[AISWorld] CALL FOR PAPERS - Workshop: Designing User Assistance Systems - ECIS 2017

[Morana, Stefan (IISM)]

CALL FOR PAPERS - Workshop: Designing User Assistance Systems (UAS) - ECIS 2017 in Guimaraes, Portugal (June 7th, 2017)

MOTIVATION 
Initial attempts in information systems (IS) to support users with more comprehensive, integrated assistance failed miserably, such as the famous Clippy by Microsoft. Yet, more recent assistance functionalities, primarily in the private life context, such as Apple's Siri or Google Now, showed their usefulness and the major technology companies (Google, Amazon, and Microsoft) announced even more intelligent and innovative personal assistants for the future. In the IS context, a user assistance system is an intelligent and interactive information technology (IT) component that enables individuals to perform tasks better. The degree of interaction characterizes the assistance system's capability to support users in an ongoing reciprocal and activating dialog using, potentially, different channels. The degree of intelligence describes the assistance system's capability to provide guidance or advice based on the user's current activities and usage environment. 

By tailoring assistance to the users' current context and needs during the task execution, for example by making use of the sensors or historical user data that many devices nowadays have access to, more advanced assistance systems can provide IS users with added value. Although there are various attempts in IS, especially in the human-computer-interaction community, to study the effects of assistance and to provide concrete solutions in the form of prototypes, a great deal of research is still needed. In particular, because technologies like smart watches, smart glasses, or virtual reality environments steadily evolve providing interesting data that can be used to tailor the assistance. Moreover, there is a recent trend in research as well as technology companies to invest in artificial intelligence research that could be leveraged for improving assistance systems in the IS context. Thus, designing user assistance systems is a promising research field that deserves more attention in IS research and related communities. 
 
INTENDED PARTICIPANTS
We invite researchers as well as practitioners with an interest in the conceptualization, design, and evaluation of interactive and intelligent user assistance systems (UAS) for supporting users' task execution and decision making. Given the broad spectrum of UAS and the topics' interdisciplinary, we invite researchers and practitioners focusing, for example, on human-computer-interaction, decision support and decision making, business intelligence and analytics, intelligent user interfaces, and human behavior in IS to advance the topic in the workshop. 

WORKSHOP TOPICS
We are interested in manuscripts addressing one of the following topics:
· Theory-grounded conceptualization of user assistance systems in general or the two dimensions interactivity and intelligence
· Design of user assistance systems in the form of decision aids, recommendation systems, virtual assistants, guidance systems, task-support systems, or digital assistance systems
· Research on the IT-based support of individuals' working routines in organizational or private life contexts
· Empirical (qualitative or quantitative) evaluation of user assistance system artifacts in, e.g. laboratory experiments or field studies
· Research addressing the context and situation when user assistance systems are required
· Research on the individuals' cognitive processes when using user assistance systems and the related outcomes
 
Manuscripts addressing related topics that are not mentioned explicitly are welcome.

SUBMISSIONS 
The submissions should be no longer than 10 pages (DIN A4, 12 pt Times New Roman, single spaced) including figures, tables, and references following the ECIS formatting style. The format of the submission is an anonymized PDF document that includes a title and 3-5 keywords. 
The manuscripts should be submitted as email attachments to the workshop chairs (Stefan Morana and Jella Pfeiffer) with the subject heading "UAS Workshop ECIS 2017".
 
Further information can be found on the UAS workshop website: http://uas.ksri.kit.edu

IMPORTANT DATES 
- Submission deadline: 15.04.2017
- Authors notification: 15.05.2017
- Workshop: 07.06.2017

WORKSHOP CHAIRS
Stefan Morana, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany (corresponding chair)
Jella Pfeiffer, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany

PPROGRAM COMITTEE
Alexander Maedche, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Christine Legner, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland
Mauro Cherubini, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland
Peter Fettke, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
Shirley Gregor, Australian National University, Australia