Workshops and TutorialsVL/HCC 2024

Accepted Papers

Call for Workshops and Tutorials

The 2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) invites proposals for workshops and tutorials to be held in conjunction with the symposium. VL/HCC 2024 workshops are small meetings intended to foster discussion in an area related to the symposium. Tutorials allow conference attendees to expand their knowledge by introducing researchers to emerging areas or new technologies or providing an overview of the state of the art in an existing research area. Workshops and tutorials should be on topics related to the conference, such as (but not limited to) end-user programming, visual programming, domain-specific languages, software visualization, and CS education. This year’s special theme is “VL/HCC and Generative AI” and workshops and tutorials around this topic are highly appreciated.

Prospective workshop and tutorial organizers must submit a proposal package, which will be reviewed by the Workshops and Tutorials chairs, and may either be accepted or rejected. The preferred format for workshops and tutorials is either a half-day or full-day standalone session. However, we are also happy to consider alternative or experimental topics and formats. If the workshop/tutorial is accepted, then both the symposium organizers and the workshop/tutorial organizers will publicize the event to help ensure that it draws a sufficient number of attendees. Please note that an accepted workshop/tutorial may be canceled due to low registration if the number of participants (including the organizers) is less than twelve.

Accepted workshops have the possibility to publish their proceedings in a VL/HCC accompanying volume published by IEEE CPS.

To motivate participation in the workshops, we will try to keep the cost of registration as low as possible (probably around £100).

Submissions can be sent at any time and will be assessed on a rolling basis. Please submit proposals via via email.

Instructions for Workshop Proposals

The workshop proposal package must contain a summary sheet for the proposal that lists:

1. the title of the workshop
   • the names, contact information for all organizers (one organizer should be highlighted as the contact for the workshop chairs)
   • the organizers’ backgrounds
   • the URL to a preliminary workshop web page (optional). For existing workshop series, a URL for a previous edition suffices.
2. A description of the topic and rationale for the workshop, including a brief description of why the workshop will be relevant to VL/HCC attendees
3. A detailed plan for carrying out the workshop, including
   • the method for soliciting papers from potential attendees
   • the method for selecting attendees from submitted papers
   • an approximate schedule for the workshop
   • an approximate number of expected participants
   • a brief description of any post-workshop activities (e.g. curating a journal special issue).
   • proceedings plans, if any
4. A Call for Participation document (500 words or less) that can be used to advertise the workshop on mailing lists, the VL/HCC web site, etc. We strongly recommend that organizers plan their workshop to encourage interaction among the attendees and avoid structuring the workshop as a long series of individual paper presentations. Note also that workshops are not courses where an instructor teaches the attendees (see Tutorials below for this instead).

Please send to the WS chairs: mailto:skuttal@ncsu.edu, jacome@fe.up.pt

Instructions for Tutorial Proposals

Prospective tutorial instructors must submit a tutorial proposal package, which will be reviewed by the Workshops and Tutorials chairs and may either be accepted or rejected. If the tutorial is accepted, then both the conference organizers and the tutorial instructors will publicize the tutorial to ensure that a sufficient number of attendees will choose to attend the tutorial. The tutorial package must contain:

1. A course abstract of at most 500 words that lists
   • title
   • instructor(s) name and affiliation
   • course duration
   • a description of the benefits that attendees will receive from this course, the features of the course, and background on the instructor(s)
2. A course description of 1–4 pages. This should contain
   • proposed duration of the tutorial (half day or full day, though shorter tutorials could also be proposed)
   • learning objectives
   • justification: Why will this tutorial be of interest to the VL/HCC community?
   • content: Describe in detail the material that will be covered.
   • presentation format and schedule: Describe in detail the format of the presentation and how it will be organized.
   • tutorial history: Describe the history of the tutorial, if any.

Please send to the WS chairs: mailto:skuttal@ncsu.edu, jacome@fe.up.pt

Workshop on Addressing Challenges in Recruiting Participants for Human-Centric Computing Research Studies

Call for Participation:

Are you interested in exploring innovative strategies for recruiting participants for human-centric computing research studies? Want to share your experiences (good or bad) in designing, running, analysing and/or reporting human-centric studies that need participants? Join us at the “Addressing Challenges in Recruiting Participants for Human-Centric Computing Research Studies” workshop at VL/HCC 2024 which will be held on 2nd Sept, in Liverpool, UK.

Dates

Submission Deadline: Mon 1 July 2024 AOE

Notification: Tue 11 July 2024 AOE

Camera-ready: 16 Jul 2024 AOE

Topics

We invite submissions of position papers detailing experiences, challenges, and success stories related to study participant recruitment and engagement in HCC research projects. Topics include but are not limited to: * Approaches for effectively recruiting industry, end user and/or student participants * Crowdsourcing participants for studies * Issues and experiences using generative AI as ‘participants’ or in helping to process participant data * Addressing challenges in recruitment e.g. number, diversity, sufficient engagement * Approaches in capturing and analysing HCC study participant data in survey, interview, focus group, observation or combinations * Experiences in using online or hybrid HCC studies * Survey or review of HCC study participant recruitment experiences

Submissions

We expect most position papers to be relatively short 2-5 pages + references. However position papers can be up to 10 pages IEEE format + references for a significant treatment of a subject.

