Call for Papers and Pictorials

Important Dates

Submission site openJanuary 2023
Title and Abstract deadline2 February 2023
Paper and Pictorial Submission deadline (extended)9 February
13 February 2023
Notifications28 April 2023
Camera-Ready Completion Deadline12 May 2023
Conference10-14 July 2023
Deadlines specified as midnight Anywhere on Earth time.

Call Description

We are pleased to invite submissions for papers and pictorials to the 2023 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). We encourage submissions from a broad range of researchers and practitioners within the field of interactive systems design that contribute knowledge related to the design and deployment of interactive systems. We welcome submissions that address issues of design theory and methods, that propose critical perspectives, that describe design artifacts, technologies and experiences for societal, cultural, economic, environmental, or political change, and that apply the research and practice of designing interactive systems across different domains.

The theme for ACM DIS 2023 is “Resilience.” Resilience is at once about flexibility, durability, and strength as well as a sense of mutuality and hope where solidaristic modes of engagement make new kinds of worlds possible. With this theme, we encourage submissions that critique, resist, and/or reimagine taken-for-granted forms of resilience in interactive design research and practices, as well as those that present innovative thinking, and creative or provocative interaction design.

We are delighted that DIS 2023 will return to in-person conference programming and will be hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Authors are required to present their work alongside other DIS papers and pictorials. For those who cannot attend in person, there will be opportunities to present online and engage with conference goers. Papers and pictorials whose authors do not present their contribution in any form (in-person or virtually) may be withdrawn from the ACM Digital Library.

Contribution Areas

DIS 2023 includes the following four contribution areas for submissions:

Critical Computing and Design Theory

Critical computing and design theory have contributed to one another for decades. This area seeks papers that carry this work into a new generation–exploring the relationships among design inquiry, politics, aesthetics, ethics, and craftsmanship as well as unpacking the notion of criticality in design and computing.

Design Methods and Processes

Share your inventions and insights that open up new spaces for design, allow for engagement with new, difficult to access communities, and enable designers to play with exciting new materials. This area seeks papers that document, innovate and/or advance the methods and processes used by UX and service design practitioners; user researchers from industry, academia, and NGOs; and academic design researchers working in HCI and interaction design.

Experiences, Artifacts, and Technology

Interactions with digital artifacts and technologies are an inescapable facet of our everyday experience. This area seeks papers that explore new relationships and intersections amongst and between experiences, artifacts and technologies, and the ways in which meaningful and impactful interactions are designed, created, and engendered.

Change Through Design

Design has the potential to enact positive change and/or tackle large-scale and complex societal, cultural, economic, environmental, and/or political challenges in the world. What are the political, ethical, and moral dimensions of design? Who is allowed to participate in design processes, and who are our designs for? This area seeks papers about design activism discourses, approaches, processes, tools, and inspirational cases/exemplars.

Special Note on Broader Impact

At DIS 2023, all submissions will be assessed based on their broader impact to society and/or the environment. We encourage authors to address the positive and negative, actual and potential, and/or pragmatic significance of their work; that is, they should engage with substantive and reflective discussions of the impact of their research beyond a narrow intellectual contribution to the field.

Preparing Your Submissions

Format

It is important that your submission is formatted correctly. Incorrectly formatted submissions might be rejected. Online guidance is available from the ACM: https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions

All paper submissions should be formatted using the templates described on this webpage, so please read the instructions here: https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow The ACM workflow requests authors to produce final publications (PDF and HTML5) by themselves using TAPS.

Papers and pictorials must be submitted in PDF.

First, authors prepare their manuscript in the designated single-column format in PDF using LaTeX or Word.
LaTeX users should use

\documentclass[manuscript, review]{acmart}. 

For an anonymous submission use

\documentclass[manuscript,review,anonymous]{acmart} 

to automatically replace the authors for “ANONYMOUS AUTHOR(S)”. The authors then submit the PDF and the source files via PCS.

Reviewers will review the papers in the single-column format. Please follow the instructions in the respective call for participation regarding page and word limits. Reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Redundant or verbose writing is strongly discouraged.

Upon conditional acceptance of an article, authors revise the manuscript and submit publication-ready source files to PCS. Further instructions are presented on the Publication-ready Author Instructions page.

Quick Links to Paper Templates

  • Microsoft Word
  • LaTeX (Use sample-manuscript.tex for submissions)
  • Overleaf (or search for: ACM Conference Proceedings Primary Article)

Creating an Accessible ACM Conference Submission

ACM publications are reviewed and read by many people. Making your paper accessible will help to promote the equal participation of people with disabilities.

