Thank you for reviewing for DIS 2026 Pictorials. We have written this guide to assist you in writing your review, since in the past, there has been uncertainty around what a pictorial is and how to assess it.
What is a Pictorial?
Please consult the Call for Pictorials for general information about pictorials.
General Notes on Reviewing
Important in a review is that (a) the contribution is summarized, (b) strengths and weaknesses are described, and (c) a score is given that reflects the qualitative review.
For detailed guidance, we highly recommend reviewers & ACs to read Ken Hinckley’s blog post and commentary about reviewing and serving as a program committee member.
A note: There are some differences with other ACM conferences. Unlike CHI, DIS does not have an R&R process, so reviews should assess the paper as is, as there is no major revision possible. In addition, Pictorials follow a relaxed anonymization policy; see below. Lastly, there is a different focus. Broadly speaking, DIS is about designing interactive systems. However, historically, this notion encompasses a variety of domains that sometimes can feel quite far from interactivity.
Guiding Questions for Reviewing Pictorials
Pictorials require particular attention to whether or not the format is used well; please consult the following questions that aim to help you assess whether or not it makes good use of the format.
When writing your Pictorial review, please consider the following questions:
- Does the Pictorial make a contribution to DIS/HCI communities (and beyond) and state its contribution clearly?
- Is the pictorial well-situated, framed and well referenced within DIS and HCI, especially, and outside of HCI where needed? (but please note: it is not necessary to reference everything about visual presentation that has ever been advanced by any discipline)
- Are images/diagrams emphasized over text as the primary means of communicating the research contribution?
- Does your work require and take advantage of the Pictorial format, or would it be clearer in a more text-based form?
- Does the Pictorial represent a visual quality (image quality, layout, typography) high enough to convey the message of the submission in an engaging and effective way?
- Does every visual component (image, diagram, picture etc.) used in the pictorial play a meaningful role and clearly present the idea on its own or with the support of text?
- Does the text and visual components of the pictorial support each other well in weaving the main argument/s of the pictorial?
- Are the implications for HCI and/or interaction design clear? These may be analytic, generative, synthesis-oriented, and even manifestos.
Anonymization
We use the ACM CHI Anonymization Policy of reviewing within a relaxed model that does not attempt to conceal all possible traces of identity from the body of the pictorial. Complete anonymization is difficult and the judgment is often made following this criteria: “Reviewers should not actively seek information about author identity”.
Authors are expected to remove author and institutional identities as noted in the submission instructions. Authors should remove any information that reveals names or institutions. Acknowledgement section must be left blank and images need to be anonymised, for example by blurring or covering parts that would reveal author or institutional identities (e.g., faces, logos, etc.).
Further suppression of identity in the body of the pictorial is left to the authors’ discretion. Authors can 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], …” or describe the other paper as best as possible in the space of the pictorial, and then simply add a note such as “[reference to existing paper with more details now anonymized for review].
Use of AI in reviews and meta-reviews
Reviewers may not upload confidential ACM submissions into any generative AI or LLM system managed by a third party which does not promise to maintain the confidentiality of that information.
Reviewers and ACs may use generative AI or LLM systems to improve the quality and readability of their review, provided any and all parts of the review that would potentially identify the submission is removed.
If you are using generative AI software tools to edit and improve the readability of your existing text in much the same way you would use a typing assistant like Grammarly, it is not necessary to disclose such usage of these tools in your review.
Check that the corrected text is what you mean, and that the references are not hallucinations!!
DIS 2026 Pictorial Program Committee
- Rohit Ashok Khot, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
- Verena Fuchsberger-Staufer, University of Salzburg, Austria
- Iohanna Nicenboim, Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria (IT:U) and Delft University of Technology, Netherlands