CHI 2010 Workshop

Workshop description

Introduction

This workshop addresses facilitation of collaborative work by context-adaptive techniques. Context-based adaptation can support users in a variety of ways, e.g., by offering the tools most appropriate for a certain type of collaboration, by providing templates for artifacts to be produced, or by filtering content relevant for a joint activity. While adaptive (single) user interfaces have been an area of research for considerable time (see, e.g. [1]) adaptation for collaboration is far less investigated.

The notion of context in collaborative work raises a variety of interesting research issues [2]. So far, attempts to structure and classify the multi-faceted concept of context [3, 4] have been mainly directed at individual, rather than cooperative usage scenarios. The importance of common ground, e.g., for electronically mediated communication has been pointed out repeatedly [e.g. 5], but theoretical concepts have hardly been translated into explicit models or concrete adaptation mechanisms. We also see a major challenge in integrating ‘exogenous’ physical context such as location, time or device used with ‘endogenous’ context factors such as the users’ roles, topical interests, experience profiles or used collaboration tools. For this purpose, integrated, coherent representations of these context aspects will be needed, making them explicit and exploitable by adaptation mechanisms. Ontology-based context models promise to provide coherent representations but are still in their initial stages [6]. Other important issues are how to combine individual contexts into shared collaborative contexts, and how to combine folksonomy-based bottom-up approaches with the benefits of standardization that ontologies traditionally provide. Finally, it is largely unresolved how to define effective and acceptable adaptations for groups. While there has been a considerable amount of research into supporting co-located or remote meetings, more general issues of supporting collaboration by adaptations are still open.

Goals of the Workshop

The workshop aims at identifying and structuring context factors for collaborative work, trying to elaborate a generalized notion of context including physical and tool-related aspects, common ground related to content and process of the collaboration, and other factors. We will also discuss strategies and methods for making these context aspects explicit by representing them through suitable models, e.g., by ontological models of cooperative context. These models will serve as input for discussions on how to manage and use such context in real-world scenarios. These activities will serve laying the groundwork for an initiative to build a shared context ontology for this area.

Workshop participants will also present and discuss different adaptation techniques for systems supporting collaboration with the aim of developing a framework for adaptive system behavior. An overall goal of the workshop will be to identify and articulate issues for future research.

An initial lists of research issues discussed at the workshop comprises the following questions:

• How can the multi-faceted concept of context be structured and classified for cooperative situations?
• What are methods for integrating ‘endogenous’ physical context with ‘endogenous’ context factors such as the users’ roles, activities, topical interests or experience profiles?
• How to combine individual contexts into group contexts?
• What are suitable models and techniques for representing context for the purpose of adapting cooperation support systems? Is there a perspective for a shared context ontology for cooperative work?
• What are effective and acceptable adaptations at the interaction, tool or content level we can implement in systems used for collaboration?

Format and Organization

Soliciting and Selecting Contributions

We will solicit contributions from the HCI and CSCW communities as well as from researchers in the area of ubiquitous and context-aware systems, using all usual channels including announcements in mailing lists, conferences and personal contacts.

Prospective participants should submit a 2-page position paper describing their interests and previous work in the topic of the workshop and first comments concerning a list of research issues we will compile and publish on the workshop website prior to the deadline. We will select participants on the basis of the abstract’s quality and their response to the list of issues; the diversity of their backgrounds, aiming at an interdisciplinary group. To enable a focussed and productive discussion, we limit the number of participants to 15.

Pre-workshop activities

Based on work in [7], list of issues will be developed and distributed through the workshop website. We will ask participants to elaborate their position on these research issues and to propose additional themes before attending the workshop. An initial discussion of the workshop topics will be carried out by a discussion forum before the workshop. The selected presenters will be asked to provide an extended 5-page position paper one month before the workshop. These position papers will be circulated in advance for participants to get an understanding of the mutual views and to provide a starting point for the discussion.

Structure of the workshop

This one-day workshop is organized to enable creative and productive interaction among participants and to produce outcomes that are valuable for the future work of the participating researchers. Following an initial presentation and brief discussion of each participant’s contribution and position, the organizers present an initial framework based on pre-workshop materials and discussions for allocating and structuring the different research issues raised by the participants. Based on the interests expressed by the participants, three breakout groups discuss selected research topics with the aim of producing proposals for structuring the area in more detail, of judging the effectiveness of different methods including interdisciplinary approaches, and of laying out road maps for future research in the selected areas.

The results produced in the breakout groups are reported back to all participants and discussed in plenary. Finally, the group discusses and decides on follow-up activities, in particular for publishing the results of the workshop and possibly extending them in post-workhop communication.

