The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Informatics is rapidly changing and becoming more and more connected to a number of human and social science disciplines. Human–computer interaction is now a mature and still dynamically evolving part of this area, which is represented in IFIP by the Technical Committee 13 on HCI. In this WCC edition it was interesting and useful to have again a Symposium on Human–Computer Interaction in order to present and discuss a number of contributions in this field.
There has been increasing awareness among designers of interactive systems of the importance of designing for usability, but we are still far from having products that are really usable, and usability can mean different things depending on the application domain. We are all aware that too many users of current technology often feel frustrated because computer systems are not compatible with their abilities and needs in existing work practices. As designers of tomorrow’s technology, we have the responsibility of creating computer artifacts that would permit better user experience with the various computing devices, so that users may enjoy more satisfying experiences with information and communications technologies. This has raised new research areas, such as ambient intelligence, natural interaction, end user development, work analysis and cultural and social interaction.
The interest in the conference was positive in terms of submissions and participation. We received 56 contributions, 19 submission were accepted as long presentations and 7 as short ones. Additionally, five submissions were accepted as poster presentations. The selection was carried out carefully by the International Program Committee. The result is a set of interesting and stimulating papers that address such important issues as specification and modeling, user-centered development, usable systems, social and cultural problems, mobile and Web applications and interaction. The interest shown in the conference was truly world-wide: if we consider both full and short papers, we had authors from Europe, South America, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa. The final program of the symposium included one technical invited speaker: Penelope Sanderson from The University of Queensland on “The Power and the Puzzles of Auditory Interfaces.” This is a very interesting topic for many application domains.