Interactivity: CHI 2009 Call for Participation

Quick Facts

Submission: 3 October 2008 (5:00pm PDT)
Notification: 28 November 2008
Camera Ready: 12 January 2009
Submission Format: Unanonymized extended abstracts of up to 6 pages in Extended Abstract format describing the work, a supplement describing the demonstration, and an optional video.
At the Conference: Overview presented in a single technical program session as well as shown as interactive demos at the CHI Studio.
Archives: Extended abstracts; DVD and ACM Digital Library
Information for Exhibitors
- General Guide for Interactivity
- Brede Exposition Services - Exhibitor's guide
- Booth Layout Plan (coming soon)

Message from the CHI Interactivity Chairs

Interactivity is your change to fully engage CHI attendees at a personal level by letting them seeing, touching, squeezing, hearing or even smelling your interactive visions for the future. Interactivity at CHI is a high-visibility part of the programme, which combines both a hands-on demonstration during the entire conference and a presentation in the technical program.

The CHI 2009 Interactivity is where the CHI community can experience the year's most exciting interactive works. If you've got a working prototype, device, or system to bring to Boston, we want to know about it.

Gonzalo Ramos, Microsoft Live Labs, USA
Anastasia Bezerianos, National ICT Australia & École Centrale Paris
Contact us: interactivity@chi2009.org

What is CHI Interactivity?

CHI Interactivity provides a venue for researchers and practitioners to demonstrate prototypes and systems.

We are looking for the most innovative examples of interaction from all the CHI communities. If for instance you have designed an MP3 player for athletes, found a new way to get gestural control out of an accelerometer, come up with a great new way to educate cognitively challenged students, just made a breakthrough in direct brain-computer interfaces, constructed a new ergonomically designed input device, devised a new way to organize scheduling based on physical-digital artifact, or if you have come up with anything else that would be interesting for CHI 2009 attendees to interact with - then we want you to submit it to Interactivity! Getting people hands-on with your interface is often the best way to communicate what you have done.

Preparing and Submitting your CHI Interactivity Proposal

The requirements for originality are less strict for Interactivity than for papers and notes - therefore it is possible to submit work that has already been published elsewhere, as long as you make this clear in the submission. In particular, we encourage Interactivity submissions that complement a CHI 2009 Paper or Note submission, so that attendees can get a direct experience of your work in addition to the technical presentation.

The Interactivity submission must be submitted as via the PCS submission system by 3 Oct 2008 (5:00PM PDT).

The submission should have the following distinct components:

Part 1: Extended Abstract

The abstract is a camera-ready 6-page short paper in the Extended Abstract format. If your submission is accepted, this abstract will be published in the CHI 2009 Extended Abstracts publication and included in the ACM Digital Library. Therefore it should be self-contained and clearly describe the novelty and distinguishing ideas of your project, even for readers who were not able to view your demonstration at the conference.

To give the reviewers and readers a comprehensive picture of your project, your abstract should include:

a description of the system and the problem it addresses
a description of the audience the work intends to serve
a description of the relevance of the work to both the community to which you are submitting this and to the broader CHI community, emphasizing its novelty, uniqueness, and rationale
a statement about the commercial status of the technology
a statement on the context in which the work has been performed (e.g. as research, art, education etc.)

Part 2: Demonstration Supplement

The supplement describes how you wish to present your project in the CHI 2009 Interactivity Studio in Boston. It should contain details on how the demonstration will be executed in practice, and how visitors will interact with your work during the conference. The interaction can be described in the form of a short usage scenario, storyboard sketch, screenshots, illustrations, photos, and/or video documentation. The demonstration supplement should also include technical requirements such as preferred setting, space, power, networking, lighting, acoustics, and any necessary special equipment. Demonstration supplement materials are for the purposes of review only and will not be published. There is no limit on the number of pages in your supplement. A template for demonstration supplements is provided here.

