HIIT, an IPCity partner, hosts a video (direct link) on MapLens on YouTube HIITTV channel. Check it out!

TimeWarp is a mixed reality time travel game which takes place in the City of Cologne, Germany. Later this year we are looking for groups of users from all backgrounds to take part in this exciting game. If you are interested please contact: info@ipcity.eu

What is TimeWarp?
TimeWarp is game where you rescue mythical characters from various time periods in Cologne. As you walk round the city you carry a small ultramobile PC which acts as a magic lens into a new augmented world. As you walk around the city you will be able to interact with various virtual characters, buildings and objects, these are superimposed over real world elements.

Where does it take place?
The game is location based so only operates in Cologne, Germany. The precise locations are within 1km of the Cathedral.

How many players?
TimeWarp is a collaborative game so each group will consist of two players, you can volunteer individually or perhaps with a friend or family member.

Is it dangerous?
No. The only risks are what you would find in any busy street environment e.g. other people or cars. However all participation is at your own risk and you will be asked to sign a waiver form.

Do you collect data about me?
Yes we collect basic profile information as well as data about your actions within the game. All participants must agree to let us use this data. However we will not print your picture or name without your permission.

Do I get paid?
We pay a very small participation fee to cover your expenses.

When are the trials taking place?
August and September.

The IPCity Consortium is organizing the IPCity Summer School 2009, to take place September 22-25, 2009 in Vienna, Austria!

The IPCity project invites for 25 international students to join us for the 2009 summer school where they will be given the opportunity to work alongside experts in the field of urban mixed realities. The summer school will bring together students from a range of backgrounds including: architecture, urban planning, computer games design and information technology with the aim of creating an atmosphere similar to those found in leading research labs.

The first day of the summer school will introduce students to the IPCity project, in particular the core theories, key concepts and underlying technologies. During the following three days students will participate in workshop groups which will focus on novel application areas including: urban life and social gathering, environmental awareness, urban renewal scenarios, mixed-reality gaming and community story-telling in urban environments.

Workshop supervisors will work together with the students to familiarize them with the methods, the technology and the focus of the workshop. Together and with the help of the provided building blocks they will create their own content for existing mixed reality systems, conduct tests and field trials, and on the last day present their groups’ work to the other workshop participants!

To receive more details on the Summer School 2009, please visit the IPCity Summer School 2009 dedicated website!

CityWall, a technology developed within IPCity by Helsinki Institute of Information Technology (HIIT), is presented in a YouTube video. The video has already been viewed over 260 000 times, so it’s quite popular.

View it here:

The deadline for the “Evaluating Player Experiences in Location Aware Games” workshop which is being held during HCI 2008 in Liverpool has been extended. The new deadline for all submissions is the 14th July 2008.

For more information visit: Workshop Website

The workshop is being held in association with IPCity and PEACH.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: 9th June 2008

Psychnology Journal (http://www.psychnology.org/)

CALL FOR PAPERS

SPECIAL ISSUE ON Mixed Realities in the Urban Environment

Urban mixed realities represent a growing and exciting area of research, which requires new ways of thinking about issues such as usability, place and presence. Urban situations are dynamic and can change rapidly, with a vast array of complex and exciting rhythms. They cover a whole spectrum of complex and chaotic happenings which span organisational and material configurations. These characteristics are both challenges and motivations for exploring mixed reality technology solutions, in particular with respect to finding methods to improve the ways in which participants can relate to the environment and to others. Mixed realities cover all situations in which digital objects are combined with physical features of the environment. Technologies include pervasive, ubiquitous, multimodal, and augmented reality solutions. Current projects explore and evaluate forms of interaction and presence in urban environments which use mixed reality technologies to improve or create new practices. This can be achieved in two ways: either by augmenting the engagement with others (including encounters, feelings, exchanges, co-experiences) or through augmenting the engagement with the environment (places, or things), which includes playing, understanding and interpreting the environment in new ways. We invite designers, technology developers, social scientists, psychologists and urbanists to submit a paper. Topic areas include but are not limited to:

– The role of the urban environment in shaping content and technologies
– Interaction issues within urban environments
– Frameworks and theories: place, presence, co-operative systems and cognition
– Technologies: from mobile phones to head-mounted displays
– Design and evaluation methodologies
– The role of art and performance in urban mixed realities
– Personal and societal issues related to the use and deployment of urban mixed reality systems
– Applications of urban mixed reality technologies: games, cultural heritage, emergency response training, pervasive games, social networking etc.

Case studies, applications, and theoretical contributions are all welcomed however they should all be focussed on mixed realities and the urban environment and be scientifically sound. The precise formatting guidelines and other relevant information for authors are available at http://www.psychnology.org/255.php. They should be sent in electronic form to both: articles(at)psychnology.org, and pnj(at)peachbase.org.

Manuscripts should have not been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere in the submitted form. All papers will be thoroughly reviewed in a double-blind process.