Creating Accessible Figures

Since visual content including figures contributes to a paper or pictorial’s communication of knowledge, the visual design and alt text should also reflect that intellectual merit. So we have developed guidance for creating accessible content to support authors and reviewers. 

It is important to create accessible figures as early as possible as it can be time consuming to remediating existing figures to be more accessible right before the submission deadline. We have summarized a few key points below but this more detailed guidance has expansive advice and resources on ensuring figures and tables are visually accessible, easy to comprehend, and that they have high quality alt text for screen reader users.

  • Visual Accessibility – Create figures with appropriate color contrast. Use high resolution png files for any images. 
  • Alt text- Write figure descriptions that consider a research audience, which may be longer than usual alt text on social media or websites. Provide research-related detail and describe any data trends or axis information (e.g., in charts). We have specific guidance for pictorial authors or those who have grouped photos. 
  • Table descriptions – Use the table feature of your editor to create tables. Keep tables simple and avoid nesting tables. Brief table descriptions help readers get the main points quickly.

How do I test if my PDF is accessible?

This section describes how to check if your PDF is accessible, and how to fix the most common accessibility problems. For more information please refer to Adobe’s accessibility resource center.

  • The document should be tagged. In Adobe Acrobat Pro: Go to the ‘File’ menu. ‘Document properties’. ‘Description’ tab. Look for ‘Tagged PDF: Yes’ among the set of advanced properties. If you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat, try selecting some text in the PDF and pasting it into a text editor. If you can’t do this, or the text looks wrong, chances are your document is not readable with a screen reader.
  • Check the accessibility. In Adobe Acrobat Pro: Go to the ‘Advanced’ menu. ‘Accessibility’. ‘Full Check’. The checker will report accessibility problems.
  • Fonts should be embedded, or your PDF will need to be regenerated, and you may lose the accessibility that you have added. In Adobe Acrobat Pro: Go to the ‘File’ menu. ‘Document properties’. ‘Fonts’ tab. All of the fonts should have the word ’embedded’ in parentheses after the font name (unless they are not visible in the final document).

How do I fix accessibility problems?

Word users should correct as many problems as possible in the Word source file rather than the PDF, as described in the next section. On a PC, the Adobe plugin for Word can export accessibility features from the Word document into the PDF.

On a Mac, this is not the case. Those using Word on a Mac, and all LaTeX users will need to edit the PDF directly using Adobe Acrobat. A better basic PDF may be produced by using latex2pdf as opposed to ps2pdf. See also the WebAim PDF Accessibility primer which provides information for OpenOffice users.

The accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat Pro provides help with fixing many accessibility problems. The following steps are for Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. For more detailed instructions for Adobe Acrobat Pro XI see the Accessible PDF guidelines. You can also find more information on Adobe’s accessibility resources page.

  • Add tags. Go to the ‘Advanced’ menu. Select ‘Accessibility’, then ‘Add tags to document’.
  • Add alternative text for figures. Context-click the Figure, select ‘Properties’, and fill in ‘Alternate Text’. If no ‘Properties’ option appears, go to the ‘Advanced’ menu, select ‘Touch Up Reading Order’, and then try context-clicking on the figures again, looking for an ‘Edit alternate text’ option.
  • Specify the document language. Go to the ‘File’ menu. Select ‘Properties’, then the ‘Advanced’ tab, ‘Language’ field. In some versions of Acrobat, the ‘Properties’ option is called ‘Document Properties’. In some versions, the ‘Language’ field is in a ‘Reading Options’ tab.
  • Define tab order.
    • Go to the ‘View’ menu. Select ‘Navigation tabs’, then ‘Pages’.
    • Click on any page, then type Ctrl-A (or Command-A on a Mac) to select all the pages.
    • Go to the ‘Options’ menu in the top right of the dialogue box (icon showing two cogs), and select ‘Page Properties’.
    • In the ‘Tab Order’ tab, select ‘Use document structure’.
  • Make sure tables have headings.
    • Go to the ‘View’ menu. Select ‘Navigation tabs’, then ‘Tags’.
    • Select the ‘Tags’ tab. This panel shows the document structure as a tree.
    • Navigate to the table cells that should be headers.○ Check they have the type . If not, then right-click on the header cell, select ‘properties’, select the ‘Tag’ tab, and change the value for ‘Type’ to ‘Table Header Cell’.

