We're happy to announce a workshop about online personals for CHI 2004. The deadline for submitting position papers is 12 January 2004. We hope to see you in Vienna! Please feel free to forward this announcement as widely as you would like. Thank you! Andrew Fiore Jeana Frost Judith Donath MIT Media Lab ========== Online Personals: "Scientists, designers seek same for good conversation" CHI 2004 Workshop: Call for Participation Vienna, Austria Monday 26 April 2004 Organizers: Andrew T. Fiore Jeana H. Frost Judith S. Donath Contact: <chi-personals@media.mit.edu> On the Web: http://smg.media.mit.edu/personals/chi2004/ ::: ABOUT THE WORKSHOP Online personal advertisements have shed their stereotype as matchmakers for the awkward to claim a prominent role in the social lives of millions of users. This one-day workshop will bring together social scientists and designers to discuss: 1. How people are behaving in online personals systems and how best to study this behavior. 2. How different personals systems handle self-expression, searching, matching, and communicating. 3. How the design of personals systems interacts with individual and cultural constructs of relationships and attraction. 4. New methods, metaphors, design paradigms, and gadgets for finding and communicating with dating partners. ::: HOW TO APPLY To apply for the workshop, simply submit a 2- to 4-page position paper. We will consider a variety of work related to online personals, as appropriate to your discipline, as long as it reflects your experience with or consideration of the topics above. Some suggestions: * Quantitative study of behavior on a personals system * Novel designs for better personals systems (especially radical departures from the norm) * Review of the literature on attraction and its application to online dating * Interviews (or surveys) with users of online personals systems * Experiment involving construction and perception of identity in personals ads We will select participants from diverse backgrounds based on the relevance and originality of their position papers. Please email your paper to chi-personals@media.mit.edu by 12 January 2004. We will notify you of acceptance by 23 February 2004. Limited to 15 participants.