Special Track on AMBIENT ASSISTED LIVING (AAL):
Solutions, Experience and Challenges

Co-located at the 5th annual Usability Symposium USAB 2009.

SCOPE

Many smart environments are already capable of providing any information at any place, anytime. Marc Weisers' vision about Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is already becoming reality in several different facets.
According to demographic changes - over-aging society - and severe cuts in the social sector one of the most promising application domains is Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), in which the supportive technology is being utilized, to offer elderly people a self-determined life in their own home as long as possible.
Since user interaction and therefore user acceptance already plays a vital role in such AmI environments, in order to provide information in an appropriate manner, it is even more important considering the special target audience in the AAL domain - the elderly people. Here, special (continuously
altering) requirements e.g. in the form of mental models, varying previous experience or different user capabilities need to be addressed. This will result in innovative user interaction concepts and new obstacles to be approached.
This track provides be a forum for discussing experiences with
Human-Computer- Interaction (HCI) in AAL environments, such as eliciting requirements, User- Centered Design (UCD) or Accessibility. Often experiences about challenges and solutions emerged in the context of demonstration environments that can be also point of discussion.


TOPICS

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
  - Ambient Intelligence Systems Engineering
  - Quality Models
  - (Model-based) Requirements Engineering
  - Predicting and Validating Perception
  - Social Responsibility Engineering
  - Human Capability Modeling
  - Human-Machine-Interaction Engineering
  - Multimodality
  - Adaptive UIs
  - Natural Interaction
  - Usability Patterns
  - Practitioner/Experience
  - User Acceptance Studies
  - Practical Experience (Prototyping, Labs, Smart Homes)
  - Shortcomings of existing approaches, solutions, or standardizations


FORMAT AND SUBMISSION

The track will take place during the USAB 2009 Symposium. It will consist of a limited number of short as well as long paper presentations followed by a discussion on the main topic.
Short papers must have at least 6 pages and not exceed 8 pages, and long papers must have more than 14 pages Springer LNCS style (http://www.springer.com/lncs), always keeping an even number of pages. Papers must address at least one of the topics listed below.

Contributions can be submitted using the form on the webpage:
http://aal-group.iese.fraunhofer.de/form.php


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission July, 21st, 2009
Notification of acceptance August, 14th, 2009
Camera-ready Pape September, 7th, 2009


ORGANIZERS

Fraunhofer IESE (AAL-Group), Germany
Westpfalz Klinikum Kaiserslautern, Germany


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

  - Jan Alexandersson, DFKI, Germany
  - Stephan Prückner, WKK, Germany
  - Yvonne Schikhof, Hogeschool Rotterdam, Netherlands
  - Markus Weber, Centigrade GmbH, Germany
  - Gottfried Zimmermann, Access Technologies Group, Germany
  - Fraunhofer IESE (AAL-Group), Germany

  - Martin Becker

  - Kai Breiner

  - Anne Gross

  - Daniel Kerkow

  - Kerstin Klöckner

  - Andreas Maier

  - Karina Villela