Interactive Technologies for the End-user: Fulfilling the Vision of a Shared Digital Economy

There are similarities between the UK and Indian end-users in terms of availability of interactive technologies, their skills in interacting with technology and desire for better interactive services, there are also differences in the type of services demanded by end-users in the two countries and the usage scenarios and context of the end-user technology. For example, touch and gesture based interaction techniques are being explored both within the UK and India as they potentially empower the user to perform eyes-free interaction. However, the context of the interaction may be very different in both these countries. The context in the UK may be to enable simple tasks when the visual channel is occupied (like setting the waypoint on a GPS when walking down a flight of stairs), while in India the context may be to empower the illiterate in performing basic interactive tasks without the need to read (like using gesture based systems for text-to-speech interaction). These similarities and differences make it worthwhile for the UK and Indian researchers to collaborate.The aim of this network is to unify past efforts and develop an agenda of activities within the context of Interactive Technologies for the end-user and to encourage the development of research collaboration that is internationally outstanding and economically relevant while being real and meaningful to both countries. A driving goal of the Network is to bring together various distinct collaborations in related research topics under a unified network and harness the strength of these individual collaborations to create a synergy which no single institution will be able to achieve on its own.The proposed network will consider three inter-related themes that will contribute to the development of Interactive Technologies for the end-user. The themes build on the network members' strengths in designing, implementing and evaluating interactive technologies for various applications and services. The three themes are - Interactive Technology Enablers, Interactive Services and Applications, and Sustainable Interaction Designs.