USABILITY EVALUATION FOR VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS:
METHODS, RESULTS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
17 December 1998
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
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Academics and industrialists with an interest in evaluating virtual
environments are invited to attend this new international workshop.
Together we hope to identify the problems and solutions specific to
VE usability studies, to share experiences, hear stories from the
field, and to gain a good overview of what has been found already
and what areas need future research.
Virtual Environments (VEs) are a novel application area of computing
technology, demanding an understanding of human-computer interaction
and computer mediated human interaction in virtual spaces. Standard
usability engineering and HCI evaluation techniques do not directly
address the usability problems introduced by these new
applications. Exploratory and observational approaches seem
promising avenues of inquiry at this stage, although it may not
always be obvious how to apply these techniques.
A key aim of the workshop is to bring together practitioners from
different application areas so that they can learn from each others
experiences, so that they can meet, present their research and
experiences, and exchange ideas. The topics of discussion during
the workshop will have a broad technical scope and include:
* current state of the art of usability studies on VEs;
* problems and issues involved in evaluating VEs;
* approaches taken, and proposals for future research.
This one-day workshop will be based on hand-picked, topic-related
small group discussion sessions, which report back to a plenary
session at the end of the day. We therefore request submission of a
two page position statement in HTML- or ASCII-format from each
attendee, by September 18th 1998, to be sent to
eworkshop@cs.nott.ac.uk. Notification of acceptance will be
announced by November 1st. Registration fees: students 10 pounds,
BCS and British HCI group members 30 pounds, others 40 pounds.
Attendees will receive workshop documentation.
More information about submission guidelines, including an HTML
template, a full list of topic areas considered for discussion, and
registration details can be found at:
http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/research/technologies/evaluation/workshop/
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Chris Hand, HCI Group, Napier University, Edinburgh
Howell Istance, Imaging and Displays Research Group, De Montfort
University, Leicester
Kulwinder Kaur, School of Informatics, City University, London
Anthony Steed, Dept of Computer Science, University College London (COVEN)
Jolanda Tromp, Communications Research Group, University of
Nottingham (COVEN)
Dr. Steve Benford, Communications Research Group, University of Nottingham
Professor Alistair Sutcliffe, Centre for HCI Design, School of
Informatics, City University, London
Professor John R. Wilson, Dept. of Manufacturing Engineering and
Management, University of Nottingham
WORKSHOP SPONSORS
British HCI Group
De Montfort University
COVEN (EU ACTS Project N. AC040)
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