Mobile HCI 2009

Last week I had the pleasure to participate of the Mobile HCI Conference held in Bonn, Germany. It was my first time in Germany, so the German culture, food and architecture called my attention. The conference was held in University of Bonn, very central which make easier for participants to get together after the conference days.

In the first day, tutorials, workshops and Doctoral Consortium were the main activities. I was in the Doctor Consortium. Seven PhD students presented their work and also a panel was there: Kaisa Vaananen; Matt Jones; Mark Dunlop and Manfred Tscheligi. The projects were very diverse. They covered issues in information design, usability, healthy, social interaction, inclusiveness and emotional factors. Overall, the questions and discussions in some way fitted for all the PhD students. What is your contribution? What is theory? What is the legacy? Should we do long term or short term studies? Do you have a backup plan? What would you do if you find similar projects in the field? What is the question that you won’t be able to answer after you finish your work? It was brilliant, in my case all those issues made me think about things that I haven’t thought before. I presented the work Developing principles for outdoor mobile multimedia guides in cultural heritage settings

In the following days, papers that called my attention were the ones that emphasized way finding and multimodality in outdoor environments. I expected some works about information design and cultural heritage content.

The industrial keynote Peter Moeckel showed the methodology for developing user interfaces that they use at DeutscheTelekom. For me it was kind of Design research what they apply with their projects. I found interesting the multi cultural perspective that they have, as he mentioned that there are people from different parts of the world working together.

I selected some papers and posters to read carefully. The papers are available in ACM.

Best paper - Sweep-Shake: Finding Digital Resources in Physical Environments. Robinson, Simon; Eslambolchilar, Parisa; Jones, Matt. Sweep-Shake. Full Paper

Very well presented. I'm really curious to know why people didn't access audio and video in the same proportion as text and pictures.

Best paper - PhotoMap: Using Spontaneously taken Images of Public Maps for Pedestrian Navigation Tasks on Mobile Devices. Schöning, Johannes; Cheverst, Keith; Löchtefeld, Markus; Krüger, Antonio; Rohs, Michael.

Very exciting presentation. A new perspective to see the way finding, it is a shame that Apple didn't accept it on the store. After the presentation I was wondering of the size of the real map and the picture size that the visitor are able to take. 

Text versus Speech: A Comparison of Tagging Input Modalities for Camera Phones. Cherubini, Mauro; Anguera, Xavier; Oliver, Nuria; de Oliveira, Rodrigo. Full Paper
Practices in Creating Videos with Mobile Phones. Puikkonen, Arto Mikael; Häkkilä, Jonna; Ballagas, Rafael; Mäntyjärvi, Jani. Full Paper Exploring the Use of Landmarks for Mobile Navigation Support in Natural Environments. Snowdon, Caroline; Kray, Chris. Full Paper
Supporting Map-Based Wayfinding with Tactile Cues. Pielot, Martin; Henze, Niels; Boll, Susanne. Full Paper
Expectations for User Experience in Haptic Communication with Mobile Devices. Heikkinen, Jani; Olsson, Thomas; Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Kaisa. Full Paper
Improving the Accessibility of NFC/RFID-based Mobile Interaction through Learnability and Guidance. Broll, Gregor; Keck, Susanne; Butz, Andreas. Full Paper
Extracting Landmarks near Personalized Points-of-Interest from User Generated.
Content Carter, Scott; Perttula, Arttu; Denoue, Laurent
Designing a Mobile Task Based UI for Tourists Laporte, Lieve; Eyckerman,
Peter; Zaman, Bieke
RECON: Capturing Mobile and Ubiquitous Interaction in Real Contexts. Jensen, Kasper Løvborg
The Use of Mobile Contact List applications and a Context-Oriented Framework
to Support their Design Komninos, Andreas; Liarokapis, Dimitrios
A Mobile Starfield Visualization with Space Compression Capabilities
Burigat, Stefano; Chittaro, Luca
Touch based interaction using a three display interface design Dittenberger,
Sandra; Geven, Arjan; Tscheligi, Manfred; Mayer, Markus
Eyes-Free Overviews for Mobile Map Applications McGookin, David; Brewster, StephenContextual Push-to-Talk: A New Technique for Reducing Voice Dialog Duration
Weinberg, Garrett
Improving the Recommendation of Mobile Services by Interpreting the User's
Icon Arrangement Böhmer, Matthias; Bauer, Gernot