Archive for June, 2010

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Applications are invited for the position of “Post-doctoral Research Fellow” as part of a joint research project between the Masdar Institute of Science& Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project’s Principal Investigators are:

• Dr. Iyad Rahwan, Masdar Institute& MIT (www.mit.edu/~irahwan)
• Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland, MIT (http://web.media.mit.edu/~sandy)

The successful candidate will work on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project. The project , titled “Influencing Collective Human Behavior Using Distributed Intelligent Systems,” aims to help people use resources more efficiently. The project will have (1) a theoretical component focusing on game-theoretic and incentive mechanism design issues, and (2) an empirical component to test these techniques in behavioral experiments using lab experiments and real deployment through mobile computing and sensor technologies.

For further details, please see: http://www.mit.edu/~irahwan/docs/20100529_postdoc_advert.pdf

Web-based collaborative applications commonly known as “Web 2.0″ (O’Reilly
2005) have been changing the way individuals interact with each other. These
applications are used for sharing content in various formats ranging from
video (e.g. YouTube) to text (e.g. Wikipedia), and for a variety of
purposes in social (e.g. social networking), business (e.g. viral
marketing), and political (e.g. political campaigning) contexts. Given the
variety in the content, user profiles, and motivations in this domain, user
interaction techniques are surprisingly limited, and not more sophisticated
than the first generation of Web applications. It is presumable that with
better identification of users, their motivations, and interaction needs,
user experience with Web 2.0 will be substantially improved. In addition,
many users interact with Web 2.0 applications using mobile devices such as
smart phones thus enabling near real-time information sharing. Yet there is
little research to date focusing on the “any time any place” nature of HCI
in the era of Web 2.0.

This special issue calls for research from diverse fields that explores the
HCI phenomenon in the dynamic and ubiquitous Web 2.0 environment. Conceptual
and theory building papers, design science studies, and empirical research
that investigates the success of the interaction of people with Web 2.0
applications are all welcome. Prospective contributors are expected to bring
in a variety of perspectives from social to technical.

Topics include but are not limited to:
. Identification and classification of Web 2.0 user profiles and
motivations
. Analysis of Web 2.0 use patterns
. Impact of Web 2.0 on user activities
. Personal-life impacts
. Social and political impacts
. Web 2.0 in the organizational context
. Evaluation of Web 2.0 interaction techniques
. Design, implementation, and evaluation of innovative Web 2.0 user
interfaces
. Methods for indexing, searching, and mining Web 2.0 data
. Impacts of mobility and distributed computing

The deadline for submissions is 01.02.2011.

More information can be found at the THCI website: http://thci.aisnet.org

I found this very interesting video by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA, http://thersa.org) adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at this organization which illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

Enjoy!