Pervasive awareness systems are awareness systems where awareness information is generated from ubiquitous devices in one’s pervasive environment. These are sensor (or actuator) types of artefacts that capture (or display) information about the context of activities within a home, in a semi-autonomous manner.

Awareness systems can be defined as systems whose purpose is to help connected individuals or groups to maintain a peripheral awareness of the activities and the situation of each other, e.g., their well-being, their availability for interactions, or an overview of their activities.  Research in awareness systems has grown quite significantly in the last 10 years and has examined awareness systems at work, at home and on the move and has provided explorations from a design perspective, several working realizations of such systems and reports on the experiences of their use. A growing number of applications, such as IM, Skype, Facebook to mention only a few, are currently widely used by people not only to perform common tasks, but also to stay in touch and to help the members of distributed social networks to feel connected.

The aim of this workshop is to increase the potential of awareness systems as a driver for connecting people, in a rich set of pervasive awareness scenario by focusing on ludic, creative, and aesthetic aspects. Some of the questions that we intend to address include, but are not limited to:

• How can we create Aesthetic, Creative, and Ludic experiences through mediated communication?

• Can art help to design pervasive awareness systems that better integrates into people’s everyday life through novel interfaces?

• How to design pervasive awareness systems that are aesthetically pleasant and/or fun to use?

• In which scenario type are artistic, aesthetic, or ludic aspects more important?

• Can art challenge mainstream assumptions on this type of systems? For example, awareness research has pointed out that it is important that this type of awareness is provided effortlessly and stay at the periphery of attention. This claim can be challenged by artistic, aesthetic or lucid applications that may specifically aim to be intrusive.  .

• Can we leverage on ludic and aesthetic aspects of pervasive awareness applications to promote system adoption and appropriation?

 

The proposed workshop will address the Aesthetic and Ludic aspects of  Pervasive Awareness applications.  It invites a mix of position papers, including demos and presentations, combined with a structured creative exercise in application conceptualization  and creation.