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In this issue:

1. Supriya Reflects on Common Vision
2. Trevor: Next Round of Project Funding
3. UCD Researchers Gather in Brisbane
4. Virtual Meeting of the Virtual Cafe
5. UE Publications/Conferences List
6. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
7. Useful Links and References

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1. Supriya Reflects on Common Vision
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The dinner in Brisbane was inspiring. And it was not just the wine. As we came to the end of a day of touching base with the team in Griffith, Liisa, Gunela, Paul and I found ourselves wishing for a different kind of technology research, a research which was more in tune with the difficulties of access in everyday life. Perhaps we could design technologies for people who do not have telephones and PCs; for people who have always shared communication technologies through public or neighbourhood access. Why should we take for granted an individual, personalized world of technologies?

Our wish lists were the same. All of us had come from somewhere else. Perhaps it is the interdisciplinary nature of research which attracts people who can live in the in-between spaces. Yet with all the diversity of our researchers, we are addressing problems of only the developed Western world.

So we began talking of a conference for 2004 – Technology and Diversity. Get people together who have considered the diverse uses of technologies in different technological and social contexts. Perhaps then the SITCRC researchers can mine their own diversity and design technologies, discover new knowledge and create markets.

Supriya

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

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2. Trevor: Next Round of Project Funding
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I have initiated a series of discussions within our team about the future of the User Environment (UE) program in the lead up to the next round of SIRCRC funding. The Research Advisory Committee (RAC) will consider new proposals in August of this year and we need to be well prepared in advance. We already have over $1million in UE grants this calendar year and we want to keep the momentum going.

I met last Friday at Swinburne with Supriya Singh, John Burke and Paul Turner to talk about UCD. Very constructive. In very brief summary we might be heading towards a two-pronged UCD strategy:

A. Extended development of the user centred design methodology which underpins the conceptualisation and evolution of SITCRC processes.

B. Focus around at least three project linkages between the User Environment Program and the technology based programs * i.e., the Amivox project (UE/ NAUI), Nymity project ( SN/ IE/SN) and the Virtual Café (SN/UE).

There are a lot of other possible projects in the melting pot. Supriya and Paul had visited our Griffth team before the Swinburne meeting and they reported on their thinking. I will be visiting the Adelaide team next week to get a good handle on their sense of direction for 2004.

At the end of our meeting last Friday Supriya told me that it was unacceptable to be taken to a cheap noodle place for lunch. So my Bankcard is reeling from the bill at a top Glenferrie Road restaurant!

Nothing like a good day of strategic thinking!

Trevor

Professor Trevor Barr,
Program Leader, UE program
tbarr@groupwise.swin.edu.au

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3. UCD Researchers Gather in Brisbane
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Supriya Singh and Paul Turner visited the Brisbane group on 28?29 May to discuss joint papers and meet with SITCRC people in Brisbane, including Gunela Astbrink, Abdul Sattar, Rene Hexel, Sue Nielsen, Jenine Beekhuyzen and myself, plus PhD Sudents Michelle Morley and Vanessa Love. Project ideas were discussed in along with how to go about making a successful project proposal. Examples of project ideas include an investigation of how smart Internet technology could assist to improve evidence-based medicine amongst hospital clinicians.

The Griffith UCD group has been involved in a detailed study on the role of clinical leaders in integrating the vast amount of research (approximately 5000 new research articles per day) and practice. This study would provide an excellent basis to develop one or more user scenarios and personas for the NAUI, SPA and IE researchers at Griffith University. A proposal 'EviMed' is currently being developed for the RAC in August.

Other project ideas that were discussed is software development for Education Queensland which already has 500 teachers involved in an experimental project aiming to explore how PDA's can enhance teacher productivity and adding features to Sony iBo robots so that, in addition to be able to play soccer, the robot dog could serve as a guide dog for blind people.

All in, the visit was both useful and enjoyable.

Assoc. Prof. Liisa von Hellens
Senior Research Fellow
UCD Project
l.vonhellens@cit.gu.edu.au

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4. Virtual Meeting of the Virtual Cafe
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Members of the UCD team, involved in developing the Virtual Café project with members of the SN Program, hosted a voice over IP meeting on May 29 to discuss the project further. John Burke led the meeting, which was attended by Peter Burrows, Paul Doornbusch and Charlotte Scarf from RMIT, Farzad Safei and Paul Boustead from Wollongong University, and Mike Rumsewicz from the University of Adelaide.

The meeting was held using CentraOne conferencing software, which enables up to 250 people to participate in a virtual “Symposium” and speak to each other via voice over IP point-to-point conferencing technology. The idea behind the meeting was to test some of the theory the UCD group had been exploring in relation to acceptable minimum delay in voice over IP communication, which suggests that acceptable delay depends on multiple factors, including user hardware and context. Proceedings at the meeting supported this research.

