Pictorials – ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2026

Call for Submissions

Important Dates

Submission Site Opens	15 December 2025
Title and Abstract	9 January 2026
Paper and Pictorial Submission	19 January 2026
Acceptance Notification	1 8 March 2026
Camera-Ready Due	8 April 2026
DIS 2026 Conference	13 – 17 June 2026

Deadlines are specified as Anywhere on Earth time

NB. DIS 2026 will be an in-person-only event, and authors are required to present their work in person. Presenting online or with a video will not be possible. Accepted papers whose authors do not present may have their paper withdrawn from the ACM Digital Library. We encourage you to ensure you can make it to Singapore between the 13th and 17th of June 2026 before you submit to DIS’26.

What are Pictorials?

Since their introduction at DIS 2014 in Vancouver, pictorials have become a first-class way of communicating design research. Pictorials are papers in which the visual components (e.g. diagrams, sketches, illustrations, renderings, photographs, annotated photographs, and collages) play a major role in conveying the ideas and contributions of a study in addition to the accompanying text. Pictorials leverage the power of visual communication with the effective use of visual languages and high-quality images. They may have a practical or theoretical nature or both.

Pictorials published at DIS2026 are ACM archival publications and will be made available through the ACM in the Digital Library. As with the papers track, peer review will be dual anonymous and stand as the same quality of contribution as technical program papers.

How to Write a Pictorial?

In pictorials the visual components (e.g. diagrams, sketches, illustrations, renderings, photographs, annotated photographs, and collages) play a major role in conveying the ideas and contributions of a study in addition to the accompanying text. Pictorials are meant to contribute to knowledge in themselves rather than document concepts, methods, and processes, we already know. Visual components can be contributions to design knowledge in and of themselves, as a form of making, but they should also be accompanied by a narrative that helps the DIS/Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) audience understand what the knowledge contribution is. It is this scaffolding that transforms a Pictorial into research and guarantees that it can be treated as an argument in the research discourse. At the same time,the textual narrative should be just that – a scaffolding to support the contribution of the visual content.

Like any good piece of research, the contribution must be made clear!

Pictorial or Paper?

In pictorials, the narrative is conveyed visually. While there is no clear-cut, the general idea is that either visuals take the lead, or that text and images have a similar weight, supporting each other. Unlike papers where the narrative is textual, in pictorials, the visuals lead the narrative. In papers images illustrate the text, while in pictorials text is used to annotate the visuals.

If you are writing a pictorial, make sure that:

Visual components (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
The text and visual components of the pictorial support each other well in weaving the main argument/s of the pictorial

Preparing a pictorial takes time and effort. Unlike papers, the process of writing a pictorial is not about formatting your text at the end according to a template, but starting to shape your publication as a visual narrative. To avoid the challenge of having your submission rejected because it falls into the paper track, we recommend starting early with the pictorial format and not waiting until all the text is written.

Given the 12-page limit, the amount of details that one can include in pictorials is not the same as in papers. For instance, this means that not all potentially relevant related work can be presented, but only indispensable ones; that details of a related empirical study need to be limited; or that not all insights gained through a design process can (or should) be reported, but only those that are core to the contribution. Thus, we recommend considering the scope of the presentation and choosing a clear focus. Some strategies to help coping with this limitation are:

What is/are the key contribution(s) I want to make? Does the pictorial capture the essential aspects of my design research?
Are all images essential? Do they contribute to the narrative or are they decorative? Can I remove some to improve clarity?
How rigorous do I need to be in citing prior work? Which references are essential, and which can be omitted without weakening my contribution?
Is my methodology communicated clearly through visuals and text? Can I reduce unnecessary detail without creating gaps that raise doubts about rigor?
Are images and text tightly interwoven, or am I repeating the same content in both? Can annotations replace long explanations?
Could rearranging the layout reduce redundancy or help the narrative flow? Am I using typography, color, and composition to emphasize key points instead of relying only on text?

In a nutshell, a pictorial should tell a clear visual story. Ask yourself:

What story am I trying to tell?
Are all the visual and textual elements (i.e., images, colors, typography, layout, and words) working together to communicate it effectively?

