The ACM PACM HCI Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS) track welcomes contributions on a wide range of topics relating to interactive surfaces and spaces as well as novel interface technologies, including (but not limited to):

• Large display interfaces and multi-display environments
• Gesture-based interfaces (hands, finger, body)
• Multimodal interfaces
• Tangible user interfaces
• Novel interaction techniques and paradigms
• Interaction with mobile and body-worn devices
• Different materials and form factors: curved, sand, water, …
• Interactive 3D spaces (Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality, mid-air displays, …)
• Large scale and outdoor interactive spaces (projected interfaces, drones, …)
• Interactive architecture
• Beyond traditional surfaces: shape-changing and actuated surfaces, body-related
• Interactive information visualization/data presentation
• Software engineering methods and frameworks
• Social aspects and protocols related to interacting with surfaces and spaces
• Interactive surfaces and spaces that support group work or social interaction
• Hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities, and results from maker communities
• Human-centered design and methodologies related to interactive surfaces and spaces
• Empirical evaluations of novel interactive surfaces and/or spaces designs
• Evaluations of deployed interactive surfaces and/or spaces in specific domains (public spaces, education, science, business, entertainment, health, art, homes, etc.)

PUBLICATION MODEL: PACM HCI Journal

Full papers are selected using a refereed process, meeting the ACM’s highest requirements for rigorous review by the ISS Editorial Board, its associate editors, and peer experts. Papers accepted in any round of submission will be published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci.

Accepted papers are invited to present at the ACM ISS 2026 conference in Oct/Nov 2026. Presenting at the conference is strongly recommended but not required. ACM ISS 2026 will likely be a hybrid event where both in-person and remote participation is supported.

The conference retains its workshop, poster, and demo tracks, which will have their own publication outlet. The call for workshops, posters, and demos will be included in the second round.

Submissions will be done through http://new.precisionconference.com

PUBLICATION FEES

For all accepted papers, regardless of conference attendance, at least one author must register for the ACM ISS 2026 conference in the corresponding author category and pay a registration fee for the work to be published in PACM HCI.

SUBMISSIONS

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, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. 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.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, 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 ORCID IDs 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 ID will help in these efforts.

Submissions to PACM HCI ISS should present original and mature research work. High-quality, elaborated case studies and practice reports with generalizable findings will also be considered. Papers should be written using the template provided by PACM HCI, https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci/submission-templates.

Submissions should be anonymized. Primarily, this means that submissions must remove all author and institutional information from the title and header area of the first page. Author information should also be removed from submitted supplementary materials, in particular, videos. Submissions that do not do so may be rejected without review. Furthermore, all references must remain intact. If you previously published a paper and your current submission builds on that work, the complete reference with the author’s name must appear in the references. Authors must refer to their previous work in the third person (e.g., “We build on prior work by Smith et al. [X] but generalize their algorithm to new settings.”) and avoid blank references (e.g., “12. REMOVED FOR REVIEWING”). Further suppression of identity in the body of the paper (for example, in an Acknowledgements section), while encouraged, is left to the authors’ discretion.

LENGTH

No minimum or maximum length is imposed on papers. Rather, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length when making decisions about acceptance and revisions. Shorter, more focused papers will be reviewed with the expectation of a small, focused contribution. Papers whose length is incommensurate with their contribution will be rejected.

We recommend a page length in the new format of between 5-15 pages + any additional pages for references. Typical papers are under 8,500 words.

FORMATTING AND LANGUAGE

ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci/submission-templates.

Authors should submit manuscripts for review in a single column format, which is available for Word and LaTeX. Manuscripts should be converted to PDF before submission.

• Word users: if the typefaces are not showing up correctly, be sure you have installed the fonts included in the ACM template download.
• LaTeX authors: On Overleaf authors can use the provided ACM templates. Authors can use the settings \documentclass[manuscript, review, anonymous]{acmart} to remove author information and add line numbers for the review process.

Please use inclusive language throughout your papers. Some commonly-used charged terminology and alternative suggestions can be found at: https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter. Please avoid using gendered language, ableist language, and racialized terminology.

You are asked to provide alt-text descriptions for all figures in your submission. Writing good descriptive text is important, so please look at http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/describing-figures/ for guidance and examples.

REVISIONS

PACM HCI ISS will be returning submissions to the primary contact author with one of the following decisions, along with the reviews, after the first review cycle of this submission round:

• Accept: Submissions that receive this decision are ready or nearly ready for publication, though they may require a few small changes. The final version of the paper must be submitted by the camera-ready deadline of PACM HCI ISS for verification by the corresponding associate editor.
• Minor revision: Submissions that receive this decision will require some revisions before being accepted for publication during this submission round. The revised submission must be submitted at the revision deadline to enter this round’s second review cycle, along with a brief response to the reviewers’ comments. The revision will be verified by the corresponding associate editor in collaboration with the external reviewers, and if approved, the submission will be promoted to an accepted paper.
• Major revision: Submissions that receive this decision have real potential, but will require major portions rewritten or redone before acceptance is possible. To allow extra time for such new work, e.g., conducting a new evaluation, they cannot enter the second review cycle of the current submission round anymore but need to be resubmitted and re-reviewed in a future PACM HCI ISS submission round. Resubmissions of revised manuscripts with a “major revision” from previous rounds to future rounds will not receive another “major revision” and will be either accepted or rejected.

To still be considered for presentation at ISS 2026, the revised submission must be submitted in the PACM HCI ISS second round. To the extent possible, resubmissions to the PACM HCI ISS second round will also be assigned the same associate editors and reviewers for re-review. This will not be the case for submissions in later rounds.

Authors should submit their revised manuscript to PCS and clearly indicate the submission ID, title, and previous PACM HCI ISS round of the original submission. They also should include an anonymized letter explaining how they addressed the reviewers’ comments and incorporated changes in the revision.

• Reject: Submissions that receive this decision will have been determined to be not acceptable in their current form and also not able to complete the needed revisions for presentation at ISS 2026. Rejected papers are also not able to submit a revision to PACM HCI ISS second round. However, authors are encouraged to resubmit strongly revised versions of their work to a future round of PACM HCI ISS for presentation at ISS 2025.
• Desk / Quick Reject: Authors should only submit completed work of publishable quality and within the scope of ISS. The Associate Editors and Papers Chairs may Quick Reject any submission that they believe has little chance of being accepted if it goes through the peer review process. Incomplete or otherwise inappropriate submissions will be desk rejected without review.

OPEN AND TRANSPARENT SCIENCE

Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary material when possible and when aligned with their methods. Authors are encouraged to submit links to preregistrations on the Open Science Framework (OSF) when appropriate for their work. Authors are also encouraged to use open access repositories and make their data and other material FAIR when appropriate for their work. Authors are encouraged to describe efforts to make their work more reproducible. Reviewers are encouraged to support evolving approaches to supporting open and transparent research practices. Supplementary material is not considered to be peer reviewed.

PACM HCI ISS Special Issue Track Chairs for 2025

Gun Lee, University of South Australia, Australia
Fateme Rajabiyazdi, Carleton University, Canada

If you have questions about papers for this special issue, please contact the Track Chairs at papers2025@iss.acm.org