Overview:

The complexity and scope of UbiComp research brings together practitioners from a wide range of disciplines. Recognised evaluation strategies are essential in order that the contribution of new techniques can be quantified objectively. Experience has shown that evaluating ubiquitous systems is extremely difficult. Approaches tend to be subjective, piecemeal or both. Individual approaches to evaluation risk being incomplete and comparisons between systems can be difficult. This workshop will bring together UbiComp researchers to discuss their experiences in the evaluation of UbiComp systems with the aim of identifying specific techniques that could form essential elements of an overall evaluation framework. It is the intention of the workshop organisers to disseminate, through appropriate publication, the findings of the workshop.

USE '07 will consist of presentations of peer-reviewed papers. Papers will be selected based on the quality of proposed evaluation techniques and their potential to stimulate discussion. Presentations will be followed by structured discussion on the merits of proposed techniques and their appropriateness for inclusion in a UbiComp Systems evaluation framework. We seek submissions in two forms: 4 to 6 page 'full paper' submissions or 2 page 'position papers' for more speculative ideas.

Topics of interest:

Given the diversity of work in UbiComp systems, this workshop will cover a broad range of themes. We solicit submissions that address issues including, but not limited to, the following:

• Frameworks and methodologies for comparative evaluation of UbiComp systems (and sub-components) in terms of:
• scalability
• security/privacy
• portability (e.g., of infrastructure and applications)
• data management
• data distribution
• correctness (e.g., formal proofs)
• etc.
• Human factors
• measuring user load, ease of use, learning curves, etc.
• evaluating user understanding of system behaviour
• quantifying acceptable system reaction times (as perceived by users) in different scenarios
• Scenarios/tasks as evaluation techniques (with associated metrics, and justifications for their use in general evaluation)
• personal area networks (including wearables)
• smart spaces
• city to country level systems
• global scale systems
• fixed and ad hoc infrastructures
• sensor-rich and sensor-sparse environments
• Experience papers
• experimental environments
• difficulties encountered while evaluating UbiComp projects
• identification of areas that would benefit from recognised evaluation strategies
• Benchmarks
• data sets for UbiComp
• example operations
• example query sets
• results and comparison techniques

Submission:

We solicit submissions of full papers between 4-6 pages and position papers of 2 pages. Papers should be prepared using 2-column springer-verlag format (SVJour2). A latex template and macros can be downloaded here. If you choose to prepare your paper using another format, please make sure that the paper follows exactly the same paper outline: two-columns, A4-size, no page numbers.

All submissions should be made in pdf format, and sent to

Important Dates:

June 08, 2007 – Submission deadline *EXTENDED*
July 01, 2007 – Notification of acceptance
July 14, 2007 – Camera-ready for accepted papers
September 16, 2007 – Workshop date

Programme Chairs:

Steve Neely (University College Dublin)
Graeme Stevenson (University College Dublin)
Sotirios Terzis (University of Strathclyde)

Programme Committee:

Vinny Cahill (Trinity College Dublin)
Sunny Consolvo (Intel Research)
Lorcan Coyle (University College Dublin)
Simon Dobson (University College Dublin)
Mark Dunlop (University of Strathcldye)
Robert Grimm (New York University)
Matthias Kranz (University of Munich)
Trevor Pering (Intel Research)
Tom Pfeifer (Waterford Institute of Technology)
Aaron Quigley (University College Dublin)
Anand Ranganathan (IBM Research)
François Taïani (University of Lancaster)