UBIQUITOUS USER MODELING – STATE OF THE ART AND CURRENT CHALLENGES

International Workshop at Haifa, Israel

Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation

 

June 25th – 28th, 2012

University of Haifa, Israel

 

 

Website: http://cri.haifa.ac.il/U2M2012/

Email: upworkshop.2012(at)gmail(dot)com

 

========== Summary and Theme ==========

 

In today's world, computer systems are part of almost every service we receive; we either interact directly with them (as in: ATMs, movies/transportation tickets purchasing kiosks, medical information kiosks, etc.) or they operate in the background (e.g., food ordering, medical treatment, flight boarding, shopping, etc.). Such services have the potential to be personalized to users' preferences and needs in ways that will make them more friendly and useful. However, in order to do that, knowledge about the target user is required. Asking users each time for their preferences and needs can be time consuming for the user, inefficient and irritating. Beyond that, services are delivered everywhere and in changing environments; this means that the context varies too (with/without internet connectivity, local/abroad, etc.). Recent developments in technology (e.g., ubiquity of smart mobile devices) and social trends (e.g., online social networking) bring us closer to ubiquitous personalization, a situation where no matter where we go we will be able to receive services tailored to our personal preferences. In order to make ubiquitous personalization available to the masses, researchers need to draw upon knowledge that is multidisciplinary. Future personalized ubiquitous solutions need to address topics such as: communication interfaces, user interfaces, ubiquitous user modeling, lifelong user modeling and more. The workshop is intended to bring together researchers, graduate students and industry people in the area of ubiquitous user modeling (and related areas). The workshop will be an opportunity for researchers to share and collaborate on ideas related to ubiquitous user modeling, lifelong user modeling, personalization and other related topics. It will be a great opportunity for graduate students to present their work, get feedback, learn and meet leading researchers in this area.

 

========== List of Topics ==========

 

•             Personalization

                o             Personalization in mobile and ubiquitous computing

                o             Location based personalization

                o             Semantic Web approaches and ontologies for personalization

                o             Social Web approaches for personalization

                o             Spatial and temporal reasoning for ubiquitous personalization

                o             Integrated reasoning and inferences with user and context models

                o             Personalization in intelligent environments like smart homes or smart cars

                o             User Interfaces personalization

                o             Lifelong aspects in personalization

•             User Modeling

                o             User modeling interoperability

                o             Distributed and externalized user modeling

                o             Construction and acquisition of distributed user models

                o             Conflict resolution for ubiquitous user modeling

                o             Lifelong user modeling

•             Privacy

                o             Privacy, security and trust in ubiquitous personalization - How to store, transfer and share user model parts while preserving the users privacy and anonymity.

•             Infrastructure

                o             Interfaces and architectures for supporting personalization in changing states of connectivity (online vs. offline)

                o             Ubiquitous communication interfaces for transferring user models

 

========== Format  ==========

 

The workshop will be divided into thematic sessions. Every session will be lead by an invited speaker and include an invited talk, a few position papers and a concluding discussion.

 

========== Important Dates  ==========

 

April 22nd, 2012                Position papers submission

April 29th, 2012 Notification of acceptance

June 25th, 2012 Workshop Day

 

========== To Participate  ==========

 

If you wish to present at the workshop, please submit a four-page position

paper related to your experience with respect to the workshop’s theme by

April 22nd, 2012. Demos and Videos are also welcome. Following the workshop,

submissions may be solicited to submit a full paper for a potential special

issue on the topic. Industry and academia people who simply wish to

participate may register by email. Submissions and

registrations should be sent to: upworkshop.2012(at)gmail(dot)com.

 

=======  Organizers =========

 

Judy Kay, Sydney University,

 

Tsvi Kuflik, University of Haifa,

 

Bob Kummerfeld, Sydney University,

 

Amit Tiroshi, University of Haifa

 

=======  Invited speakers ===========

 

Shlomo Berkovsky - CSIRO, Australia

 

Dominikus Heckmann - DFKI, Germany

 

Geert-Jan Houben - TU Delft, The Netherlands

 

Alfred Kobsa – the University California, Irvine, CA, USA

 

Antonio Kuger – DFKI and Saarland university, Germany