Important dates:
Submission Deadline 9th June 2008
Notification of Acceptance 20th June 2008
Final Copy due 15th July 2008

Guest Editors:
Rod McCall, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Giulio Jacucci, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland
Wolfgang Broll, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany

Dr Rod McCall is a research scientist at Fraunhofer FIT, Germany. He has been studying and working in the field of mixed and virtual realities for over ten years and recently chaired the Urban Mixed Realities Workshop at CHI 2008. Current projects include IPCity and PEACH.

Dr Giulio Jacucci is a Senior Research Scientist and co-leads Ubiquitous Interaction, a research group at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, projects include interaction design and studies of mobile, mixed reality, and ubiquitous computing applications. Jacucci is docent at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and serves as a member of program and organizing committee of several conferences in the area of HCI and interface technologies.

Dr Wolfgang Broll is head of the Collaborative Virtual and Augmented Environments Department at Fraunhofer FIT, and a lecturer at RWTH Aachen. He holds a Diploma in Computer Science from the Darmstadt University of Technology and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen. He has been undertaking research in the area of Mixed Reality and 3D user interfaces since 1993.

***************************************************************************************************************
PNJ is a quadrimestral, international, peer-reviewed journal on the relationship between humans and technology. The term ‘PsychNology’ results from the merge of two words, Psychology and Technology, and has been chosen in order to emphasize the tight relationship connecting the two concepts. PNJ is currently indexed within major scientific databases including PsycInfo and EBSCO; it is an independent, electronic publication that grants a wide accessibility to its published papers.

——————————————————–
CALL FOR PAPERS

*** WORKSHOP ***
Evaluating Player Experiences in Location Aware Games

HCI 2008: Culture, Creativity, Interaction
1-5 Sept. 2008, Liverpool, John Moores University, UK
http://www.hci2008.org

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2008
——————————————————–

Location aware technologies such as widespread mobile computers and varying location sensors open up a massive range of possibilities for extending game playing into streets, buildings and even the rural landscape. New and extended forms of location-aware games including mobile or pervasive phone games, smart toys, role-playing games as well as Mixed Reality (MR) games all demonstrate promising new forms of game play. Substantial work has also gone into new game concepts, sophisticated technology and viable business models. However, research on the methodological issues of studying mobile player experiences, pervasive game activity and ubiquitous interaction has become necessary. Furthermore, there is also a need to explore the methodological issues in the evaluation of the intertwined, mutually dependent dimensions related to the usability and playability of location-based games.

This workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners, and students with the objective of sharing knowledge, experience and ideas so that the many user experience issues of location aware games can be more thoroughly addressed.

We would like to invite papers to be submitted to this workshop that focus on one or several issues of measuring player experience in location-aware games including but not limited to:
• User interface design issues on multiple device types: from ideas to guidelines and principals
• Devices and modalities, including tangible computing
• Appropriateness of existing HCI work to game interfaces e.g. task analysis, heuristics, interviews and other methods
• Social dimensions of location gaming technologies, from non-player participation to between player communication
• Theoretical issues related space, place and presence
• Contextual issues when designing and evaluating location aware games
• Using participatory design and probes in design and evaluation
• Game design patterns

*** SUBMISSIONS ***

Authors are invited to submit position or research papers of not more than 4 pages, including tables, figures and references. Submissions will be accepted to be presented in a talk or as a poster. Papers should present original research or summarize experiences related to the above mentioned workshop topics. All submissions should be made via the online workshop paper submission system.

Paper submissions should adhere to the HCI 2008 style guidelines. The respective templates may be found at:
http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/hci2008/documents/HCI_2008_Paper_Template.doc
Please include all author and contact information in your submission.

Unless clearly indicated otherwise, submission of a workshop contribution implies permission for a publication on the workshop website.

*** IMPORTANT DEADLINES ***

Paper Submission: June 15, 2008
Notification of Acceptance: July 1, 2008
Camera-ready Paper Submission: August 1, 2008

*** Organising and Programme Committee ***

Rod McCall, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany (co-chair)
Barbara Grüter, Hochschule Bremen, University of Applied Sciences, Germany (co-chair)
Anne-Kathrin Braun, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany (co-chair)
Lynne Baillie, Glasgow Caledonian University (UK) and FTW, Austria
Andrew Wilson, Blink, UK
Richard Wetzel, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Zachary O Toups, Texas A&M University, USA
Joerg Niesenhaus, University of Duisberg-Essen, Germany

** Further Information ****
For more information contact Rod McCall (rod.mccall@fit.fraunhofer.de) or visit www.ipcity.eu

The workshop is being held in association with the EC funded IPCity and PEACH projects.

—

PRESENCE 2008

11th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Padova, Italy, October 16-18, 2008

Second Call for Papers

Submission deadline (extended): May 23, 2008

Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at the 11th Annual International Workshop on Presence, to be held in Padova, Italy, on October 16-18, 2008.

