Are you exploring an exciting and emerging area in ISS? Consider organizing a workshop! Organizing a workshop is a great opportunity to advance the field and foster a community around emerging topics.

Workshops are independently organized, full-day or half-day events that take place on the day before the main ISS conference. Workshops enable researchers, practitioners, and students to engage in focused and interactive discussions, thereby fostering a sense of community.

ISS workshops might address various topics within different contexts, including but not limited to:

  • Basic and applied research
  • Innovative AI technologies and their impact on interactive surfaces and spaces
  • ISS practice
  • New methods
  • Emerging application areas
  • Design innovations
  • HCI education
  • Ethical considerations, security, and privacy in interactive surfaces and spaces

Each workshop should offer a new, organised way of thinking about topics or suggest promising future research directions for the ISS community.

Preparing the Submission

Workshop proposals should include:

Background: Provide a strong rationale for the workshop, describe the issues to be addressed, and state concrete goals for the workshop. If this is a continuation of a previously offered workshop, please provide precise descriptions of how you are extending the goals of the workshop or any changes you are introducing.

Pre-Workshop plans: State your plans for recruiting and community-building (e.g., through a website or other communication with participants) and plans for accessibility and inclusion leading up to the workshop.

Workshop format (In-person): Please provide details about the workshop, including the technical capacity necessary to support the workshop day. We encourage organizers to support asynchronous online materials for participants unable to access in-person or synchronous. Please include accessibility requirements, such as transcription, if needed.

Workshop schedule: Please provide a proposed schedule of activities for the workshop. ISS workshops typically have 15 - 20 participants, and interaction is fundamental. The proposed workshop schedule can be modified by the organizers prior to the event, taking into account the number of submissions and participants. However, workshop schedules are an important factor in the selection process. Your proposed schedule must clearly identify the workshop as either a half-day or a full-day workshop, and it should provide details regarding planned forms of engagement (keynotes, presentations, discussions, group, and individual activities), as well as the use of breaks.

Diversity and language: Please elaborate on how you plan to promote diversity and create an inclusive environment at the workshop. Submissions should actively consider a respectful use of language, especially in relation to marginalized groups.

Expected outcomes: Discuss the expected outcomes of the proposed workshop. For instance, some workshops result in edited books or special issues of journals.

Organisers: Include short bios for the organizers and indicate who is the main contact person and how participants can reach them.

Publishing plans: say how you’ll publish the submitted papers (like on arXiv or CEUR-WS).

Length and Formatting

Submissions should be a maximum of 6 pages long (excluding references).

Proposals must be in English. Authors are required to use the single-column ACM Manuscript template. Submission preparation is described on the ACM Primary Template website.

For LaTex, the correct templates (Overleaf or LaTeX templates) can be found on ACM’s Preparing your article for LaTeX page, using \documentclass[manuscript, screen, review]{acmart}.

For Word, the correct submission template can be found on ACM’s Preparing your article for Word page, i.e., “submission template.”

The TAPS workflow we use is described on ACM’s TAPS workflow page.

All references must be complete, accurate, accessible, and conform to the ACM Publication Format.

Anonymity

Submissions are not anonymous. Authors should add their names and affiliations.

Supplementary Material

Videos can be of any length and should include closed captions and audio descriptions; see Accessible Presentation Guide.

Other supplementary material may include, for example, survey text, experimental protocols, source code, and data, all of which can help others replicate the work. Authors should submit any non-video supplementary material as a single .zip file, including a README file with a description of the materials. Reviewers should be able to access the contribution of the paper solely based on the main PDF submission. That is, the paper submission must stand independently without the supplementary material.

Accessibility

Authors are required to follow SIGCHI’s Guide to an Accessible Submission. If authors have questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs early in the writing process (the closer to the deadline, the less time the team will have to respond to individual requests). Papers flagged as inaccessible by a reviewer will be reassigned. Note that while we strive to match the best reviewer to each paper – the best reviewers for the work may not be able to review an inaccessible submission.

Guide to an Accessible Submission:

Use of Generative AI

Authors must adhere to the ACM Policy on Authorship regarding the use of generative AI in submissions. Authors are responsible for all content produced (including plagiarism, misrepresentation, or fabrication) by these tools and must disclose their use.