If you find your narrative cannot be fully expressed within the 12-page pictorial format, consider submitting to the traditional paper track instead. Many aspects of design research (including the ones you worked on for the pictorials such as images) can still be well presented and appreciated in paper form.

Notes on the Template

It is encouraged to use the format creatively, including the first page. While the template’s first page contains only text, it is encouraged to add visuals and use the space creatively like you would on the remaining pages. It is allowed to change the font and position of the title.

Preparing Your Pictorial

Pictorials must be submitted using the DIS Pictorials templates (below) and not exceed 12 pages, excluding references. On the first page of the submission please follow the template’s parts (but not necessarily the format, see above) and include the submission’s title, author(s) and their affiliation(s) (leave blank for dual anonymous review), and a written abstract of no more than 150 words succinctly describing the background and context of the pictorial as well as its contribution to the DIS community. Further written parts known from other conference formats (such as Introduction, Conclusion, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References) are optional. The main part of the submission should be an annotated visual composition.

Templates

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 templates.

The following are examples of well-formed Pictorials:

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 accessibility 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. Consider this review of alt-text patterns in Pictorials for further guidance.

Pictorial Submission

DIS 2026 has two submission deadlines for pictorials. The first deadline, January 9, 2026, requires you to submit a title, abstract of less than 150 words, and meta-data including authors and keywords for your pictorial. This Notice of Intent (NOI) is an entry in PCS. We will use this information to help plan the specifics of the review process. The second deadline, January 19, 2026 is for the final version of your pictorial. You can also update your previously submitted title, abstract and other metadata as needed.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCIDs from all of our published authors.

We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID will help in these efforts.

Please submit Pictorials through the Precision Conference Submission Portal. PCS allows file sizes up to about 150 MB, but we suggest that you keep reviewers in mind andexperiment with lower resolution to make the submission considerably smaller.

Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Anonymization Policy

All pictorials 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 pictorial.

Authors are expected to remove author and institutional identities from the title and header areas of the pictorial, 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. Please note that images need to be anonymised for review too, 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. 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], …”

In order to ensure the fairness of the reviewing process, DIS uses dual anonymous reviews, where external reviewers don’t know the identity of authors, and authors don’t know the identity of external reviewers. In the past few years, some authors have decided to publish their DIS submissions in public archives prior to or during the review process. These public archives have surpassed in reach and publicity what used to happen with tech reports published in institutional repositories. The consequence is that well-informed external reviewers may know, without searching for it, the full identity and institutional affiliation of the authors of a submission they are reviewing. While reviewers should not actively seek information about author identity, complete anonymization is difficult and can be made more so by publication and promotion of work during the DIS review process. While publication in public archives is becoming standard across many fields, authors should be aware that unconscious biases can affect the nature of reviews when identities are known. DIS does not discourage non-archival publication of work prior to or during the review process but recognizes that complete anonymization becomes more difficult in that context.

Policy on Use of Large Language Models

Text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, must be clearly marked where such tools are used for purposes beyond editing the author’s own text. Please carefully review the ACM Policy on Authorship (updated September 16, 2025) before you use these tools. The SIGCHI blog post describes approaches to acknowledging the use of such tools and we refer to it for guidance. While we do not anticipate using tools on a large scale to detect LLM-generated text, we will investigate submissions brought to our attention and desk-reject papers where LLM use is not clearly marked.

Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects

Any research in submitted manuscripts that involves human subjects must go through the appropriate ethics review requirements that apply to the authors’ research environment. As research environments vary considerably with regard to their requirements, authors are asked to submit a short note to reviewers that provides this context. Please also see the 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans before submitting.

Review Process

In DIS 2026, Pictorials follow a rigorous dual anonymous peer review process similar to Full Papers. The review process is managed by the Pictorials Chairs and the Pictorials Associate Chairs (ACs). Confidentiality of submissions is maintained throughout the review process. Reviewers will use below questions to assess submissions. We provide them here for authors to consider before submitting their work.

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.

Acceptance Rate, Relation to other Submissions, and Copyrighted Materials

Pictorials are expected to be original work created specifically for the Pictorials track. Expect the track to be competitive and submit your best work. Expect an acceptance rate of around 25%.

