This is a preliminary page showing the four subcommittees of DIS 2027 – Please, check back soon for further details on Subcommittee Chairs, Associate Chairs, and example papers.
To assist in your choice of subcommittee, we describe our four contribution areas, which are also the paper subcommittees:
Artifacts and Systems
This subcommittee invites papers that design, evaluate, and/or reflect on artifacts and interactive systems. Such artifacts and systems can be designed using a wide range of materials and technologies (e.g., digital, tangible/physical user interfaces, fabrication methods, AR/VR). We encourage papers that expand our understanding of meaningful interactions (e.g., sensing and actuation, unconventional interactions) and how they can be designed to contribute to specific outcomes (e.g., sustainable, equitable, or resilient futures). We call for projects that address different aspects of designing objects, systems, and spaces including but not limited to discussing the material, temporal, and/or spatial aspects of design. We encourage a reflection on the evolution of artifacts and systems, including the considerations and choices that shaped the work, especially where these connect to evaluation, deployment insights, or experiences of how the artifact or system performs and is taken up in context.
Critical Computing and Design Theory
This area invites papers on the topics of critical computing, design theory, and their overlap. Critical computing encompasses the reimagination as well as analysis and critique of technologies in the world—i.e., the political, ethical, and societal dimensions of computing and the interactive systems we create. Design theory encompasses knowledge around critical-reflective design and research practice. We welcome epistemologically pluralistic approaches, spanning disciplines, theories, and methods, including those that question or confront technological progress. The area seeks papers that explore and expand the relationships among design inquiry, politics, aesthetics, ethics, ontologies, pragmatism, craft, and epistemics.
Design Methods and Processes
This area invites papers that document, innovate, and advance the methods, approaches, and processes used in interaction design, UX design, and service design across industry, academia, and the public sector. We are particularly interested in methodological contributions that push the boundaries of current practice, exploring new scales, audiences, and contexts for design. This includes innovative methods that enable designers to address complex, multi-layered problems, engage with underrepresented or hard-to-reach communities, and adapt to diverse, evolving technological landscapes.
Research through Design
We invite contributions relating to the Research through Design family of approaches, including:
- Practice-Based Design Research
- Speculative or Critical Design & Design Fiction
- Material Experimentation and Fabrication
- Emerging design approaches such as Regeneration/Unmaking/More-Than-Human
- Other related design-led research practices such as soma design, slow design, piratical perspectives and mischievous tinkering
Our emphasis is on the ‘through’ part of design. We welcome papers that tell the full story not as a quest to problem solve but as a journey, with the focus on continuous learning and reflexive practices. Submissions to this subcommittee are likely to build on or contribute to the methods and theories of RtD. We also welcome submissions that question, critique, and are transgressive towards RtD itself. Submissions may sit anywhere on a spectrum between polished, functional, and finished prototypes, through to experimental, failed, or unconventional design explorations.