Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services
Venue: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 159 (2006)

It is the 8th time when the Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services is being arranged. We are happy to be able to arrange and host the conference this time in Espoo, Finland.We hope - and believe - that this conference will be a success in many ways. The aim is to bring both academics and practitioners together to discuss jointly about the interesting future of mobile devices and services. Currently, this topical area is not only changing very quickly but it is also having major impact in general in our surroundings. The impact is not just on research, not even just on industrial issues, but on society as well.Recent estimates point out that mobile information and communication devices are spreading globally with such a pace that has never been seen before. The devices and corresponding services are not anymore a marginal phenomenon in any way: They are not anymore used by an exclusive group of people for a restricted set of activities. These information appliances are being used more and more not only by the consumers but also by professionals in different industrial branches such as logistics, traffic and construction. Also, the usage is becoming common in surroundings and situations that would not have been expected a while ago. How to design information appliances for people who cannot read, or for people who do not have electricity? As these types of questions emerge, new perspectives to look at the development of the mobile devices and services are required.This development is changing the world.MobileHCI 2006 aims at reflecting this development. The conference is divided into three thematic parts. The three conference days address the effect of mobile devices and services from the directions of society, research, and industry. Each of the three main conference days are opened with a keynote speech addressing these topics: How do mobiles affect society? What are the emerging frontline research directions? What are the industrial and commercial expectations? These three viewpoints aim at delivering a general picture of the thematic area providing a basis for further discussions and explorations among the participants of the conference.The sessions in the conference are put together with the emphasis on the subject of the submissions, not on the format/category of the submission. Sessions are divided according to the subject of papers crossing the format/category boundaries. This arrangement aims at stimulating interaction between academic and industrial participants, providing more visibility also to the work done at companies as well as providing new innovative grounds for future research. A practical consequence from this is the fact that the sessions in the conference are of variable length depending on the amount of papers on a specific theme. We hope that this experiment will turn out to be successful.Even though the three main conference days form the body of the conference, the conference has traditional pre-conference events, workshops and tutorials as well as a new part: doctoral consortium. These events provide a forum for intensive interaction between the core actors in the field.MobileHCI has raised substantial interest among the academic and industrial people. The conference received 82 full paper submissions, 120 short paper submissions, 10 industrial case study submissions, 11 posters, 8 demonstrations and 4 suggestions about panel discussions. Out of these, 20 long research papers, 20 short papers, and 5 industrial case study papers were selected for presentation in the conference. The rather strict acceptance rate at around 25% provides good expectations about the high quality of the presentations in the conference.This year, the selection process of the papers was slightly changed from the previous conferences: According to experience and comments from the previous conferences, meta-reviewing was added to the reviewing and selection process. In addition to the three reviewers that were assigned to every submitted paper, meta-reviewers were also selected to look through all the reviews and check for consistency and argumentation provided in the reviews. The aim with meta-reviewing was to ascertain that every author receives constructive feedback concerning their submission whether the paper was accepted or not for presentation in the conference. We hope that this reviewing style accelerates the improvement of all submitted papers to the conference, not just the ones that were accepted. Reviewing of the papers has required lots of effort and we want to thank all reviewers and meta-reviewers for their outstanding work.We are happy to arrange the conference in Espoo. Espoo is a major center of technology in Finland with its University of Technology campus area, the premises of the Technology Research Centre of Finland, and the home of many innovative small and large technology businesses including the headquarters of the platinum sponsor of the MobileHCI conference. Espoo is, however, also a city with exceptional nature; primeval forest and seaside that are worth experiencing even outside the official conference arrangements. We find that these elements complement each other in a unique way that makes visiting Finland, which also currently holds the EU presidency, worthwhile.In the end, the conference will be made by the participating people, us all. We are hoping to see a lively crowd of special experts from all parts of the world discussing, exchanging, and elaborating thoughts and ideas about the timely issues in this rapidly moving research area.