PICS 2006 Workshop Description

Portable digital cameras continue to enable prolific photo capturing in a variety of settings and to inspire digital photo sharing via an extensive repertoire of mechanisms and modalities, including exchange of physical prints, sharing of digital copies via email, web pages and blogs, or simply showing images on the imaging devices during face-to-face encounters. Camera phones expand sharing activities further through MMS (multimedia messaging), email from phones, and transfer via IR or Bluetooth between phones. All these functions, embedded in a device that is always close at hand, are creating opportunities for pervasive image capture and sharing.

This second workshop on "Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing: New Social Practices and Implications for Technology" will continue ongoing discussions among a diverse, multi-disciplinary group of researchers around these emerging phenomena. The goal is to examine new technical developments and social practices and to understand implications for further research, including design and development of new devices, applications and services.

THEME

Cameraphones and compact portable digital cameras continue to spread as ever-present, pervasive imaging devices. The list of mechanisms for immediate sharing includes MMS (multimedia messaging) between phones, sending images via email from the phone, posting images to blogs and webpages directly from the phone, transferring images via infrared or Bluetooth between phones, and showing others images on a handheld screen during face-to-face encounters. Over the last few years, images from camera phones have started to appear in regular media as proof that a public event that took place, in addition to already providing an intimate record of daily moments.

According to the recent predictions by InfoTrends, by the year 2010, 87% of all phones shipped worldwide will have a camera. Of those, many will capture multi-pixel images, be augmented with zoom and flash, and ultimately create images that are not only acceptable for viewing on the phone but also on larger displays or in a printed form. In addition, the total number of images captured on camera phones will reach 228 billion, exceeding the number of photos taken on digital still cameras and film cameras combined.

The new social practices that are currently under development have been observed and analyzed by researchers from different disciplines and in different cultural settings. Last year we organized a workshop on "Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing: New Social Practices and Implications for Technology" (PICS 2005) with a goal of creating a venue for researchers to have an open discussion on the topic. The success and the lessons of this first workshop are motivating us to organize the workshop again this year.

GOALS

Our goal is to continue examining technical developments and social practices, and to understand implications for further research.

The second workshop is designed to be highly interactive and cover the following aspects:

• Short presentations. Introductory presentations lasting no more than 2 minutes will be given by all attendees at the beginning of the day.
• Field exercise. In order to stimulate thinking from the users' point of view, we will provide to all attendees phones with some of the recently released mobile photo applications like ZoneTag to use in a mobile outdoor scenario.
• Design exercise. Based on the photos captured during the field exercise, the attendees will have an opportunity to be design a mobile photo application. The design will be carried out using low fidelity methods (pen and paper).
• Open format discussion. The attendees will have an opportunity to propose topics and hold discussions in smaller groups.
• Joint discussion. At the end of the day all participants will take part in the joint discussion with the goal of defining several of the most important research topics and questions for future study.
• Workshop blog. In order to capture questions, comments and reflections, as well as to stimulate discussion before an after the workshop, a joint workshop blog (workspace) will be set up for all attendees.

PARTICIPATION

The number of participants will be limited to 25 people, selected based on their submission and reviewed by the organizers. Participants are asked to submit a position paper describing their interest and experience in this field (about 2-3 pages in the SIGCHI conference publication format). The organizing committee will select participants based on these extended abstracts.