[agents] DCC08 call for participation

[Giuseppe Vizzari]

THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DESIGN COMPUTING AND COGNITION  
(DCC'08 or DCC08)
http://mason.gmu.edu/~jgero/conferences/dcc08/

Bringing artificial intelligence, cognitive science and computational  
theories to design research

23–25 June 2008
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

preceded by Workshops
21–22 June 2008

This biennial conference series provides an international forum for  
the presentation and discussion of state-of-the-art and cutting-edge  
design research with a focus on artificial intelligence, cognitive  
science and computational theories in design. The conference  
proceedings will form a continuing archive of design computing and  
cognition research. The conference will be preceded by a series of  
half-day workshops on specialist topics in design computing and  
cognition.

A set of research papers that have been refereed by an international  
board of reviewers will be presented and published as a book. Posters  
describing ongoing research will be presented.

Conference Chair: John Gero

Local Chair: Ashok Goel

Sponsors:
- Georgia Institute of Technology0
- Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study

Call for Participation

Design is a fundamentally important topic in disciplines ranging from  
the more commonly associated fields of engineering, information  
technology and architecture, to emerging areas in the social sciences  
and life sciences.

One of the foundations for change in our society comes from  
designing. Its genesis is the notion that the world around us either  
is unsuited to our needs or can be improved. The need for designing  
is driven by a society's view that it can improve or add value to  
human existence well beyond simple subsistence. As a consequence of  
designing, the world that we inhabit is increasingly a designed  
rather than a naturally occurring one. In that sense it is an  
"artificial" world. Designing is a fundamental precursor to  
manufacturing, fabrication, construction or implementation. Design  
research aims to develop an understanding of designing and to produce  
models of designing that can be used to aid designing.

Design research can be carried out in variety of ways. It can be  
viewed as largely an empirical endeavor in which experiments are  
designed and executed in order to test some hypothesis about some  
design phenomenon or design behavior. This is the approach adopted in  
cognitive science. The results of such research can form the basis of  
a computational model. A second view is that design research can be  
carried out by positing axioms and then deriving consequences from  
them. If the axioms can be mapped onto design situations then the  
consequences should follow. This is the approach adopted in  
mathematics and logic and forms the basis of a small but powerful  
area in design research. A third view, and the most common one in the  
computational domain, is that design research can be carried out by  
conjecturing design processes, constructing computational models of  
those processes and then examining the behaviors of the resulting  
computational systems.

The conference theme of design computing and cognition recognizes not  
only the essential relationship between human cognitive processes as  
models of computation but also how models of computation inspire  
conceptual realizations of human cognition.

This conference series aims to provide an international forum for the  
presentation and discussion of state-of-the-art and cutting edge  
research and developments in design computing and cognition.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

     * Agents in design
     * Artificial intelligence in design
     * Biologically-inspired design
     * Collaborative design
     * Cognitive theories applied to design
     * Computational theories applied to design
     * Creative design
     * Design in practice
     * Digital media in design
     * Evolutionary approaches in design
     * Games and design
     * Human cognition in design
     * Learning from human designers
     * Machine learning in design
     * Multi-modal design
     * Situated computing in design
     * Virtual environments in design
     * Visual and spatial reasoning in design

The conference and workshops programs, as well as details about the  
registration and venue are available at the conference website  
(http://mason.gmu.edu/~jgero/conferences/dcc08/).