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The i³ initiative ("eye-cubed") on future interfaces to information is being launched on 15 September 1995 by Esprit with a budget of 25 MECU.
The aim of the i³ initiative is to make interaction with information an effortless task for the broad population of non-specialist users. It is a response to the rapidly growing amounts of information being made available in our information society, for which effective access and management is still difficult and time-consuming. The launch is accompanied by a comprehensive information package.
The initiative centres around research on future "intelligent information interfaces" that will enable people to communicate with others in new ways, participate in entertainment, access data-banks and utilise information services. The "intelligence" of the interfaces will lie in their natural and intuitive usability; their flexibility in spanning across different devices, applications and media; and their active role in providing helpful service that empowers the citizen.
To provide such interfaces, new human-centred paradigms are needed - ones that will not depend on fixed concepts such as "computer", "television" or "telephone", but will open up new ways of interacting with information, ways that will be personal or social, offering truly distributed interfaces to information for anybody, anywhere.
i³ aims to tackle these issues and is broadly defined by five themes that describe the principal characteristics of interfaces to be considered:
To ensure a sufficiently coordinated yet competitive effort, the initiative will first solicit "schemas" that will act as master-plans for groupings of projects. A small number of these schemas will be selected following an open call for proposals launched on 15 September. Each schema will address the above themes, but will each chose a particular instantiation of them. In its description, a schema will plan a tightly knit yet flexible framework for a number of independent but coordinated tasks. These tasks will then be open to competitive bidding through open calls for projects. The i³ initiative will thus evolve in two stages:
Schemas will be expected to encourage a dynamic balance of project autonomy, inter-project cooperation and competition; they should be open to interdisciplinary contributions from domains such as technology, design, human-factors and the arts; and they should take account of developments worldwide involving cooperation beyond Europe, where appropriate.
It is hoped that using the approaches taken by this initiative, will enable European research efforts to make a considerable impact on the future market for human-information related products.
For more information please contact:
Jakub Wejchert
European Commission
Esprit Long-Term Research
Directorate General III - Industry
200 rue de la Loi
B-1049 Brussels
tel +32 / 2-296-8032 - fax +32 / 2-296-8390
e-mail jwe@dg13.cec.be
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