‘Nowhere and Everywhere’

We are happy to announce that the theme for the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference will be “Nowhere and Everywhere” between June 28-July 2, 2021, because that is where the conference will be held.

Registration for DIS’21 is now open for ACM member and non-member tickets.

We propose to host ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2021) as an asynchronous distributed conference nominally taking place June 28-July 2, 2021. The conference chairs are Wendy Ju (Cornell Tech) and Lora Oehlberg (University of Calgary). The Technical Program Chairs are Sean Follmer (Stanford), Sarah Fox (CMU), and Stacey Kuznetsov (Arizona State University).

Conference Theme: Nowhere and Everywhere The theme for DIS 2021 acknowledges the unprecedented state of the world, and challenges designers and design researchers have to center themselves amidst chaos and uncertainty. The unmaking of the once everyday is alarming and unsettling, but also an opportunity to think anew about where we are, and where we should go from here. Fittingly, we are taking this opportunity to deconstruct the idea of the conference– to reconsider how we can share knowledge without sharing space, to exchange ideas without exchanging breath, and to take time to enjoy the interaction design research community without leaving home.

With our “non-ference,” we will continue Designing Interactive Systems as a premier venue for interaction design research in HCI while preserving our collective health, safety and sanity. In this year, survival, perseverance and continuity is a triumph. The opportunity to share our work, and to think about material, interaction, process, technology and design is a cause for celebration. DIS 2021 venues: Less is More The venues for DIS 2021 will be the technical program, pictorials, and the doctoral consortium.

For 2021, we plan to forgo workshops, provocations, demonstrations, the student design competition and the design exhibition (which DIS can welcome with open arms when we are all able to physically meet again). In their place, we are open to creative suggestions for community and conversation building activities which can take place in a lightweight online distributed time-zone friendly manner.

For 2021 DIS is being held as an asynchronous distributed conference in a similar manner to DIS2020. The venues for #acmDIS2021 will be the technical program (papers and pictorials), and the doctoral consortium.

Important dates

action	timeline
Papers and Pictorials: Abstract and title due: (title, abstract, authors, and other metadata)	February 4, 2021 (The submission system closes at 17:00 PST)
Papers and Pictorials submission deadline:	February 11, 2021 (The submission system closes at 17:00 PST)
Doctoral Consortium submission deadline:	March 12, 2021
Papers and Pictorials notifications to authors: Notification for Doctoral Consortium:	April 9, 2021
Papers and Pictorials camera ready deadline:	April 26, 2021
Video ready deadline:	May 21, 2021
Papers and Pictorials Program:	June 28-July 2, 2021

We are grateful to our volunteers for translating the theme information to various languages.