Please do not submit work you have submitted elsewhere with a few images added. Doing so may violate dual submission rules. You may submit previously published work to which you have added significant visual content, provided only that such work is clearly and prominently attributed as such in a footnote to the title with a clear description of what the Pictorial uniquely contributes or adds to the previous work. In this last case, at least 30% of the material must be new, per ACM rules.

You must be the author and copyright holder of all materials you submit, particularly all visual materials. Submitted work must comply with ACM policies, which state that you must be the owner of your images and/or obtain written approvals for included third-party materials. If authors are using third-party images as a key source for their pictorials, they should make a note to reviewers with their submission about their plans for obtaining copyright.

Upon Acceptance of Your Pictorial

Authors will be notified of conditional acceptance or rejection of their Pictorial on or before the notification date of March 18, 2026. Meta reviews will describe any further changes that the authors are expected to make to the Pictorial prior to its publication. These should be made as part of a “camera ready submission” into PCS by the deadline of April 18, 2026. Final changes will be checked by members of the program committee prior to making a final acceptance of the Pictorial. If authors are unable to meet the requirements for changes, the program chairs will be notified and may reject the Pictorial.

All accepted submissions require a signed form assigning copyright or licence 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.

Additionally, each accepted submission requires a full conference registration fee to be paid, unless the person presenting the Pictorial is a first-author student, in which case, a student registration fee has to be paid. All published 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 Pictorials must be in attendance to present their Pictorials and answer questions from the audience. Presenters of Papers and Pictorials will have a presentation slot of approximately 20 minutes, though this may be altered prior to the conference based on scheduling needs. Pictorials whose authors are not at the conference to present may be removed from the ACM Digital Library and the conference proceedings.

Open Access Publishing (Important Update!)

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors willhave two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy

Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM. Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

$250 APC for ACM/SIG members
$350 for non-members

This represents a 65% discount , funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.

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 / TU Delft

pictorials@dis2026.acm.org

Pictorials Associate Chairs

Ferran Altarriba Bertran, ERAM Escola Universitària de les Arts (Salt, Catalonia)
Karey Helms, Umeå Institute of Design
Jiwei Zhou, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Rowan Page, Monash University
Anton Poikolainen Rosén, Stockholm University
Deepti Aggarwal, Deakin University (Burwood Campus)
Yang Chen, City University of Hong Kong and National University of Singapore
Jialin Deng, School of Computer Science, University of Bristol
Audrey Desjardins, University of Washington
Alexandra (Allie) Teixeira Riggs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Digital Media
Xiao Zhang, Simon Fraser University
Vedran Simic, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Jihae Han, KU Leuven, Belgium
Sena Cucumak, Koç University, Turkey
Yidan Cao, Affective Interactions lab, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney
Yangyang Yang, UC Berkeley School of Information
Zoë Breed, Delft University of Technology
Haena Cho, Simon Fraser University
Natalie Sontopski, Hochschule Anhalt
Youngsil Lee, University of Edinburgh
Anna Blumenkranz, University of Salzburg, Austria
Andrés Lucero, Aalto University
Stine Schmieg Johansen, Aalborg University
Serena Pollastri, ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University
Rucha Khot, Eindhoven Unversity of Technology
Ege Kökel, Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Marco Quaggiotto, Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano
Jan Tepe, University of Borås, Sweden
Irene Kaklopoulou, Umeå University, Sweden
Spyros Bofylatos, Royal Colleage of Arts
Arne Berger, Hochschule Anhalt University of Applied Sciences
Bow Yiying Wu, University of Sydney
Ricardo O’Nascimento, Independent researcher
Irene Posch, University of Arts, Linz, Austria
Gül Onat, Human-Centered Design, AI DeMoS Lab, Delft University of Technology
Rosa van Koningsbruggen, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Mengyao Guo, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
Vincent van Rheden, University of Salzburg, Austria
Burcu Dumlu, Keio University, Japan
Alyshia Bustos, University of New Mexico, USA
Claire Florence Weizenegger, University of Washington, USA
Ariane Lucchini, Delft University of Technology
Sarah Hayes, Munster Technological University (MTU)
Hong Luo, Monash University
Timothy Merritt, Aalborg University