TV'03: the 3rd Workshop on Personalization in Future TV

in conjunction with 9th International Conference on User Modeling

Johnstown, PA, USA

June 23rd, 2003

Call for Papers

Workshop Organizers

Liliana Ardissono
Dipartimento di Informatica
University of Torino, Italy

Mark Maybury
The MITRE Corporation, USA


Program Committee

Liliana Ardissono
University of Torino

Patrick Baudisch
Microsoft Research
USA

Fabio Bellifemine
Telecom Italia Lab
Italy

Judith Masthoff
University of Brighton, UK
UK

Mark Maybury
The MITRE Corporation
USA

Barry Smyth
ChangingWorlds Ltd.
Ireland

Howard Wactlar
Carnegie Mellon University
USA


Important Dates

March 14, 2003
submission of contributions
March 25, 2003
notification of acceptance
May 10, 2003
submission of final contributions


For more information about the workshop, contact
Liliana Ardissono
Dipartimento di Informatica
Universita` di Torino
Corso Svizzera 185
I-10149 Torino
Italy
and
Mark Maybury
Information Technology Division
The MITRE Corporation
MS K312
202 Burlington Road
Bedford, MA
USA

The previous TV workshops


The 3rd workshop on Personalization in Future TV follows TV'01, held in association with the 8th Int. Conf. on User Modeling (Sonthofen, 2001), and TV'02, organized in conjunction with the 2nd Int. Conf. on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web Based Systems (Malaga, 2002). Both TV events have been organized as forums in which researchers from diverse areas such as machine learning, knowledge engineering, cognitive sciences, adaptive user interfaces, and business intelligence could share their experiences in the design, development and exploitation of user interfaces for future TV services. After the success of such workshops, which attracted the attention of academic and industrial researchers and provided an excellent overview of the current international work in the area of digital TV, we propose the third edition of such event, to be held in Johnstown in conjunction with the UM 2003 Conference.


TV'03: background and motivation


There are large differences in types of users (e.g., ages, languages, ethnic backgrounds) and ranges of viewing purposes (e.g., enjoyment, business, education and learning, etc.) witness speciality stations in sports, business, economics, biography/history, etc. The diffusion of digital TV and the availability of hundreds of TV channels are exciting challenges for the design, development and exploitation of user modeling, personalization and adaptive user interfaces techniques. First of all, personalized Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) are needed to support the TV viewer in the selection of the interesting programs. Second, the presence of Set-top boxes running complex programs facilitates the development of user modeling systems that monitor the viewer's behavior each time (s)he watches TV, acquiring long-term user models. At the same time, however, there are important issues to be solved: for example, viewers typically do not watch TV alone; therefore, household models have to be acquired and efficient unobtrusive identification techniques have to be developed to make the explicit identification unnecessary. Moreover, the viewer's interests have to be acquired without bothering her/him with questions and, as such interests may abruptly change, the system has to promptly react to such changes to provide suitable recommendations. Finally, privacy issues have to be addressed to make such systems acceptable.
Another important challenge for digital TV is the development of suitable user interfaces for TV services. For instance, the transition from a passive type of interaction to an active one and the need to use simple remote control devices constrains the types of actions that the TV viewer can perform. Moreover, as the TV is located far away from its viewers, there are special constraints on the layout of the user interfaces.
Finally, increasingly sophisticated and interactive games will provide additional challenges. And new forms of interactive television promise to place the viewer in the drivers/design seat.


Workshop Schedule of papers and electronic version of presentations
Workshop Notes: electronic version of accepted papers stored as a single, gzipped PDF file
Workshop Results (PowerPoint Presentation)


Call for papers


For this workshop, we will consider contributions devoted to user modeling and user-adaptive systems in the field of Personalized TV Applications available on the Web and on new generation TV-sets. In order to focus the themes addressed during the workshop, the submitted papers should try to address at least one of the following questions:
  • Will users prefer personalized television over traditional television?
  • What are the unknown usability problems for digital TV applications? What testing methods could be applied to assess the usability of TV services?
  • What are the most effective algorithms for selecting shows relevant to viewers' personal interests?
  • What is the most intuitive personalized interface for users to browse and select programs?
  • How can privacy be managed and balanced against needs for personalization of massive television data?
  • What is the best way to convey user preferences to the computer?
  • Are stereotypes more effective than individualized models of users' television interests and preferences?


Workshop format


This workshop is intended to provide a forum in which researchers from diverse fields such as machine learning, knowledge engineering, psychology, cognitive sciences, adaptive user interfaces, user modeling and business intelligence can examine the personalization aspects of the user interface in interactive TV.
During the workshop, the authors presenting their work should try to answer at least one of the previously listed questions. Notes will be taken, in order to produce a summary of the contributions. At the end of the workshop, a discussion session will be held to summarize the results of the presentations.