Important Dates

January 19, 2015 (Extended): Submission Deadline
February 13, 2015: Notification of Acceptance
April 19 (Sunday), 2015: Workshop

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets were originally conceived and have traditionally been utilized for individual use. Research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions. However, computers are getting smaller, more powerful, and closer to our bodies. Therefore, mobile collocated interactions research, which originally looked at smartphones and tablets, will inevitably include ever-smaller computers, ones that can be worn on our wrists (e.g., Apple Watch) or other parts of the body (e.g., Google Glass). The focus of this workshop is to bring together a community of researchers, designers and practitioners to explore the potential of extending mobile collocated interactions to the use of wearable devices.

Submission

Potential participants should submit a 3-4 page position paper in the CHI Extended Abstracts Format describing their interest and/or previous work related to the workshop topic. We will select papers based on relevance, quality, and diversity. We will limit the size of the workshop to 15-18 people to ensure effective participation.

Registration

At least one author of each accepted position paper must attend the workshop and all workshop participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the main conference. For an early indication on prices, see last year’s workshop and conference pricing.

Workshop Background

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets were originally conceived and have traditionally been utilized for individual use. Research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions.

Several researchers have explored mobile collocated interactions, encouraging people to share their devices to create a collective experience or reach a common goal. Various physical and social contexts of use have been taken into account, such as teamwork at the office, sharing media content at home and outdoors, and public expression in a theme park and in a pub, and for sharing educational stories in rural, developing-world contexts. More recently, researchers have been looking into simple ways to bind such devices together. Most of this research has been looking at the use of smartphones (and tablets) to study mobile collocated interactions.

Computers are getting smaller, more powerful, and closer to our bodies. Computers have transitioned from being in a large room (e.g., ENIAC), to our desks (e.g., PCs), to a bag (e.g., laptops), and to our pockets (e.g., mobile phones). Wearable computers (e.g., the WIMM watch or iPod Nano) have continued the trend towards ever-smaller computers, ones that can be worn on our wrists (e.g., Apple Watch) or other parts of the body (e.g., Google Glass).

Researchers have actively looked into novel input wearable devices. For example, Nenya consists of a magnetic finger ring that provides an always-available input mechanism. It allows for simple input actions such as twist to select and slide along the finger to click. A wrist-worn sensor tracks this small and socially acceptable ring. Facet is a multi-display bracelet consisting of multiple independent touch-sensitive segments. It supports multi-segment touch, yielding a rich set of touch input techniques. BitWear is a prototyping platform for small, wireless, interactive devices. BitWear incorporates hardware, wireless connectivity, and a cloud component to enable collections of connected devices. A natural first step for this line of research has been to look into individual use of these wearable devices.

Mobile collocated interactions research, which originally looked at smartphones and tablets, will inevitably include ever-smaller computers in different form factors. The focus of this workshop is to bring together a community of researchers, designers and practitioners to explore the potential of extending mobile collocated interactions to the use of wearable devices.

Workshop Goals

In previous workshops on the subject of mobile collocated interactions at MobileHCI ’11 and at ITS ’13, several design and evaluation challenges were identified as being the core of this research area: group size, physical distance, device-binding, operating systems, privacy, extending to public displays and tabletops, and conducting in-the-wild evaluations. One question that was introduced in our first workshop and that still remains unanswered is how can we move beyond just designing for smartphones?

We are currently witnessing how computers are getting smaller, more powerful, and closer to our bodies. As Google Glass, Pebble, Android Wear and Apple Watch gain popularity, we will soon be considering situations where people want to use a rich ecosystem of small wearable devices and engage in mobile collocated interactions. Such interactions may include clothing, eyewear, wristwatches, rings, pendants, and jewelry.

In this workshop we want to continue exploration of mobile collocated interactions and promote research into this domain. In particular, the focus will be on creating a deeper understanding of designing and evaluating collocated interactions with wearable devices. The goals of this workshop are:

  • Identify key opportunities for mobile collocated interactions with wearable devices.
  • Investigate how devices will be bound together.
  • Consider more intimate or personal ways for interaction, as these devices get closer to our bodies.
  • Explore interaction paradigms that can be (re-) appropriated for such interactions.
  • Examine adequate ways of prototyping and evaluating such systems.

Workshop Plan

The aim is to bring together a mix of researchers and practitioners from disciplines such as interaction design, human factors, computer science, art, and HCI who are interested in exploring mobile collocated interactions with wearable technologies.

The first half of the workshop (the morning) will be dedicated to introducing emerging forms of mobile collocated interactions with wearable technologies and the presentations of the individual attendees. Time will be spent preparing a list of topics for the afternoon.

The second half of the workshop (the afternoon) will consist of a ‘hands on’ session, where we will split into three teams and try to create three working prototypes using wearable technologies. We will scaffold this activity by introducing participants to Lundgren et al.’s design framework for mobile collocated interaction. Each team will take a particular aspect of transitioning from mobile collocated interactions with smartphones to wearable technologies (presented or identified during the morning session). We will bring Bluetooth Low Energy devices, WIMM, and Arduino to sketch mobile collocated interactions. We will then work out a concept for collocated interactions based on wearables and create a simple working prototype. This activity will stimulate discussion on how to prototype and evaluate such concepts.

The results of the workshop will be summarized and published on the workshop’s website. Depending on the maturity of the submissions and the outcome of the workshop, we intend to write a special journal issue with an appropriate publisher to promote this research area.

Questions?

For further information, please write to lucero[at]acm.org.