Quick Facts
Important Dates:
- Submission deadline: January 11th, 2021 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
- Notification: February 18th, 2021 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
- Publication-ready deadline: February 25th, 2021 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
- Video previews deadline (optional): March 9th, 2021 at 12pm (noon) PT – Pacific Time
Submission Details:
- Online Submission: PCS Submission System
- Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column)
- Submission Format: Up to 6-page Extended Abstract including references, video figure, still image, and additional information describing what attendees will experience.
- Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
Selection Process: Curated
Chairs: Pedro Lopes, Sylvain Malacria, Yuta Sugiura (interactivity@chi2021.acm.org)
At the Conference: Accepted Interactivity will be presented during the conference in the exhibition area.
After the Conference: Interactivity descriptions are published in the Extended Abstracts proceedings in the ACM Digital Library, but are not considered archival publications.
Message from the Interactivity Chairs
The Interactivity track is a high-visibility, high-impact forum of the Technical Program that allows you to present your hands-on demonstration, share novel interactive technologies, and stage interactive experiences. We encourage submissions from any area of human computer interaction, games, entertainment, digital and interactive art, and design. Interactivity promotes and provokes discussion on novel technologies, and invites contributions from industry, research, startups, maker communities, the arts, and design.
CHI 2021 going virtual presents a more of an opportunity than a challenge for the Interactivity track! Previous CHI conferences struggled with finding enough floor space for all the amazing demos we received: not this time! Furthermore, this is a fantastic opportunity for our HCI community to test our ingenious ways to provide an exciting remote interactive experiences to conference attendees (e.g. providing executable files to the audience ahead of time, live streaming both 3rd and 1st person views for VR scenarios, etc.). As such, in spite of CHI 2021 going virtual, demonstrators of all accepted interactivities will be expected to perform remote live demos during the conference.
The Interactivity track showcases this year’s most exciting interactive technologies and installations. If you have an interesting prototype, device, system, art performance, exhibit or installation, we want to know about it. Sharing hands-on experiences of your work is often the best way to communicate your creation.
Pedro Lopes, University of Chicago, United States
Sylvain Malacria, Inria, France
Yuta Sugiura, Keio University, Japan
Email: interactivity@chi2021.acm.org
Preparing and Submitting your Interactivity Submission
Before the submission deadline you must submit an Extended Abstract detailing the work, a picture depicting the work, a video, and additional information detailing the requirements for the exhibit. All submissions should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information. The organisers will provide you with a standard table, WiFi and electrical outlets. Additionally, presenters can request computer displays, dimmed lighting, and speakers. Due to the expected crowd during the Interactivity reception we will ask you to provide a plan for dealing with line-ups. We ask that you detail how you are going to limit your presentation time to a maximum of 5 minutes per person by providing the “elevator pitch” in the ‘Envisioned Interaction’ field in PCS (see below). This is especially important for demos based on wearables, AR/VR, haptics and other forms of devices that allow only one visitor to experience them at a time. We also ask you to detail how you plan to keep visitors waiting to experience your Interactivity. For instance, in the case of a Interactivity based on VR, we suggest that you mirror the VR headset’s display in an external screen, enabling the audience to be involved even though they are not experiencing it yet.
Previously-published work may be accepted into the Interactivity track, on the condition that the publication and presentation history is clearly outlined in the ‘Presentation History’ field in PCS, and that the submission is novel in that it was not demonstrated before at a scientific conference. The Interactivity track encourages authors of accepted CHI Papers to submit an extended abstract for Interactivity, although there is no formal association between Interactivity and accepted papers.
Submissions must have the following components:
1. Extended Abstract
The extended abstract is an up to 6-page short paper in the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column), including references. Note that we eliminate the old CHI extended abstract format (landscape) and use the same format as full papers. It should be self-contained and clearly describe the novelty and distinguishing ideas of your project, even for readers who are not able to view the related demonstration at the conference or associated videos. Your abstract should include:
- A description of the system, installation or exhibit and the problem it addresses. Where relevant, discuss the broader context and questions that your work promotes reflection upon.
- A description of the relevance of the work to the immediate CHI conference community, as well as to the broader CHI community, emphasising its novelty, uniqueness, and rationale.
Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission.
2. Video
A video is the optimal medium to communicate your interactivity demo to the reviewers and provides an archive of the work. You must submit a video in addition to your written documentation. The video must be no longer than 5 minutes and all uploaded content (PDF(s) + image + video) must be less than 100 MB. Please make sure that your video is playable on standard PC and Macintosh computers. We recommend that you encode your video as an MP4 using the H.264 codec. Submitted videos will be used for review purposes. The videos may also be displayed at the Interactivity site and possibly on websites previewing CHI content. Be sure to have permission for all content, and use rights-free music tracks.
3. Still Image
You are required to upload a still image of at least 1500 x 1200 px that represents your work. The image is required for publications and conference publicity.
4. Envisioned Interaction
Alongside your submission, you are also required to provide the envisioned interaction through the PCS System, that is an explicit description of how the interactivity will be demonstrated and live performed if the submission gets accepted. CHI will take care of providing a video streaming platform, so please focus on how you will on your end provide the audience with the best possible experience.
Interactivity Selection Process
Interactivity will be curated and may include work that was invited or selected from other submissions. The selection process includes reviews by the Interactivity program committee (each submission will be reviewed by at least one Interactivity co-chair and one external reviewer), but will also take into account feasibility, available space at the conference, and other relevant information. Our intention is to ensure that the Interactivity track is exciting, while representing a range of projects being undertaken across diverse CHI and related communities. Note that because CHI interactivity is a curated track, you will not receive formal feedback on your submission other than the acceptance decision.
Also, note that in spite of CHI 2021 going fully virtual, demonstrators of all accepted interactivities will be expected to perform live demos during the conference.
Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the selection process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity.
AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date may affect the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)
Upon Acceptance of Your Interactivity Submission
Interactivity authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 18th February 2021. Authors of accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit the publication-ready version, and details on the demonstrations presentation and scheduling at the conference. All authors are strongly encouraged to use the instructions for accessible pdfs to add accessibility to your final generated pdf.
Authors of accepted submissions will also be asked to submit a 30-second video preview summarizing the work; this is optional, but highly encouraged, as it will increase the visibility of your Interactivity before, at the conference, and in the ACM digital library in perpetuity. See here for technical requirements and guidelines for videos at CHI. The video preview must be submitted before the video preview deadline. Video previews count towards the total submission size of 100MB, so we recommend that the publication ready source files submission does not exceed 80MB.
During the Conference
If accepted to Interactivity, you will be assigned a dedicated space on the online conferencing platform used for the CHI 2021 interactivities (likely Discord).
Lastly, if you did not make the Interactivity submission deadline on time but still have a CHI project that you want to showcase (typically an accepted CHI paper), please get in touch with us to book one of the additional “hot spots” that we can provide. These hot spots will be available on a first-come first-serve basis.After the Conference
Accepted Interactivities Extended Abstracts and Videos are not considered Archival Publications but will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts and placed in the ACM Digital Library. Those Extended Abstracts that are associated with accepted CHI Papers will link to the associated archival publication.
Supporting CHI2020 Interactivities not shown due to COVID-19
CHI 2021 going virtual frees the Interactivity track from many logistical constraints. As such, we are strongly determined to help authors display their accepted CHI2020 Interactivities that were not shown due to COVID-19. This is still subjected to the chairs decision, but we highly encourage authors of an accepted CHI2020 Interactivity to inform the interactivity chairs (interactivity@chi2021.acm.org), as soon as possible, that you would be willing to take your CHI2020 Interactivity to CHI2021.