Unlike CentraOne, the proposed “Virtual Café” is a multi-point-to-multi-point application that is intended to provide users with natural immersive audio synchronicity, and the ability to move and interact with large numbers of participants. It promises to be the next generation in voice communication. The challenge for the UCD researchers is to determine the user contexts where there is a need for such an application and, if so, what the user needs are in terms of deployment.

The next steps from the meeting are that the UCD team will begin to develop possible scenarios / contexts for joint consideration and outline the possible role of user researchers in an ongoing project team. A face-to-face meeting will be held late June to further develop common scenarios, and to determine whether an integrated interdisciplinary team is appropriate for the project proposal which has to be completed by end-July.

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5. UE Publications/Conferences List – July 2002 to present
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Refereed Conference Papers

* Singh, S. (2002). A good practice guide for Government electronic service delivery. Communications Research Forum, Canberra, 2-3 October 2002. http://www.dcita.gov.au/crf/papers02/singh.pdf

* Barr, T, Knowles, A, & Moore, S (2002). Internet futures: Unlocking user bottlenecks. Proceedings of First Workshop on the Internet, Telecommunications and Signal Processing, Wollongong, 9-11 December.

* Knowles, A., Moore, S, & Barr, T (2003). Ripped off in cyberspace: Financial transactions on the Internet and their psychological predictors. Paper presented at Society for Australasian Social Psychologists, Bondi Beach, NSW, April 25.

* Cox, R (2003). What is the value of emotion in Communication: Implications for User Centred Design, ICEIS, Angers, France, 23 -25 April.

* Astbrink, G & Beekhuyzen, J (2003). The Synergies of Universal Design and User Centred Design, HCI International Conference, Crete, Greece, 25-27 June.

* Astbrink, G. & Kadous, W. (2003) Using disability scenarios for user centred product design. AAATE conference, Dublin, 1-3 September 2003.

Refereed Journal Article

Armstrong, M, Barr, T, Coutts, R, Coutts, P, Knowles, A, & Moore, S (2003). Trust in the Internet: the key bottleneck, Telecommunications Journal of Australia, Vol 53, No 1, Autumn 2003

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6. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
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* AQR Conference 2003

Qualitative researchers from several disciplines will be getting together from July 17-19 2003 to discuss issues in qualitative research at the Association for Qualitative Research Conference in Coogee, NSW. The Conference theme is: "Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Understanding." Late abstracts may still be accepted.

For further information, please visit: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/aqr/offer2003/conf03_welcome.htm
or email: Linda Phillips Linda@icmsaust.com.au
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* CRF 2003

The 11th Communications Research Forum will be held at Old Parliament House in Canberra on 1-2 October 2003. Organised by the Communications Research Unit of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, the forum draws together researchers, key industry players and policy-makers in a multi-disciplinary environment to consider communications policy and research in Australia. It provides a valuable platform for leaders in the fields of broadcasting, digital media, the Internet, e-commerce and telecommunications to exchange ideas and research findings, and to discuss recent policy developments in various aspects of communications. Late abstracts may still be accepted.

For further information, please visit: http://www.dcita.gov.au/crf/index.html
or email: peter.allen@dcita.gov.au
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* ACIS 2003

The 14th Australasian Conference on Information Systems will take place from 26-28 November, 2003 in Perth, Western Australia. The theme of the conference is, "Delivering IT and e-Business Value in Networked Environments." Information systems researchers, educators and practitioners are invited to participate.

For further information, please visit: http://www.we-bcentre.com/acis2003/

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7. Useful Links and References
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* Sharrock, W. and Button, G., (1997), “Empirical investigations: Practical sociological reasoning in the work of engineers,” in Bowker, G., Star, S., Turner, W. and Gasser, L. eds, Social Science, Technical Systems and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

It is often held that social scientists and technical people have trouble working together. They use different languages and methods, study different problems, identify results in different ways, and so on. Sharrock and Button, however, argue that engineers are actually, to a large extent, practical sociologists. Through their case studies of real engineers at work, they describe engineers engaged in situated deliberations of their user communities, the institutional dynamics of their firms, and their own processes of work, both when it is happening and especially in review afterward. This reasoning is driven not by research agendas but by the necessity of anticipating and managing contingencies while working against a deadline and cooperating with people from other professional groups. The objects of design are thoroughly affected by social processes, and Sharrock and Button describe some of the detailed work through which this happens.
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* Markopoulos, P. and Bekker, M., (eds), “Interaction Design and Children,” Interacting with Computers, 15 (2), 2003, pp 187-202

This paper describes a design method, novel to the domain of interaction design, for gathering user requirements from children called the KidReporter method. The KidReporter method was chosen and further refined based on assumptions about User-Centred Design. The method was considered to be suitable and appealing for children in terms of participating in design. Two school classes participated in making a newspaper about a zoo, to gather requirements for the design process of an interactive educational game. The educational game was developed to educate children about animals while walking through a zoo. The KidReporter method's main strengths are that it combines many techniques for eliciting information from children, such as interviews, drawing and making pictures. In this paper the authors describe how the KidReporter method was applied, in what manner it was successful and what they would do differently next time.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(03)00007-9
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