Making Places: Visualization, Interaction and Experience in Urban Space

Guest Editors

Paula Trigueiros, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Michael Smyth, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Ingi Helgason, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Sarah Gallacher, Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable and Connected Cities (ICRI-Cities), University College London, London, United Kingdom

Important dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: 15 May 2015 -> 25 May 2015
• Notification to the authors: 20 June 2015 -> 15 July 2015
• Camera ready paper: 20 July 2015 -> 30 July 2015
• Publication of the issue: end of August 2015

Overview

“Cities are exciting”. People continue to be drawn to urban areas because of the choices that cities offer. Large-scale sensor networks and pervasive computing technologies are transforming our city environments as they become augmented with increasingly powerful networked technologies and media. This raises the question of how these technologies can play a part in improving the use of the spaces that already exist in the urban environment and, critically, what roles information visualization and interaction design have in this endeavor. In the context of so-called future or smart cities, visualizations are especially relevant as they are the tangible outcomes of these systems, while interaction design is the enabler for citizens to engage with this urban data.

Emerging technologies are providing new ways of experiencing information in urban space and, consequently, creating a fertile area for cross-disciplinary research, bringing together computer sciences, social sciences, design, art and music, among others. But it is through human activities, that urban spaces become “places”. How people experience and conceptualize “place” is formed by the scope and range of what happens in that space and those that inhabit it.

Our aim is to explore how interactive technology can be used to maximise the use of space within urban areas for positive outcomes, to enhance the experience of city living that so many of us would like to enjoy. As people’s expectations grow, along with the amount of information to communicate, creating multi-sensory information systems is becoming an increasingly challenging task. It requires creative and collaborative approaches to generate outputs ranging from sophisticated digital interventions to more low-tech solutions.

In this context, we encourage inter-disciplinary contributions from areas, including but not limited to HCI, computer sciences, design, psychology, social sciences, digital games, music and arts to gain deeper insights into the roles of visualization, interaction and experience in urban space and place making.

Topics of Interests

The special issue welcomes original research papers on topics including but not restricted to:

• Public displays

• Public engagement

• Big data visualizations

• Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing

• Tangible Interfaces

• Digital Games

• Internet of Things

• Future cities

• Multi-sensory information systems

Keywords

Urban space, pervasive computing, information visualization, citizens, engagement, user experience, cross-disciplinary.

Submission procedure 

All submissions (abstracts and later final manuscripts) must be original and may not be under review by another publication.

The manuscripts should be submitted anonymized either in .doc or in .rtf format. 
All papers will be blindly peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers. Perspective participants are invited to submit a 8-14 pages paper (including authors' information, abstract, all tables, figures, references, etc.). 
The paper should be written according to the IxD&A authors' guidelines .

More information on the submission procedure and on the characteristics of the paper format can be found on the website of IxD&A Journal the where information on the copyright policy and responsibility of authors, publication ethics and malpractice are published.

For scientific advices and for any query please contact the guest-editor:

• paula [dot] trigueiros [at] gmail [dot] com

• m [dot] smyth [at] napier [dot] ac [dot] uk

• i [dot] helgason [at] napier [dot] ac [dot] uk

• s [dot] gallacher [at] ucl [dot] ac [dot] uk

marking the subject as: 'IxD&A focus section on: 'Making Places: Visualization, Interaction and Experience in Urban Space'.