Senior CHI Development Consortium

Each year, the Development Consortium encourages interactions between the existing CHI community and a focused group of professionals who have not yet established close links to the CHI conference and to ACM SIGCHI.

The 1999 Development Consortium is called Senior CHI. Its purpose is to build bridges between the CHI community and other groups who share an interest in older people and technology including users, gerontologists, futurists, gerontechnologists, and ergonomics specialists. The International Society for Gerontechnology is a cooperating society for CHI 99.

Senior CHI will be conducted in workshop style with an emphasis on the exchange of ideas, the creation of partnerships, and the development of an agenda for future research. It will take place on Sunday and Monday at the beginning of the conference week, and will provide on-going informal social support for its participants during the rest of the conference. Participants are encouraged to carry the messages of Senior CHI to the rest of the CHI community by participating in the CHI 99 technical program and social events.

Topics

Senior CHI will explore these topics:

Overcoming limitations in Senior CHI

• implications of age-related changes in perception, cognition, and motor control for design
• intelligibility of speech synthesis and hearing ability; font legibility and visual acuity; menu structure and memory; etc.

Creating new opportunities for older people through Senior CHI

• new opportunities for work at home, social activism, life-long learning, and family cohesion via new technology
• new opportunities for extending the independence of older individuals with greater environmental control, communication, and monitoring
• new opportunities to collect and share with people of all ages what is learned from a lifetime of experience

Looking to the future for cutting-edge developments in Senior CHI

• adapting the environment to the changing needs of aging people (technology that learns)
• using computers for self-expression in the arts
• enabling seniors to participate in software design, development, testing, and deployment

Submission Process

Users, researchers, practitioners, and futurists from the gerontechnology and CHI communities are invited to submit position papers focusing on limitations, opportunities, and cutting-edge developments in Senior CHI. A position paper should be two pages long in the CHI Conference Publications Format.

Submissions will be reviewed on the basis of their potential contribution to discussions during the consortium. Accepted position papers will be published in the CHI 99 Extended Abstracts.

At the Conference

The Senior CHI Development Consortium will be conducted in a workshop style. Discussions will be facilitated and notes will be taken to record the ideas and discussions. Participants will develop a plan for disseminating the results of the consortium to the wider CHI audience.

Participants will receive free registration for the Sunday and Monday Senior CHI Development Consortium. Registration includes lunches and coffee breaks. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses and for their own CHI 99 conference registration.

Members of the International Society for Gerontechnology may register for the conference at the "member" rates.

Upon Acceptance

Applicants to the Consortium will be notified of acceptance by the end of November 1998. Authors of accepted position papers will receive an Author Kit with detailed instructions on how to submit the final camera-ready copy of the extended abstract for publication. The camera-ready copy is due on 8 January 1999.

Checklist

Please follow the steps in this checklist to ensure completeness in your submission.

• Read the conference overview.
• Fill out Cover Page One.
• Prepare the two-page submission paper in the Conference Publications Format, as described above.
• Collect Cover Page One and the position paper, in the order given, in a packet. Make 6 copies of the packet. Use 8.5 x 11 inch or A4 paper.
• Make sure each copy of the packet is stapled, not loose or held by clips.
• Send the 6 packets to the Send To address shown.
• You may include a stamped, self-addressed reply postcard, which we will mail to acknowledge receipt of your submission.