Ribeaucourt, France
April 8-9 2000

Preliminary Schedule

All events will be held in Ribeaucourt Chateau unless otherwise indicated. Transport to/from the other lodgings will be provided. Participants' suggestions on schedule improvements/amendments are welcome both before and during the workshop.

Friday, 7 April 2000

7:00pm    Reception for attendees and accompanying persons in the Chateau.

Saturday, 8 April 2000

9:00 Pickup of the attendees at their hotel after

8:30-9:30   Breakfast

9:30-12:30  Soapbox" session : each participant speaks for 5-10 minutes on research issues, discussion topics, etc. of their own choice. This is intended to serve as an introduction to what everyone's up to recently as well as their visions for the future. This is not intended to be a "here's my bio" style presentation :-)

12:30-2:00  Lunch

2:00-3:00  Decision on which topics to further discuss. Attendees should come prepared with topics which they feel will fuel lively discussion. During this hour, we'll pick, as a group, the most compelling topics. Some example topics are suggested at the bottom of this page.

3:00-7:00  Break up into two sessions of discussion topics, with a coffee break in between.

7:00  Dinner. As a pre/post dinner activity, we propose a "gadget show" where each participant brings interesting gadgets/devices/videos/other cool stuff to show everyone.

Sunday, 9 April 2000

8:30-9:30  Breakfast

9:30-12:30  Continued discussion of most promising topics from Saturday's session. It is likely that several subgroups will have formed by this time to discuss a particular topic. One of the possible outcomes of this workshop is a set of papers to be published as a special issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM) devoted to the topic of input research. Thus, if a topic looks promising and worthy of development into a paper for this CACM issue, those interested in the topic should take a first stab at organizing a collaborative effort to write a paper.

12:30-2:00  Lunch

2:00-7:00  Further discussions & wrap up session. Subgroups could present a summary of their discussions to all attendees.

7:00  Dinner

Monday, 10 April 2000

8:00  Breakfast & transportation to airport & train stations.

The following questions are examples of possible topics for the workshop:

"Meta" topics:

• Where is the field of input heading? What purpose is it serving?
• What are the most important input problems that are being neglected?
• What are the biggest threats, problems, or technological changes that could cause current input research to become irrelevant?
• What were the important pieces of research in the past? What does this tell us about the future?
• What are the "holy grails" of input? What holy grails should we pursue or abandon?
• What sort of theories do we need to advance in the field?
• Have tools served us well? What are limitations and areas of development for taxonomies, cognitive models, experimental design, etc?
• How will future technologies (e.g. biotechnology, nanotechnology) affect input?
• What forces are affecting the introduction of new input devices and techniques in the market place? Why are we still in the "keyboard and mouse" rut? Is there life beyond the mouse?
• Why is there such a gap between academic research and industry practitioners? In other words, why does so little of the innovation, theories, and models developed by the CHI community affect commercial user interfaces?
• How do we expand the field of input research? Is there a need to expand it?

• What input problems need to be solved for mobile devices? How are we doing?
• Have background (proximal) sensing techniques lived up to their promise? How can automatic sensing techniques be balanced with user control? How can the designer encourage a mental model of what is going on? (Or does it matter?)
• How can we orchestrate a multitude of mobile input devices. In the future, devices will need to know about each other and operate  independently or in a community. They will need to broadcast their abilities and needs. How does the user manage this? Will we use input proximity, physical contact, contextual awareness (ahh what the heck...let's call this fuzzy logic...it sounds cooler). Are we constrained to use the "lowest common denominator" interface -- the keypad? Is voice input the holy grail?
• Some have claimed that we are heading toward a strong-specific set of devices instead of weak-general ones. Is this true? The evidence points the other way: just look at the cell phone, pager, PDA, GPS, e-mail, Web combos. The devices are increasingly doing more than just one of these functions.  What is the "magic number" sweet spot for these combinations?
• There seems to be a trend in interaction and input style: user goes to computer -> bring computer with you -> computer is always with you and always on. This latest stage (always with you and always on) may shift our input and access requirements -- towards more implicit instead of explicit interactions as well as background access. Perhaps this is where "wearable computing" is heading but the focus in this area to date seemingly is on the hardware and not the UI/input implications.
• The new game boxes (e.g., Sony PS/2, SEGA Dreamcast, etc) show an amazing  leap in affordable, high-end graphics. However, the advances in input controllers for these game consoles are hardly noticable: you get 8 buttons and two 2D joysticks. Is input just not important, is our field irrelevant?