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digest 2002-07-08 #001.txt

litsci-l-digest          Monday, July 8 2002          Volume 01 : Number
009



In this issue:

     interesting workshop on human-computer interaction and cultural & 
literary theory

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Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 14:15:11 -0400
From: Phoebe Sengers 
Subject: interesting workshop on human-computer interaction and cultural
&  literary theory

Hello all,

Those of you who think about computing or build systems from a humanist
perspective may be interested in the following workshop.  The organizers
are thoughtful and interesting people who I know from CHI.  I can
recommend this.

For more info please write the organizers, Peter Wright
(pcw@cs.york.ac.uk) and Janet Finlay (J.Finlay@lmu.ac.ukl).

- -- Phoebe

- ----
Call for participation
One day workshop at South Bank University, London
Tuesday 3rd September 2002
as part of the HCI'2002 International conference

Understanding User Experience: Literary Analysis meets HCI

Organisers:
Peter Wright (University of York, UK)
Janet Finlay (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK)

You are invited to participate in an interactive workshop
exploring the potential contribution of approaches from
literary and cultural studies to interaction design. With
the confluence of computing and communications technology
and the deeper penetration of computers into our everyday
lives, purely functional construals of human interaction
are limiting progress in our understanding of interaction
design. In today's world, interaction design is as much
about fun, entertainment, community and identity it as
it is about work, tasks and goals.  This is reflected in
recent concerns to contrast usability and user experience
and to analyse such uniquely human characteristics such
as trust and loyalty and identity.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers
who are actively exploring the application of new metaphors,
models and approaches from literary or cultural studies to
interaction design as well as those who have a specific
interest in these possibilities. The latter group may
include researchers in cultural studies interested in this
application area or developers of interactive artefacts,
such as games or multimedia, where these approaches have
clear application. The workshop's objectives are to begin
to develop a research agenda for HCI practitioners
interested in these issues and to help to establish an
active research community.

Literary analysis covers a very broad range of potentially
relevant topics, for example:
* Genre theory provides us with a potentially valuable way
of characterising the relationship between user and artefact
in a way that orients us towards experience and expectation
as key components of user satisfaction.
* Reception theory views the reader as an active interpreter
of texts who forges meaning on the basis of her personal,
social and historical context.
* Dialogism gives us a way of approaching interaction as a
perspectival and creative process.
* Narrative is central in many approaches to understanding
human activity and interaction.
* Deconstructionism is one approach to the analysis of texts
and artifacts that may have analytical value in HCI.

The workshop will be based around position paper presentations
and facilitated and focused discussions. Each participant will
be asked to prepare a response to another position paper and to
facilitate
discussion around it. This pre-workshop activity will
be critical to the success of the event and all participants
should be prepared to take an active part.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop please
submit a position paper of no more than 4 A4 pages explaining
your interest in this area and/or summarising any work you
have previously undertaken in this field. Your position paper
should indicate how you consider literary analysis can
contribute to HCI (or indeed problems with this approach)
and what you consider to be the most important research
issues in this area.

Position papers should be sent to Peter Wright (pcw@cs.york.ac.uk)
no later than July 31st. Successful applicants will be notified
by August 10th, together with details of the paper they are
required to respond to. A discussion web site will also be
provided at that time.

The outcomes of the workshop will be disseminated at the
conference by the production of a poster and it is hoped
that some or all of the position papers will be developed
into contributions for a journal special issue.
- -

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