstrator
Professor Joe Chicharo
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

5:05 eHealth Demonstrator
Professor Enrico Coeira
[15 mins presentation + 10 mins questions]

5:30 Conclusion and wrap up by session chair

5:35 Close of Conference

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4. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
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* PDC 2004

The eighth biennial Participatory Design Conference will be held in Toronto, Canada from July 27-31, 2004. The theme of the conference is "Artful Integration: Interweaving Media, Materials, and Practices." Whereas conventional design approaches emphasize the role of the designer and the creation of singular products, artful integration calls attention to the collective interweaving of people and artifacts to achieve practical, aesthetic, or emancipatory syntheses.

PDC 2004 will bring together a multidisciplinary and international group of researchers, designers, practitioners, users, and managers who adopt distinctively participatory approaches in the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

For further information, please visit: http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/index.html
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* DRS FUTUREGROUND 2004

Monash University will host the Design Research Society International Conference for 2004 in Melbourne from 17-21 November 2004. The theme is “Futureground” and the conference will feature leading edge design research from the international research community.

Supporting the central theme will be discourse around design as both cultural activity and production; mapping the discipline's development; and research in an industrial context. Particular emphasis will be on the opportunities this presents for reconsidering the nature of design and an exploration of the scope for future research.

For further information, please visit: http://www.futureground.monash.edu.au
Or email: futureground@artdes.monash.edu.au
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* Design and Emotion 2004

The fourth International Conference on Design and Emotion will be held in Ankara Turkey on 12-14 July 2004. The conference is a leading international forum for the exchange of ideas and information about various aspects of emotion / experience-driven design.

Contributions are encouraged from both research and industry and the submission deadline is November 14, 2003.

For further information, please visit: http://www.de2004.metu.edu
Or email: de2004@metu.edu

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5. Useful Links and References
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* Chan, S., Fang, X., Brzezinski, J., Zhou, Y., Xu, S., and Lam, J. (2002) “Usability for Mobile Commerce Across Multiple Form Factors,” Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Special Issue: Human Factors in Web-based Interaction, 3:3 2002

Current research on usability for mobile commerce has focused on single platforms and very limited aspects of commerce activities. The authors conducted an exploratory study to examine usability problems and to identify potential research questions concerning wireless solutions for consumer e-commerce. By using cognitive walkthrough and heuristic evaluation methods, they evaluated the usability of ten wireless sites in three platforms: WAP-enabled mobile phones, Palm OS based wireless PDAs, and Pocket PCs running Windows CE operating systems. This article discusses their usability findings pertaining to user tasks, content presentation, search, navigation systems, and the design constraints imposed by form factors. It also provides design guidelines based on our study and examines research implications for wireless interface design.

http://www.csulb.edu/web/journals/jecr/issues/20023/paper7.pdf
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* Boivie, I., Aborg, C., Persson, J., and Lofberg, M. (2003). “Why Usability gets Lost or Usability in In?House Software Development,” Interacting with Computers, 15:4. pp 623-639.

This study tries to shed some light on what happens to usability and occupational health issues in a bespoke software development project. Usability is an essential quality in software, in particular in a work context where poor usability and other risk factors related to the software and computers may cause health problems. The authors have interviewed a number of software developers, usability people and users about their attitudes to and practices for integrating usability and users' health concerns in software development. The interviews were conducted in two Swedish organisations with in-house development of bespoke software. Their main conclusion is that several factors combine to push usability and occupational health matters aside, some of which are attitudes to usability and users' health issues, unclear responsibilities, poor support for user-centeredness and usability in software development models, ineffective user participation and usability and users' health being ignored or forgotten in decisions about the software, its use and its design.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(03)00055-9
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* Paul Dourish (2001), “Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction,” MIT/Triliteral

In this book Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls the "foundations of embodied interaction"- an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes phenomenological engagement and practice rather than disembodied rationality. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.

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