Important dates
Deadline for submissions: August 31, 2020 (extended)
Response to authors: September 15, 2020
Camera ready submission deadline: September 30, 2020
Workshop day: October 25 or 29, 2020 (remote)


How to join the workshop
We invite researchers in the Ubicomp and CHI communities interested in the theoretical basis, design, implementation, and evaluation of novel multimodal e-coaches to submit position papers or preliminary results in the field. Authors are asked to submit 4-6 pages papers related to their work using the SIGCHI Extended Abstract format. Please send your submission via e-mail at multimodalecoaches@gmail.com. The position papers will be reviewed by a program committee composed of international experts, including also researchers working in NESTORE, SAAM, CAPTAIN, HOLOBALANCE, EMPATHIC, MENHIR, vCare with a single blind process. Accepted papers will be included in the ACM Digital Library and in the adjunct proceedings of the conference.


Workshop objectives
The workshop aims to establish itself as the premiere shared forum for multimodal e-Coaches. We aim at involving researchers and practitioners, particularly those who are seeking new insights for understanding how e-Coaches will evolve in the future.
We want to create a multidisciplinary space where researchers can discuss how these technologies should evolve to be integrated with existing practices, individual needs and levels of technical expertise, effectively supporting a variety of people’s tasks and goals in their everyday lives.
In particular, the workshop aims at discussing multimodal e-Coaches that can be embedded in the daily routines of the users through wearable interfaces, embodied representations of the e-Coach (e.g., smart companions), conversational agents and distributed augmented reality interfaces.
The long-term objective of the workshop is to build a community interested in sharing ideas on multimodal e-coaches. This includes researchers with different backgrounds, from engineers and computer scientists, to designers, social scientists, ethnographers and psychologists.


Workshop activities
The workshop will be structured in two parts. In the first part, participants will present position papers and discuss the current trends in the field. In the second part, participants will work in groups for designing multimodal e-Coaches for different application domains. Depending on the ICMI conference chair decisions, these activities may be carried out remotely.


Workshop topics
The workshop aims at gathering contributions for the design of e-Coaches that are embedded in the user’s daily life through multimodal interfaces. This is a non-exhaustive list of topics for the workshop position papers:
• Spatially distributed interfaces for e-Coaches;
• Augmented reality and voice interfaces for e-Coaches;
• Text and voice conversational agents for coaching;
• Embodied and empathic virtual coaches;
• Talking companions;
• Data collection and presentation from e-coaches;
• Intelligent context-aware fission of coaching advices;
• Multimodal fusion of inputs for e-Coach monitoring and interaction;
• User modelling for e-coaching;
• Trust and user rapport;
• Particular applications of e-coaches: healthy living, well-being, etc.;
• Context-aware conversations and interactions with e-coaches;
• Long-term usage of multimodal e-Coaches;
• Design methods for multimodal e-Coaches;
• Unobtrusive ambient sensing feeding e-Coaches with data.

Organizers from 7 EU project (PM15 consortium on virtual coaches for older adults):
- NESTORE
- SAAM
- CAPTAIN
- HOLOBALANCE
- EMPATHIC
- MENHIR
- vCare