Part 3: Videos (optional)

A video is by far the best way to communicate interactive projects to the reviewers. Therefore we strongly encourage you to submit a video in addition to your written documentation. The video must be no longer than five minutes, and no bigger than 30 Mb. Please make sure that your video is playable on standard PC and Macintosh computers.

Submitted videos are for review purpose only and will not be published. However, successful submissions will have an opportunity to include revised videos on the CHI 2009 Conference DVD.

Submission

The abstract and supplement should be combined and submitted as a single PDF file. Final submission PDFs must be no larger than 4 megabytes large. The video should be submitted as additional material through the PCS submission system.

CHI Interactivity Review Process

Review Process

Projects for CHI 2009 Interactivity will be selected in a 2-stage process. First, all submissions will be reviewed by at least 3 independent reviewers from the relevant communities. Second, a jury will make final selection of projects based on reviews, feasability, available space at the conference, and other relevant information. This is to make sure that the Interactivity represents a good balance of different types of projects from all CHI communities and that they can be presented in a good way at the conference.

Jury

An international jury will select the works to be exhibited, based on reviews from the CHI communities:

Anand Agarawala (BumpTop)
Andrew Cockburn (University of Canterbury)
Hideaki Kuzuoka (University of Tsukuba)
Johnny Lee (Microsoft)
Don Lindsay (Live Labs)

Confidentiality

Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference.

Upon Acceptance of your CHI Interactivity Proposal

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 28 Nov 2008 or shortly after.

Third-party material and copyright

It is very important that you have the rights to use all the material that is contained in your submission, including music, video, images, etc. Submissions will not be published or shown at the conference without a signed form releasing publishing copyright to the ACM. Attaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference.

At the Conference

You will be required to install your demonstration in the conference venue on April 6 and have it packed away by the end of the conference, on April 10 2009. Interactivity at CHI 2009 consists of two segments: a booth in the Studio and a presentation at the conference.

For the booth, the conference will provide a space for your demo, table and chairs if you request it, a power connection, and wireless internet connection (as provided by the main conference). Authors of accepted submissions are responsible for bringing and setting up the equipment that is required for their presentation, e.g. laptop computers, displays, projection screens, etc. If you have any special requirements such as furniture, props, etc. please first try to find a way to bring it to Boston, or investigate if you can rent or buy it when you arrive. If this is not possible you must notify the Interactivity chairs as soon as possible (preferably already in your Supplement) and we will try to work with you and the CHI 2009 organizers to meet your needs. To ensure that we can plan the demo area properly, make sure to specify all needs in your demonstration supplement.

The Studio is the hub for all activities in the Interactivity venue, where attendees can experience your work for themselves. Your presentation in the Studio will consist of a hands-on setup where CHI 2009 attendees can interact with your work. This means that the project must be in such a stage that it is a robust working prototype or demonstration.

There will be a special conference reception where Interactivity projects are showcased, and you are required to have your demonstration up and running during this reception. In addition, we strongly encourage you to have your demo staffed and available throughout the conference, especially during breaks. Since manning a demo during the whole conference is exhausting, we strongly recommend that at least two people attend the conference to present the project. Note that although student volunteers will be present in the Studio at all times, CHI 2009 will not be able to provide anyone to run your demonstration if you are absent.

After the Conference

Accepted Interactivity extended abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts DVD. They will also be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide. Authors will also have an opportunity to submit videos for inclusion on the conference DVD.

Instructions for Interactivity Demo Exhibitors

Based on previous Interactivity sessions and instructions from the Boston Hynes Conference center we have created a General Interactivity Guide that you may find helpful in preparing your trip to Boston. All shipments to the Boston Hynes Conference center are being coordinated by Brede Exposition Services and your items need to be shipped to them. Here is a Brede Exposition Services Guide regarding shipment arrangements. We encourage you to contact them directly if you have any questions after reading this their materials. As you will see mentioned in the Brede manual, when shipping material, you always need to label them with the submission number and booth number. These can be found in the "Floor Layout document" (coming soon).