Papers must be submitted using the IEEE two-column conference paper format. Be sure to use the current IEEE conference paper format (which was updated in 2019), and to select the “US letter” template: http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

Papers should be submitted via the EasyChair system:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vlhcc2024

And choose “New submission” and then “VL/HCC 2024 - Workshops” track.

Papers will be evaluated on potential interest to workshop attendees, technical correctness, and presentation.

All accepted papers will be published by IEEE in the VL/HCC 2024 workshop proceedings.

Double Anonymous Submissions

We follow a double-anonymous reviewing process. Both authors and reviewers are expected to make every effort to honor the double-anonymous reviewing process. In case of questions, please contact the organisers. Authors should ensure that the submission can be evaluated without it being obvious who wrote the paper. This means leaving author names off the paper and using terms like “previous research” rather than “our previous research” when describing background. However, do not hide previous work – papers must still reference all relevant research using full (non-anonymized) citations, including the author’s own prior work, so that reviewers can evaluate novelty. Please reference your own prior work in the third-person just like you would do for any other related work (e.g., avoid “As described in our previous work [10], … ” and instead write something like “As described by [10], …”). It is also important that authors specify all conflicts of interest with potential reviewers during the submission phase. Reviewers should not undertake any investigation that might lead to the revealing of authors’ identity. If identities are inadvertently revealed, please contact the Program Chairs. The Program Chairs will check all submissions for obvious signs of lack of anonymity and may ask authors to make changes and resubmit the paper within three days of the submission deadline. Only changes to resolve anonymity issues will be permitted.

IEEE Guidelines Adherence

Please be sure that your submission follows the IEEE requirements:

https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/author-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/submission-policies/

Especially around Human Subject approvals and use of Generative AI:

Research on Human and Animal Subjects

Excerpted from the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board (PSPB) Operations Manual, sections 8.1.1.E. Also see section 8.2.1.B.6: https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/PSPB/opsmanual.pdf

Authors of articles reporting on research involving human subjects or animals, including but extending beyond medical research, shall include a statement in the article that the research was performed under the oversight of an institutional review board or equivalent local/regional body, including the official name of the IRB/ethics committee, or include an explanation as to why such a review was not conducted. For research involving human subjects, authors shall also report that consent from the human subjects in the research was obtained or explain why consent was not obtained.

Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Generated Text

The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in a paper (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in the acknowledgments section of any paper submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the paper that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content.

The use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. In this case, disclosure as noted above is recommended.

Organisers

Dulaji Hidellaarachchi dulaji.hidellaarachchi@monash.edu

John Grundy john.grundy@monash.edu

Introduction:

Notation Design is a concept instrumental to advanced, configurable and programmable systems. Despite the promise of low-code empowerment, there is still normally a notation of some type to be mastered by users. This tutorial will explore approaches to determining the effectiveness and challenges that specific notations present to their users. Factors that determine the strengthens and weaknesses of specific notations will be examined using a range of examples and a reference model. The approach presented will be illustrated using a wide range of worked examples and will encourage attendees to introduce and critically assess their own notation design challenges.

Aims:

The motivation for the tutorial is to develop an understanding of the space of notation designs and to develop an awareness of the factors that influence design effectiveness and interdependencies. The specific approach presented is novel and demonstrably informative in critically assessing notations including visual notations. This tutorial will allow you:

• To appreciate the range of user interfaces and languages to which notational design thinking are relevant.
• To understand why conventional user evaluation techniques are not ideal for evaluating specific notations.
• To understand how alternative techniques can be used to inform notation design, and how they are inter-related.
• To reflect on the intrinsic challenges and complexity of effectively using notations in context.

Topics:

Notations for Empowerment

Notations are commonplace in numerous technologies today. Often within systems and apps users are said to be empowered through providing them a configuration interface or language that provides access to detailed and powerful functions.

Usability of Notations

Conventional concepts of usability evaluation are largely impractical when applied to notations and the sizable space of tasks they support.

Approaches to Assessing Notations

We shall explore the Physics of Notations and Cognitive Dimensions of Notations as approaches to assessing the quality of notations.

Notation Space

Intrinsic generic features and properties of notation are explored and a model for understanding the human factors relevant to their effectiveness articulated.

Notation Design

Notation design as a human factors challenge is reviewed, with specific findings about the core challenges and decisions in notation design will be explored.

Organisation and Duration:

The tutorial will run for one day in-person, working with contemporary apporach to interactive learning and development the opportunity for the attendees to introduce and work with their own notational design challenges.

Organisers:

Dr. Chris Roast c.r.roast@shu.ac.uk Dr. Elizabeth Uruchurtu

Date

Monday 2nd Sept 2024