DIS2020

More than Human Centred Design

July 6-20, 2020

DIS 2020 will be a virtual conference. The conference will open July 6 and proceedings for the conference will be open access until July 20th. The program will include Papers, Pictorials, Provocations-Works-in-progress, and Demos. Our chairs will ask authors to create pre-recorded presentations or other contributions for the virtual program. We will also post available preview videos as part of the program. The Performance and Design Exhibition will be a virtual gallery. The Doctoral Consortium and Student Design Competition will host virtual sessions via video conference. We invite Workshop organizers to organize virtual sessions or online events and we will help where we can. We will provide asynchronous channels for conversations and questions on different social media and web channels.

All of the program will be freely available on our web site during this time. All accepted submissions will become part of the DIS 2020 proceedings and companion proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.

At least one author for each accepted Paper, Pictorial, Provocations-Works-in-progress, Workshops, Performance and Design Exhibition, and Demos will be required to register and pay a participation fee (a drastically reduced conference fee). Authors can apply for compassionate waivers if they are unemployed, an independent artist or designer, have no institutional support, or have other reasons. Online registration will be available shortly.

We are excited about opening DIS 2020 to a wider audience and ask that you share this news so more people can see the brilliant work of this community. Having said that, it is with heavy hearts that we cancel the in-person DIS 2020.We will miss toasting each of you at the outdoor dinner we planned with all hopes for some non-human cooperation of a star-filled evening with no rain! But everything changed. The weaving mill in Eindhoven that was to weave the lanyards we designed is now producing masks and other personal-protection gear. And so in keeping with our posthuman theme, we are becoming within our entanglements and intra-action with non-human things and matter–including viruses and a global pandemic. And so, given the challenges and the constant of change, we hope we found a way to meet to exchange ideas, things, and experiences that keeps us safe, healthy, and generally well.

We look forward to the virtual gathering this July!
All the best,
Ron & Kristina
Co-Conference Chairs DIS 2020


We are asking that at least one author for each accepted Paper, Pictorial, Provocations-Works-in-progress, Workshops, Performance and Design Exhibition, and Demos will be required to register and pay a participation fee (a drastically reduced conference fee). Our budget will be entirely used to facilitate the publication of accepted work and videos. Needless to say, registration is also open to non-authors. Please register as soon as possible and before the 5th July.

You can apply for a compassionate waiver if you are unemployed, an independent artist or designer, have no institutional support, or have other reasons. If you would like to apply for a compassionate waiver, please contact the Registration Chair, registration@dis2020.acm.org.

The registration fees are directly and entirely related to the publication costs and the conference itself will be online, asynchronous and take the form of an extended program list of published papers and associated videos. By registering you are making these publications possible. The conference material is available for free to everyone for the duration of the conference. This means that you can read and watch all presentations whenever you like over these two weeks (and after, on the ACM DL). Spread out over this time, we will use twitter to direct attention to the various sessions themes, with the idea that this might encourage conversations amongst those who are “reading along”. We are hoping that this will lower the load on our community, while broadening the exposure and maybe even the conversations around the work of the DIS community.


The ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) is the premier, international arena where designers, artists, psychologists, user experience researchers, systems engineers and many more come together to debate and shape the future of interactive systems design and practice.

The theme for DIS 2020 is “More than Human-Centred Design”. The aim of the theme is to rethink the research and contributions we make in design and HCI, by investigating non-humanist or posthumanist alternatives. These approaches displace the human at the centre of thought and action with humans and non-humans bound together materially, ethically, and existentially. The theme is intended to encourage contributions toward new methodological or theoretical approaches that build on, and extend, existing research in order to go beyond human-centred design towards more complex understandings of our future coexistence with other kinds of materials and intelligences that blur the boundaries between humans, non-humans, and technology.

DIS 2020 is an interdisciplinary conference, encompassing all issues related to the design and deployment of interactive systems. We encourage submissions from a broad range of researchers and practitioners within the field of interactive systems design that address issues of design theory, methods, critical perspectives, experiences, artifacts, technologies, diverse application domains, and design for societal, cultural, economic, environmental, or political change.

Important Dates

January 24, 2020
Full Papers and Pictorials: Abstract and Title Submission
January 31, 2020
Full Papers, Pictorials: Full Submission
February 7, 2020
Extended deadline: Workshops: Full Submission
March 13, 2020
Extended deadline: Provocations and WIP, Demos, Design Exhibition, Doctoral Consortium, Student Design Competition: Full Submission
March 26, 2020
Workshops: Notifications
April 9, 2020
Full Papers, Pictorials, Provocations and WIP, Demos, Doctoral Consortium, Student Design Competition: Notifications
April 9, 2020
Workshops: Camera ready
April 23, 2020
Design Exhibition: Notifications
May 6, 2020
Provocations and WIP, Performance and Design Exhibition: Camera ready