Often described as a sense of “being there” in a mediated environment, telepresence is broadly defined as a psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience. It is a rich, fascinating subject of scientific investigation, artistic exploration and diverse application, with increasingly important implications for the ways in which people interact and technologies are developed. Designing technologies and imagining practices to modify, prolong and reconfigure the possibilities of being present has been a continuous endeavor of the human species, from early attempts at constructing communication and transportation devices, to the many current technologies we continue to develop to reach other places and people. Originally focused on bringing “presence” from the real world to a simulated one, the phenomenon is today analyzed and investigated in the context of diverse environments and involves questioning simple distinctions between “‘real” and “artificial”. This opening to a wide range of mediated environments is accompanied by a growing involvement of different research fields that are continuously updating and modifying the contours of presence scholarship. The phenomenon of presence is challenging from a scientific point of view as much as it is viable in everyday life, where people participate in simultaneous mediated experiences, feeling present or co-present in digital locations without any need for explicit instructions and orchestrating technical and cognitive resources to control and enhance presence. What it means to be present in mediated environments is then an extremely relevant and enticing question, bearing all sorts of implications for the design and application of diverse technologies.

More at www.presence2008.org

Read Rod McCall’s feature on the CHI08 workshop on Urban mixed realities at the Usability news portal.

It seems like only a few short years since virtual reality, or rather Second Life, exploded onto almost every single news outlet on the planet. However, the as-yet relatively under-explored field of urban mixed realities perhaps presents some of the most interesting areas for research and development. With this in mind CHI 08 played host to the “Urban Mixed Realities Workshop” which explored, in common with CHI, art, science and perhaps how to balance the two.

http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4685.asp

Psychnology Journal (http://www.psychnology.org/)

CALL FOR PAPERS

SPECIAL ISSUE ON Mixed Realities in the Urban Environment

Urban mixed realities represent a growing and exciting area of research, which requires new ways of thinking about issues such as usability, place and presence. Urban situations are dynamic and can change rapidly, with a vast array of complex and exciting rhythms. They cover a whole spectrum of complex and chaotic happenings which span organisational and material configurations. These characteristics are both challenges and motivations for exploring mixed reality technology solutions, in particular with respect to finding methods to improve the ways in which participants can relate to the environment and to others. Mixed realities cover all situations in which digital objects are combined with physical features of the environment. Technologies include pervasive, ubiquitous, multimodal, and augmented reality solutions. Current projects explore and evaluate forms of interaction and presence in urban environments which use mixed reality technologies to improve or create new practices. This can be achieved in two ways: either by augmenting the engagement with others (including encounters, feelings, exchanges, co-experiences) or through augmenting the engagement with the environment (places, or things), which includes playing, understanding and interpreting the environment in new ways. We invite designers, technology developers, social scientists, psychologists and urbanists to submit a paper. Topic areas include but are not limited to:

– The role of the urban environment in shaping content and technologies
– Interaction issues within urban environments
– Frameworks and theories: place, presence, co-operative systems and cognition
– Technologies: from mobile phones to head-mounted displays
– Design and evaluation methodologies
– The role of art and performance in urban mixed realities
– Personal and societal issues related to the use and deployment of urban mixed reality systems
– Applications of urban mixed reality technologies: games, cultural heritage, emergency response training, pervasive games, social networking etc.

Case studies, applications, and theoretical contributions are all welcomed however they should all be focussed on mixed realities and the urban environment and be scientifically sound. The precise formatting guidelines and other relevant information for authors are available at http://www.psychnology.org/255.php. They should be sent in electronic form to both: articles(at)psychnology.org, and pnj(at)peachbase.org.

Manuscripts should have not been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere in the submitted form. All papers will be thoroughly reviewed in a double-blind process.

Important dates:
Submission Deadline 30th May 2008
Notification of Acceptance 20th June 2008
Final Copy due 15th July 2008

Guest Editors:
Rod McCall, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Giulio Jacucci, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland
Wolfgang Broll, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany

Dr Rod McCall is a research scientist at Fraunhofer FIT, Germany. He has been studying and working in the field of mixed and virtual realities for over ten years and recently chaired the Urban Mixed Realities Workshop at CHI 2008. Current projects include IPCity and PEACH.

Dr Giulio Jacucci is a Senior Research Scientist and co-leads Ubiquitous Interaction, a research group at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, projects include interaction design and studies of mobile, mixed reality, and ubiquitous computing applications. Jacucci is docent at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and serves as a member of program and organizing committee of several conferences in the area of HCI and interface technologies.

Dr Wolfgang Broll is head of the Collaborative Virtual and Augmented Environments Department at Fraunhofer FIT, and a lecturer at RWTH Aachen. He holds a Diploma in Computer Science from the Darmstadt University of Technology and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen. He has been undertaking research in the area of Mixed Reality and 3D user interfaces since 1993.

***************************************************************************************************************
PNJ is a quadrimestral, international, peer-reviewed journal on the relationship between humans and technology. The term ‘PsychNology’ results from the merge of two words, Psychology and Technology, and has been chosen in order to emphasize the tight relationship connecting the two concepts. PNJ is currently indexed within major scientific databases including PsycInfo and EBSCO; it is an independent, electronic publication that grants a wide accessibility to its published papers.