An ACM SIGCHI Workshop, May 7th Vancouver 2011
David England D.England@ljmu.ac.uk
Martin Randles M.J.Randles@ljmu.ac.uk
A. Taleb-Bendiab A.TalebBendiab@ljmu.ac.uk
@ School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
Philip Koene, Felix Köbler, Suparna Goswami, Christian Crusius, Jan Marco Leimeister, Helmut Krcmar, DropTheBeat – a tangible user interface for cloud computing resources
Jonna Häkkilä, Katja Kytökorpi, Minna Karukka, Discussing the Challenges of Mobile Interaction when ´The Cloud´ is Coming – A Position Paper
Helen Le Voi, Ann Light, Claire Rowland, Towards interusability; HCI for cloud computing and embedded devices
Sungmoo Hong, S. Shyam Sundar, Social Responses to Computers in Cloud Computing Environment: The Importance of Source Orientation
Hubert Pham, Justin Mazzola Paluska, Steve Ward, User Interface Models for the Cloud
Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, On- and Off-Line User Interfaces for Collaborative Cloud Services
Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Eija Kaasinen, Virpi Roto, User Experience in a Research Agenda
Janet C Read, Russell Beale, What Teenagers think about when they think about Safety in the Cloud
Sara Eriksén, Global/Local Design of Services for “Supporting People in Their Realities”
Cloud computing is moving from a buzzword to a set of useful services which promise the benefits of Computing as a utility, removing the responsibility for infrastructure and software application management from end users and organizations. However, the full implications of moving to a cloud-based platform on the user experience are not clear. In this workshop we intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from various fields where cloud computing is becoming an issue. We wish to examine the impact of cloud computing on the design of the user experience at the individual and organizational level.
Distributed Computing has been a research area in Computer Science since the 1980’s. However it is only recently that fully distributed or Cloud platforms have become more widely available. The promises of Cloud-based computing include:
The metaphor of Utility Computing has been applied to the Cloud where we treat Computing as just another on-tap resource like electricity, gas and water. The aim is for the end user to concentrate on the computing requirements that are related to their task or business, and leave infrastructure management to others.
These promises however gloss over a number of challenges, specifically to the quality of the user experience that may or may not be satisfactory, such as
It is the aim of this workshop to bring together researchers and practitioners to debate some of the issues of user interface design and user experience that have been overlooked in the hype over Cloud-based systems.
Cloud-based systems have been with us under various guises for the last 2-3 years. For example, Amazon provides its EC2 enterprise platform so that developers can provide their own “Service Oriented Architecture” on the Web. The developer does not require their own website or storage space. They use the Amazon EC2 application interface to provide these. Google Apps promises to replace the standard Office Suite used on most personal computers, with a set of applications; word processor, database, spreadsheet etc, which reside and are accessed entirely online. Microsoft’s Azure provides a platform for developers to build their own cloud applications. There are potentially large economic savings to be made by passing the responsibility for our application architecture to a third party. Similarly in the field of gaming, not only are more games linked via the Internet but also companies are promising to make hardware consoles obsolete by providing the entire gaming experience via online delivery. Beyond these areas, in the fields of mobile computing and ubiquitous computing, there is an expectation that behind the interaction device(s) there is some distributed infrastructure supporting the users.
So the Cloud, in one form or another has the potential to impact many different areas of interactive computing. The chief questions are, what are the main challenges to interactive experience and design, and how do we as practitioners and researchers respond to the challenges.
The workshop will seek to bring together researchers and practitioners from different areas who have had experience with dealing with Cloud-based computing and interaction. Amongst the topics we expect to discuss are
To motivate pre-workshop discussion we present the following scenarios where © indicates support from the cloud
- Scenario 1
An Oncology team meet to discuss today’s patient caseload [4][8]. They discuss a new diagnostic model © which has recently been approved. They compare the new model with their historical data © to see how it performs which their caseload. They then run the new diagnostic model © and look at the new patient treatment recommendations ©. They approve the clear-cut recommendations © and create the relevant treatment schedule ©. They also create the discussion notes © for patient meetings that day. At the meetings patients are presented with their treatment options ©. They can also take these home © for discussion with their families and to link with support group information © for similar patients.
- Scenario 2
Dorothy is in her 70s has been identified as being at risk of falling ©. Her home diagnostic kit [1] © (cameras, inertial devices) has recognised a potentially worrying change in her movement behaviour ©. Her home entertainment system is updated © with a set of exercises to strengthening exercises to help key muscles. The system assesses over a period of days whether there has been any improvement ©. With no improvement Dorothy’s Home Health nurse is alerted to the problem © and makes sure she assesses these problems at her next visit, in order to make recommendations © to the primary care team.
- Scenario 3
Sally is a New Media artist is has responded to a call for bids for a commission ©. Her proposal is accepted and she decides to base her work on a system called Wet+Sticky [2] © which mimics real paint and canvases. She comes across a plugin for Wet+Sticky that sets gravity on the canvas in spiral patterns ©. She runs her work with a variety of paint and canvas properties © until she is happy with the results. She then decides she wants to render the paint with different 3d textures © and print out the most interesting result with a 3D printer. She searches for an appropriate 3D printing supplier © and then shares her final work with the gallery for approval ©.
The workshop is aimed at HCI researchers and practitioners who are either currently tackling issues of interaction and Cloud computing, or are tackling related topics which could applied to deal with some of the challenges outlined above. Researchers and practitioners could be involved in any of: user interface engineering, usability and observational methods, social and organisational studies.
The workshop will require the submission of a 4-6 page, position paper in the ACM Extended Abstracts format. Papers will be assessed for the timeliness, quality and relevance of their research to the workshop topic. Accepted papers will be posted on the workshops website http://neptune.cms.livjm.ac.uk/webtest/eicloud/home.html and authors invited to read the submissions to promote pre-workshop discussions. The organisers will generate a summary paper bringing out the main points of the submissions. We expect these pre-workshop activities will generate a list of research topics and challenges. We will identify key issues raised for further discussion at the workshop.
Delegates will then be asked to give mini-presentations at the workshop in the morning session based on their readings of one or more of the submitted papers, followed by discussion of the main issues raised. In the afternoon we will break up into smaller groups to discuss the key research issues raised from the morning’s activities. Each group will report back on their discussions.
Extended papers will be invited after the workshop to form a Springer HCIS volume on Cloud Computing and Interaction.