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Workshop on Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values

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In Conjunction with the Ninth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2007)

September 16th, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria

Updates:

Accepted participants: Registration is now open for the conference. You can register for the full conference, or as a workshop-only attendee.

Overview

This workshop will explore how Ubicomp research can intersect with values and practices linked to environmental sustainability. Growing concerns about resource depletion, global warming, and environmental degradation have led increasing numbers of people to reconsider their actions and the impact they have on the planet. This upswing in public interest in making positive change for the environment has substantial implications for how the Ubicomp community frames and executes the design of technologies in realms as diverse as energy conservation, healthcare, home systems monitoring and automation, environmental monitoring, community planning, and social networking. The goals of the workshop are to gain an understanding of emerging practices in which technologies align with emerging environmental values, and to distill a set of challenges for the Ubicomp community that are synchronous with those developments.

Topics

We encourage submissions exploring the relationship between Ubicomp and environmental sustainability. We ask authors to pick one of the following three options:

  1. Describe and discuss a project of your own in which Ubicomp technology follows environmentally sustainable principles or supports environmentally sustainable values.
  2. Consider one of your own projects (either former or current) that is related to Ubicomp and critique it from the point of view of environmental sustainability. If the project had been conceived or designed with environmental values in mind, might it have been different? If so, how? What if anything might you have done differently, or what might you do moving forward, if you considered sustainable issues in your project?
  3. Propose a possible research agenda for environmental sustainability in Ubicomp.

For each of the above options, example topics include (but are certainly not limited to) the following:

  • Product design. How can Ubicomp designers better incorporate sustainable practices in the design process? What new design paradigms might emerge from reconsidering products from the sustainability perspective? How can Ubicomp enable cradle-to-cradle design of products, and how do cradle-to-cradle principles change Ubicomp?
  • Systems. How can we design more sustainable Ubicomp technologies? How can infrastructure be designed to maximize its reusability? Can the energy requirements of Ubicomp systems be dramatically reduced? Can Ubicomp technologies serve as a substitute for more energy-intensive alternatives? Can we develop criteria for accurately evaluating the environmental impacts of a new Ubicomp system before beginning its development?
  • Home technologies. In what ways does Ubicomp research in the home intersect with the green home phenomenon, and how can Ubicomp support issues such as monitoring, reconfiguration, and co-evolution of residents and home technologies?
  • Monitoring technologies. How can Ubicomp help people better understand energy consumption? What sorts of sensors might be useful for this purpose? To what extent can studies of how technology is used help identify opportunities for changing personal behavior related to energy consumption?
  • Social networking technologies. How can social networking technologies be used to motivate sustainable behavior? What paradigms are likely to be most effective?
  • Persuasive technologies. In what ways might Ubicomp be used to encourage more sustainable behaviors? How can people be supported in their efforts to change their daily practices and reduce resource consumption?
  • Personal action technologies. How can Ubicomp support personal actions such as protest or subversive resistance to effect change? For example, can Ubicomp sensor networks or social sensing be used to support the environmental justice movement by documenting developing problems or potential misdeeds?

Workshop Format

The workshop will be highly interactive, and activities will be designed to stimulate discussion and creativity. The workshop will be an opportunity to explore ideas for innovative design and implementation strategies and principles, as well as to identify relevant areas of synergy within the Ubicomp community. Throughout the day, the organizers will draw on concepts from human-computer interaction, anthropology, and design to guide and facilitate discussion. The workshop will be structured into four sessions. In the first session, the organizers will present themes that emerged from the participants’ position papers (based on an analysis the organizers will conduct before the workshop). Each participant will also give a brief overview of the paper they submitted. In the second session, participants will participate in a brainstorming session. In the third session, participants will further explore the interactions between technological interventions and environmental values. In the final session, we will engage in a discussion about the most interesting and difficult problems that came out of each activity, and identify key outcomes and challenges. In order to facilitate interaction, we anticipate the workshop will be limited to 15-20 participants.

Participation and Registration

We welcome submissions from individuals who are passionate about the interaction between Ubicomp and environmental sustainability. A background in sustainability is welcome but is not required to participate in this workshop. We welcome submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students from both academia and industry. Authors of accepted papers are expected to register (details to be be posted at a later date). In general, we expect that one author from each accepted submission will participate in the workshop (if space permits, it may be possible to arrange for additional authors to attend the workshop, but we can not guarantee this).

Submission Content and Format

We ask that prospective authors prepare a submission based on one of the options described above. Each submission should also include a biography stating the participant's background and motivation for submitting to the workshop, and should be in English and in PDF format. Each submission should be 2-4 pages total (including all content, figures, and biography). Accepted position papers will appear in the adjunct proceedings and the final camera-ready version should follow the 2-column Springer-Verlag format (two-columns, A4-size, no page numbers). A template for this format is available at the UbiComp workshops website. A Word template can be found here (right-click to download).

Submission Instructions

Please email your submission to sustainableinteraction@gmail.com by 11:59pm PST on June 11, 2007.

Important Dates

  • June 11, 2007: Workshop position paper submission deadline 11:59pm PST
  • July 1, 2007: Notification of acceptance/rejection of position papers
  • July 14, 2007: Camera-ready deadline for accepted position papers
  • Sept 16, 2007: Workshop takes place in Innsbruck, Austria

Workshop Organizers

Contact Information

Please contact sustainableinteraction@gmail.com with any queries.

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