A Report on IFIP HWID 2009
Working Conference on Usability in Social, Cultural and Organizational Contexts
held on October 7-8, 2009, Pune, India

We are happy to inform that IFIP HWID 2009 Working Conference on Usability in Social, Cultural and Organizational Contexts held on October 7-8, 2009 at International Convention Centre (ICC), Pune, India was very successful! The conference was hosted and co-organized by Human Centred Design and Computing Group of C-DAC, Pune, India in collaboration with Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Aarhus University, Denmark and Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. This event is an initiative of Technical Committee (TC 13.6) for Human Work Interaction Design (HWID) of International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).

A group photo with the International Participants
Rikke Orngreen, Andy Smith, Dinesh Katre, Frederico Figueiredo, Torkil Clemmensen, Arminda Lopes, Lene Nielsen, Shailey Manocha, Pradeep Yammiyavar

Relevance

This working conference on the theme of Cultural Usability and Human Work Interaction Design was very timely and relevant in the context of growing investments by the Indian government on e-governance, e-learning, e-health and applications of information systems to empower the rural and agricultural population of India. Also the Indian IT industry has geared to design and develop IT solutions for users across the globe at an economical price. It is perhaps the most appropriate time to create awareness and promote cultural usability. Cultural usability is also going to be a differentiating factor for  new product development and success given the need of the hour for  IT products and systems to cross international boundaries.  As a result it is also of importance to the usability practitioner in IT Industry.

Wide Ranging Topics

The conference touched upon wide ranging topics related to cultural usability and human work interaction design such as cross-cultural usability testing, user personas, usability evaluation method in medical context, usable techniques for hand-writing recognition, mobile application for construction workers, an overview of HCI education in India, promoting usability in large enterprises, design conversions, social usability in second life for distance learning students, interactive kiosks for museums and many more..

Form more details refer the programme schedule

Participants

The conference attracted several international participants from European countries like Denmark, England and Portugal. There was also a participant from Iran and of course large number of participants from India. Good amount of representation from Indian cities like Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, New Delhi and Guwahati was also observed.

The participants of the conference represented academia and industry in equal proportion. They were from organizations like Nokia Siemens Networks, Portugal; FICO India, Bangalore, India; Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati; Tech Mahindra, Ltd., Pune, India; Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai; iRunway, Bangalore, India; Snitker & Co. Copenhagen, Denmark; Instituto Polit©cnico de Castelo Branco, Castelo Branco, Portugal; Thames Valley University, London, UK; Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark; Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark;  Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune, India;  Infosys Technologies, India; Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Universitetsvej, Denmark; User In Design, Pune, India; Pure IT Usability Research, India; Department of Computing, The Open University, Walton Hall, UK; Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi;  Core Objects India P. Ltd, Patni Computers, Siemens PLM Infotech, Wipro Technologies, Bharti Vidyapith University; Human Centred Design & Computing, C-DAC, Pune, India; Tobii Technology AB, Sweden, and many more….

Altogether the conference had 70 participants (20 paper presenters, 50 attendees). It once again proved the fact that good conferences are made by the quality of content and participation of the people.

The Team Effort

A lot of people have volunteered to use time and energy to make this conference happen. We also published the conference proceedings, which contained 21 blind reviewed papers. We would like to state our gratitude towards the group, who has assisted in performing a number of reviews, which enhanced the quality of the conference, the international program committee of 31 people.

Organizing Co-chairs of the Conference
Dinesh Katre (Host), Torkil Clemmensen, Rikke Orngreen, Pradeep Yammiyavar

This event was made possible through the funding support of CultUsab Project of Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and Human Centred Design & Computing, C-DAC, Pune, India. The conference was conducted in the most cordial and friendly atmosphere for which the credit entirely goes to all participants.

The event was concluded by taking all the foreign participants to Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum at Pune to offer some glimpses of India’s rich cultural heritage.

We believe that this initiative will surely help in forming the cross-cultural bridge for usability researchers in Europe, India and other parts of the world to participate in this collective effort.

Deliberations on various topics between the audience, presenters and panelists

IFIP Springer Book
It is proposed to publish an IFIP Springer Book on Cultural Usability, which will include selected research papers from this conference. The Editorial Committee has started its work on the proposed book.