Information School Ph.D. students Li Zeng, Travis Windleharth and Marc Schmalz, along with Assistant Professors Emma Spiro and Jason Yip and Associate Professor Jin Ha Lee are among the finalists for best paper awards at iConference 2017.

Zeng and Spiro teamed with Zack Almquist of the University of Minnesota on their nominee for Best Completed Research Paper, entitled “Let’s Workout! Exploring Social Exercise in an Online Fitness Community.” The paper explores the dynamics of social interaction using data collected from an online fitness community popular with cyclists and runners. The results indicate that when peers are physically present, exercise tends to be more intense.

Lee, Windleharth, Yip and Schmalz earned a nomination for Most Interesting Preliminary Results Paper for “Impact of Location-based Augmented Reality Games on People’s Information Behavior: A Case Study of Pokemon GO.” The researchers conducted field observation of game players in public places and online communities and found the emergence of ad-hoc information sharing and a crowdsourced data-driven approach to problem solving.

The winners, selected by track and program chairs, will be announced at the iConference, which takes place March 22-25 in Wuhan, China.