Creating an accessible PDF directly from Word

The following link provides step-by-step instructions for adding basic accessibility information to a Word document on a PC, then exporting it to a PDF document intended for ACM: Create an accessible ACM submission using Microsoft Word

These guidelines were adopted from ASSETS 2020.

Creating an accessible PDF directly from InDesign or PowerPoint

Pictorial authors using InDesign, read this guide to add alt text using InDesign and to generate an accessible PDF from InDesign. Follow these instructions if you created your pictorial in PowerPoint. They are similar to creating accessible PDFs from Word by instructing users to run the accessibility checker and fixing errors in the source file (e.g., PowerPoint), and generating the PDF.

Papers

Papers do not have a page limit. Authors are instead encouraged to submit a paper with a length proportional to its contribution. The length of typical submissions is expected to be approximately 7,000–8,000 words excluding references, figure/table captions, and appendices. Submissions above 12,000 words or below 4,000 words, will be considered for desk rejection. Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions will be rejected. Papers should be succinct, but thorough in presenting the work. Papers may be perceived as too long if they are repetitive or verbose, too short if they omit important details, neglect relevant prior art, or tamper with formatting rules to save on page count.

If you are unsure of what constitutes a well-formed paper, see examples in the ACM Digital Library, including award winning papers from recent years:

Pictorials

Pictorials must be submitted using the DIS 2023 pictorials templates (below), they should not exceed 12 pages, excluding references. Please keep the first page of the submission following the template (see below) to include the submission’s title, author(s) and their affiliation(s) (leave blank for anonymous review), and a written abstract of no more than 150 words.

The main part of the submission should be an annotated visual composition, and we encourage submissions to use the format creatively. However, pictorials should also be made accessible by including alt text with visuals (see the accessibility resources detailed and linked above). The Pictorial format should be used to document what would otherwise not be seen in a traditional paper, allowing details to be shown in a variety of rich visual ways alongside a textual narrative that orientates the knowledge contribution to the DIS community.

PCS allows file sizes up to about 150 MB, but we suggest making the PDF file around 20-50 MB by using images of an appropriate resolution for the page, to make the reviewing process easier. We strongly advise you to use the InDesign template to compose your Pictorial. If you do not have access to InDesign, please use the Word or Powerpoint template.

All submissions will be made through the New Precision Conference website. The total size of all submitted materials, including a video figure, should not exceed 150 MB.

The following are examples of well-formed Pictorials:

Anonymization Policy

All papers must be anonymized for review. Author and affiliation sections and credits must be left blank. Authors of accepted submissions will add this information in preparation of the “camera-ready” version. We are using the ACM CHI Anonymization Policy of reviewing. We use a relaxed model that does not attempt to conceal all traces of identity from the body of the paper.

Authors are expected to remove author and institutional identities from the title and header areas of the paper, as noted in the submission instructions (Note: changing the text color of the author information is not sufficient). Make sure that no description that can easily reveal authors’ names and/or affiliations is included in the submission (e.g., too detailed descriptions of where user studies were conducted). Authors should also remove any information in the acknowledgements section that reveals authors or the institution (e.g., specific supporting grant information). Also, please make sure that identifying information does not appear in the document’s meta-data (e.g., the ‘Authors’ field in your word processor’s ‘Save As’ dialog box).

In addition, we require that the acknowledgments section be left blank as it could also easily identify the authors and/or their institution.

Further suppression of identity in the body of the paper is left to the authors’ discretion. We do expect that authors leave citations to their previous work unanonymized so that reviewers can ensure that all previous research has been taken into account by the authors. However, authors are required to cite their own work in the third person, e.g., avoid “As described in our previous work [10], … ” and use instead “As described by Jones et al. [10], …”

Submission

You must submit your Notice of Intent (NOI) to submit a Paper to the PCS submission system by 2 February 2023. The NOI is an entry in PCS with tentative author names, title and abstract. You can make changes as many times as you like before the final submission deadline on 13 February 2023.

As part of the submission process, authors must submit an abstract, keywords, and meta-data related to the submission’s contents. Authors will also be asked to select a ranked list of between one and three contribution areas that fit their paper. This selection will be used to assign your paper to one of the review areas. It is not necessarily the case that your submission will be handled by a subcommittee that aligns with the contribution area you choose as a first preference.

