CfP: Mixed Realities in the Urban Environment

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. 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.

SUBMISSIONS
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.

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.

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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.

Associated Link: PsychNology Journal

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