CALL FOR PAPERS
Multi-channel Adaptive Context-sensitive (MAC) Systems:
Building Links Between Research Communities

www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rich/mac

University of Glasgow, 15 May 2006

Introduction

A user's experience of computing has been radically transformed during the past 10 years by several parallel developments, including web-based commerce, multimodal user interfaces (e.g., speech driven input), mobile and digital phone technology, PDA-based mobile systems, tangible and ubiquitous computing, among others. This has resulted in the deployment of distributed, multi-device, multi-user mobile and ubiquitous systems of increasingly large, indeed massive, scale.

The resulting design and engineering problems are the focus of attention for a variety of research efforts, originating from communities as diverse as the technologies that they address. In particular:

• The Web Design community see the problem as the extension of web application design to the use of devices with similar underlying technology but different user interaction capabilities.
• The User Interface community see the problem as just one aspect of creating user interfaces that adapt or are adaptable to context while preserving usability.
• Researchers into pervasive, ubiquitous and context sensitive systems are particularly interested in modelling the variety of contexts in which the systems are intended to be deployed.
• Business Process Modellers concentrate on the tasks to be supported by the application developing workflow and other models which contain a high level account of the intention of the application.
• Artificial Intelligence approaches to adaptation point the way to how adaptation might be achieved - for instance algorithms and systems for recognising context change, coping with unplanned contexts of use and learning appropriate adaptations.
• Autonomic and Self-Managing Systems research produces insights into how an application might adapt itself automatically to different contexts.
• Hypermedia and Web Technologies for Distributed Information Management research promises ways of describing how technologies can be used to provide information access to reflect different contexts and needs.
• Model-Driven Engineering explores models and transformations that address adaptation both at design time and at run time.

Workshop Aims

The aim of this workshop is to begin the long overdue task of building links between these communities, for sharing results and finding ways of combining our expertise. Included among the high level goals for the workshop would be:

• finding results that can be used or transformed for use by other groups;
• identifying common problems that would benefit from a collaborative approach across community boundaries;
• agreeing to a vocabulary so that it's possible to communicate between communities;
• identifying research challenges that another community is better placed to solve.

Papers are invited that focus on challenges, opportunities for, or experience of, working on MAC problems, e.g., arising from the diverse nature of these problems (i.e., tackling the problems can require looking at generic software architecture issues, user interaction techniques, distributed systems algorithms and protocols, web engineering design patterns).

Workshop Topics

Topics include:

• integration of technologies for supporting MAC, viz., dynamic combination of run-time services;
• identification of appropriate technologies for solving the various problems;
• utilisation of combinations of design techniques and tools;
• creation of appropriately extensive and inclusive models of context
• exploitation of peer-to-peer or ad hoc networking techniques to provide MAC;
• conceptual models of MAC systems (e.g., task models);
• design and engineering methods (e.g., extensions to the Unified Process Model);
• methods for evaluating and measuring the performance and usability of MAC systems;
• algorithms for transforming systems or system components for adaptation.

PAPER SUBMISSION AND WORKSHOP ATTENDANCE

Papers are invited that address one or more of the workshop themes. Papers should not exceed 15 pages in length and should include a 200-word abstract. Papers will be reviewed by the workshop programme committee and will be selected based on relevance, originality and academic quality.

Authors are requested to use LNCS format, although conformity to this format at this stage is not a requirement for acceptance. Thoughtful and reflective papers of a more conceptual nature will be considered alongside more traditional studies and "practice & experience" reports. It is intended that authors of selected papers from the workshop will be invited to submit revised versions of their papers as the basis of a publication (e.g., special issue of a journal). Participation in the workshop requires the submission and acceptance of a paper. These papers will form the basis of workshop presentations and discussions.

IMPORTANT DATES

Organisers

Programme Committee