Review Process

After the submission deadline, each paper will be assigned to a split committee during the PCS submission process, in consultation with SCs, and at the discretion of the technical program chairs. The DIS 2023 paper and pictorial committees will be composed of Associate Chairs that collectively represent expertise across all contribution types. The process will be similar to the DIS 2022 conference and is intended to foster discussion across contribution types and also ensure equitable workload across ACs.

SCs will then assign each paper or pictorial to a primary AC (1AC) and a secondary AC (2AC). The 1AC will find two external reviewers. Each external reviewer, and the 2AC will write a detailed review of their assigned submissions and assess the contribution of the research to the field. Thus, each paper or pictorial will receive 3 detailed reviews. As part of this process, we will strive to find ACs and reviewers who are experts in the topic area of each submission. We also highly encourage all authors to sign up and volunteer to be a reviewer.
After the reviews have been written, the 1AC for a paper will ensure scholarly content and broader impact of reviews and write a meta review of the paper or pictorial that summarizes the reviews from the two external reviewers and the 2AC. If 1ACs disagree with the other reviews, they will be encouraged to write a review as well as a meta-review.

We will strive to distinguish between the 1AC’s assessment of the submission and the summarisation of the other reviews.
The 1AC will present a recommendation for the paper’s or pictorial’s acceptance or rejection to the SC responsible for that submission. SCs and ACs will meet at a virtual program committee meeting with the technical program chairs to discuss the final acceptance of papers and pictorials for inclusion in the program.

Accepted papers and pictorials will be included in the Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems 2023, and will become available in ACM Digital Library.

Upon Acceptance of Your Paper or Pictorial

Authors will be notified of conditional acceptance or rejection of their paper or pictorial on or before the notification date of 14 April 2023. Meta reviews will describe any further changes that the authors are expected to make to the paper prior to its publication. These should be made as part of a “camera ready submission” and submitted to PCS by the deadline of 28 April 2023. Final changes will be checked by members of the program committee prior to making a final acceptance of the paper. If authors are unable to meet the requirements for changes, the program chairs will be notified and may reject the paper.

All accepted submissions require a signed form assigning copyright or license to the ACM, or an upfront fee to ACM to enable Open Access. Responsibility for obtaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the DIS conference.

Accepted submissions will be also asked to prepare and submit a short teaser video (approximately one-minute) to promote contributions at the conference and to share the work with the broader community.
Additionally, each accepted submission requires a full conference registration fee to be paid, unless the person presenting the paper or pictorial is a first-author student, in which case, a student registration fee has to be paid.

All published papers and pictorials will appear online in the ACM Digital Library and be distributed digitally to conference delegates as part of the conference proceedings.

At the conference, authors of accepted submissions must present their work and be available to answer questions from other conference participants. For those who cannot attend in person, there will be opportunities to present online and engage with conference goers. Presenters of papers and pictorials will have a presentation slot at the conference of approximately 20 minutes, though this may be altered prior to the conference based on scheduling needs.

Information on presentations will be sent by email to the corresponding author. Papers and pictorials whose authors do not present in any form (in-person or virtual) may be removed from the ACM Digital Library and the conference proceedings.
Accepted authors should ensure they have obtained permissions to use licensed content and images that depict identifiable people in their conference contributions (paper/pictorial, videos, and presentations). Authors will also be required to give permissions to include their contributions in the ACM Digital Library. Authors can either assign copyright or a license to the ACM or they can pay a fee to ACM for open access. More information on rights management can be found here: https://authors.acm.org/. Finally, and as part of this rights management process, presenting authors will be asked to opt-in to and grant permission to record and/or stream their presentations at the conference.

Papers Chairs

  • Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Université Paris Saclay, LISN
  • Sarah Fox, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Cayley MacArthur, University of Waterloo

Contact: papers@dis2023.acm.org

Pictorials Chairs

  • David Chatting, Goldsmiths + Newcastle University
  • Andy Boucher, Northumbria University
  • Iohanna Nicenboim,TU Delft

Contact: pictorials@dis2023.acm.org

Associate Chairs and Sub-Committee Chairs

Experiences, Artefacts, and Technology.

  • Cesar Torres. The University of Texas at Arlington
  • Qian Yang. Cornell University
  • Teresa Almeida. Umea University
  • Margot Brereton. Queensland University of Technology

Critical Computing and Design Theory & Change Through Design

  • Cindy Lin. Penn State University
  • Sucheta Ghoshal. University of Washington

Design Methods and Processes

  • Colin Gray. Purdue University
  • Doenja J. Oogjes. Technical University Eindhoven