Plan for dissemination

Firstly, the results will be made available as an interactive poster during the CHI conference. Secondly, we will write up the results of the workshop in a SIGCHI Bulletin paper. Depending on the quality of the submissions and the workshop results we will consider an edited publication on the workshop topic. We will also make the workshop results available on the Workshop Website.

References

[1] A. Kobsa, Generic user modeling systems, in Methods and Strategies of Web Personalization, eds. P. Brusilovsky, A. Kobsa and W. Neidl (Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2007), pp. 136-154

[2] A. K. Dey, Understanding and using context, Personal Ubiquitous Computing Nr. 1(5):4-7 (2001).

[3] A. Zimmermann, A. Lorenz and R. Oppermann, An Operational Definition of Context, Modeling and Using Context (2007), pp. 558-571

[4] J. W. Kaltz, J. Ziegler and S. Lohmann, Context-aware Web engineering – Modeling and applications. RIA – Revue d'Intelligence Artificielle, Special Issue on Applying Context-Management, 19(3):439-458 (2005).

[5] Monk, A., Common ground in electronically mediated communication: Clark’s theory of language use. In: Carroll, J. M. (ed.): HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks, Elsevier (2003).

[6] T. Strang and C. Linnhoff-Popien, A Context Modeling Survey, Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning and Management, The Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, 2004.

[7] Contici, http://www.uni-siegen.de/fb5/contici/

Call for Participation

Context plays an increasingly important role to adapt systems to users’ needs and to make access to large information spaces more efficient. Yet, in the area of collaborative work the potential of context-based adaptation of IT systems has so far not been investigated and exploited to a sufficient extent. There is a lack of methods that take into account the manifold aspects of context such as physical, activity-based, thematic or social context in an integrated fashion.

The workshop aims at identifying and structuring context factors for collaboration, trying to elaborate a generalized notion of context for this field. We will discuss strategies and methods for making these context factors explicit by representing them through suitable models, e.g., by ontological models of cooperative context. A potential outcome is to provide the groundwork for an initiative to build a shared context ontology for cooperative work. A further goal is to collect and analyze methods for managing and using context in real-world scenarios, including combinations of folksonomy- and ontology-based approaches.

Persons interested in participating should submit a 2-page proposal describing their background with respect to the workshop theme, their proposed contribution and an initial reaction to a number of research issues published at the Workshop Website (http://caicoll.org). Proposals should be sent by e-mail to submission [at] caicoll [dot] org. Upon acceptance, participants will be asked to provide an extended position paper of 5 pages four weeks prior to the workshop which will be distributed to participants. Workshop results will be summarized on the Website and published in a suitable form.

Submissions

Proposals should be sent by e-mail to submission [at] caicoll [dot] org.

Workshop Program

	09:00	09:05	Welcome and Brief Introduction by Workshop Organizers
Session 1	09:05	09:30	Stefan Werner Knoll, Till Plumbaum, Ernesto William de Luca	Context-Adaptive Interaction for Collaboration Work
	09:30	09:55	Tim Hussein, Timm Linder, Werner Gaulke, Jürgen Ziegler	Improving Collaboration by Using Context Views
	09:55	10:20	Christian Dörner, Volkmar Pipek	CoCoS-EUD – Context-based Collaboration Support for End User Development
	10:20	10:30	Session Discussion
	10:30	11:00	Coffee Break
Session 2	11:00	11:25	Dirk Veiel, Stephan Lukosch, Martijn Warnier, Michel Oye, Jörg Haake	Facilitating Group-Based Adaptation of Shared Workspaces Using a Multi-Agent System
	11:25	11:50	Anastasiia Beznosyk, Johanna Renny Octavia, Chris Raymaekers, Karin Coninx	Enhancing Group Interaction in Collaborative Virtual Environments through Context-Based Adaptation
	11:50	12:15	Benedict Ley, Matthias Betz	Picnic: Integrating Physical Artifacts in Collaborative Settings for Context-Aware Adaptation
	12:15	12:30	Session Discussion
	12:30	14:00	Lunch Break
Session 3	14:00	14:25	Sean Goggins, Giuseppe Valetto, Kelly Blincoe	From Task Context to Group Awareness
	14:25	14:50	Jungwoo Kim, Mark W. Newman, Mark S. Ackerman, Atul Prakash, Tao Dong, Sarah Qidwai	Capture and Replay of Contextual Data for the Design of Context-Aware Collaborative Applications
	14:50	15:15	Tao Dong, Zhe Pu, Mark Newman, Mark Ackerman	Supporting Group Activities with Context-adaptive Privacy Policies
	15:15	15:30	Session Discussion
	15:30	16:00	Coffee Break
Session 4	16:00	17:00	General Discussion, Research Issues, Follow-Up Activities Outline of Workshop Poster to be Shown at CHI
	17:00		Closing
Session	Time		Authors	Title

Workshop papers (extended pre-workshop versions, participants only)