Exploring the Practices & Technologies of Representing the Urban Environment in Human-Computer Interaction

Recent technological developments mark the city as a central and perhaps special space for human-computer interaction research and practice. Visions of ubiquitous computing, the resonance of the ‘urban probe’, and the proliferation of interactive mapping services speak to the significance of the urban landscape to studies of Human-Computer Interaction. But such visions and technologies require, produce and reproduce images of urban space that influence what these systems, and our interactions with them, are and might be. Developing and employing technologies for the urban environment requires visualization techniques that both reflect and challenge how we image, and consequently imagine, the city.

This one-day workshop will explore the practices and technologies of imaging the urban environment, bringing together an interdisciplinary array of designers, HCI experts, urban planners and technologists to investigate such issues as:

• How do we represent the city in HCI, and how do these representations inform HCI research and practice?
• What kinds of technological devices, services, and platforms support imaging the city now and might be created in the near future?
• How are and might these new representations of the city and urban imaging technologies be used for social and political ends?
• What new methods are required for developing technologies that image the city in new ways?
• What can we learn from the urban experience to design stronger representations and interfaces within HCI research and practice?

We welcome position papers from HCI practitioners, architects, visualization specialists, urban planners, futurists and artists. Sample topics might include:

• Novel design and use of interactive mapping technologies
• ‘Mashups’ and other user-driven combinations of imaging, information and location-based technologies and services
• Urban surveillance technologies: their uses, abuses and implications
• Urban environmental sensing: the social, technical and visualization challenges
• and opportunities
• The design and design implications of GPS-enabled/location-aware devices
• Flickr photosharing, photoblogs and the geo-coding of images

Link: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/cdisalvo/chi2007workshop/