[Tccc] Call for Journal Papers: Special Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Springer

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Call for Journal Papers: Special Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous
Computing, Springer
Bridging Digital Divides through Mobile and Ubiquitous technology:
Experiences and Perspectives

Editors
Matt Jones, Swansea University, UK
Gary Marsden, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Lucia Terrenghi, Vodafone GROUP Services R&D, Germany

Synopsis
Ubicomp – everywhere, everybody technology and systems. But are we
really fully exploring inclusive visions? Is the full potential of
mobile and ubicomp technology for everyone or only the relatively affluent?

The research community's work to date has been focused on the so-called
'developed' world – contexts where there are already well-established
technical infrastructures and digital resources. These contexts have
users who are relatively highly computer literate, typically have high
degrees of textual literacy and have undergone a formal education.
Examples include sophisticated 'smart' homes with digital noticeboards
and even interactive fridge doors (Taylor et al, 2007); embedded
technologies for amusement parks (Schnädelbach et al, 2008); and, cities
and urban dwellers with time to, "marvel at mundane everyday experiences
and objects that evoke mystery, doubt, and uncertainty. How many
newspapers has that person sold today? When was that bus last repaired?
How far have I walked today? How many people have ever sat on that
bench? Does that woman own a cat? Did a child or adult spit that gum
onto the sidewalk?" (Paulos & Beckmann 2006).

This Special Issue is about the billions of people who do not fit these
sorts of context. There are hundreds of millions of users, and billions
to come in the next 5 years, in places like India, China and Africa,
whose first, and perhaps only, experience of computing will be in the
form of mobile and other ubicomp technologies. Many of these users will
never live in the sorts of home, or work in the types of office, or
daydream in the parks, or take a day-off for the sorts of amusement park
envisaged by earlier research.

But it is not just 'developing' countries. What about the marginalised
in our 'developed' world – the urban poor, the ill-educated, the
homeless, the computer non-literate; i.e. those without access to what
many of us take as essential digital infrastructure? We invite
contributions considering these contexts too.

Topics which are relevant for this issue include, although are not
limited to:

- elicitation of requirements in these new, challenging contexts
(methodologies, results…)
- case-study descriptions of projects aiming at bridging digital
divides: we want to learn about successes, failures and lessons learned
- mobile and ubicomp guidelines and/or manifestos for marginalised
communities (e.g., rural areas, developing countries, elderly people,
disabled people)
- interface and interaction issues
- devices and infrastructure
- examples of appropriation of a mobile or ubicomp technology in a
community previously unconnected
- examples/ideas about how to sensitize social responsibility in the
networked society (e.g., recycling hardware, stimulating social networks…)

Submission details
Submissions should be between 4000 and 6000 words and authors are
encouraged to use the Springer guidelines for authors, available at
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/Word/journals
<ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/Word/journals>
Submission in pdf electronic format should be emailed to gaz@acm.org
<mailto:gaz@acm.org>

Important dates
12th March: deadline for full paper submission 31st May: notification
from reviewers
2nd July: Submission of final papers December: Final publication
of special edition

Reviewing Committee:
Russell Beale, University of Birmingham
Jan Blom, Nokia Research, Bangalore
Stephen Brewster, Glasgow University
Abigail Sellen, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK
Andy Dearden, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Ann Light, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Anxo Cereijo-Roibas, Vodafone GROUP Services, UK
Derrick L. Cogburn, Syracuse University, USA
Edwin Blake, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Eli Blevis, University of Indiana, USA
Ingrid Mulder, TU DElft.
Keith Cheverst, Lancaster University, UK
Mike Best, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Nic Bidwell, James Cook University, Australia
Pan Hui, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
Jussi Impio, Nokia Research Africa
Tim Kindberg, Matter 2 Media
Amit A Nanavati, IBM Research, New Delhi
Yvonne Rogers, Open University, UK.
Kentaro Toyama, Microsoft Research, India
Jonathan Donner, Microsoft Research
Matthew Kam, CMU
Susan Dray, Dray & Associates
Sriram Subramanian, University of Bristol

References
Paulos, E. and Beckmann, C. 2006. Sashay: designing for wonderment. In
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006).
R. Grinter, T. Rodden, P. Aoki, E. Cutrell, R. Jeffries, and G. Olson,
Eds. CHI '06. ACM, New York, NY, 881-884.

Schnädelbach, H., Rennick Egglestone, S., Reeves, S., Benford, S.,
Walker, B., and Wright, M. 2008. Performing thrill: designing telemetry
systems and spectator interfaces for amusement rides. In Proceeding of
the Twenty-Sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05 - 10, 2008). CHI '08. ACM, New York,
NY, 1167-1176.

Taylor, A. S., Harper, R., Swan, L., Izadi, S., Sellen, A., and Perry,
M. 2007. Homes that make us smart. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 11, 5
(Jun. 2007), 383-393.

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