ACM Publications Policy

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.

ACM will investigate alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy. They may result in a full retraction of the paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

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 ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution, and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Submitting

The deadline for submitting workshop proposals is July 22, 2026. Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis upon receipt, with all reviews finalized within two weeks and no later than August 7, 2026.

Submission Platform

Submissions are facilitated via the Precision Conference System (PCS). Authors may submit and edit their materials until the submission deadline. Should authors encounter any difficulties, technical problems, or questions about this process, please contact the Workshops Chairs via workshops2026@iss.acm.org.

In PCS, first click "Submissions" at the top of the page. From the "Society" dropdown menu, select "SIGCHI." Then, from the "Conference/journal" dropdown menu, select "ISS 2026." Finally, from the "Track" dropdown menu, select the "ISS 2026 workshops" option. After selecting all three dropdown options, press “Go.” In the table below, authors will see a new entry for ISS with an “Edit submission” option; press this and enter all the required details.

Metadata Integrity

Changes to author names are not permitted after the submission deadline; no exceptions will be made. Changes to the order of authors are allowed only before the camera-ready deadline. The metadata is crucial to the integrity of the review process and the representation of authors. If any authors need to be added or removed after the submission deadline, they will need to withdraw their submissions/papers.

Selection Process

The selection will be curated by the Workshops Chairs. Please note that for workshop proposals of comparable quality, preference will be given to workshops that include discussion, interactive sessions, and a diverse team organization.

Criteria for selection will consider three things:

  • Is the workshop topic relevant to the ISS and the broader HCI community?
  • Does the topic of the workshop have the potential to evoke interest from the ISS community? This may include considerations for whether the workshop topic is new, thought-provoking, and/or pushing forward the knowledge related to an emerging topic of interest in the community.
  • Does the workshop foster community-building and diversity in the ISS community?

Upon Acceptance

Publication

Accepted workshop proposals will be included in the ACM Digital Library as part of the ISS 2026 Adjunct Proceedings.

Submissions are facilitated via the Precision Conference System (PCS). Authors may submit and edit their materials until the submission deadline. Should authors encounter any difficulties, technical problems, or questions about this process, please contact the Workshops Chairs via <insert email here>

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 before the first day of the conference.

Responsibility of Workshop Organisers

Organizers of accepted workshops are responsible for the following activities:

  • Set up a webpage: Organisers of an accepted workshop are encouraged to create and maintain a web page with information about their workshop (deadlines, CfP, program, templates, accepted papers/participants, organizers, etc.).
  • Inform ISS Web Chairs: Provide a title, short description, and website URL to the conference Web Chairs so that your workshop can be listed on the main website.
  • Advertise your workshop: Share your call for participants within your professional network. If you'd like the workshop to be promoted through the main conference social network accounts, please inform the conference Publicity and Social Media Chairs and provide them with the necessary text and media material.
  • Collect papers/presentations: Workshops typically include paper presentations from participants (depending on how the organizers run the workshop). Workshop papers can present novel technical contributions or take the form of a position paper. Paper length requirements are determined by the workshop organizers. Please note that workshop papers are not included in the archived conference proceedings. Workshop organizers can decide how to archive submissions (e.g., a collection in CEUR proceedings or arXiv).
  • Set up a review process: Select papers/participants accordingly. We expect workshops to target a minimum number of 10 participants. Organizers can define specific dates as necessary to fulfill their selection process. We encourage workshops to complete the selection by mid-September 2026 to allow participants to plan accordingly for attending the conference. Suggested deadlines are available at the end of this page.
  • Distribute accepted papers/presentations and other pre-workshop materials to participants before the workshop: It will help participants to familiarize themselves with workshop content and encourage more in-depth discussions.
  • Publish: Decide on and publish the final program of workshop activities.

During the workshop, organizers facilitate discussion, maintain productive interaction, and encourage participation. The emphasis should be on group discussion rather than on the presentation of individual papers. Diversity of perspectives should be encouraged.

We recommend that accepted workshop organizers consider the following timeline guidelines in preparing their call for submissions to match the conference preparation schedule:

Deadline for submissions: This is up to the organizers, but we recommend notifying authors no later than October 18 (5 days before the early-bird registration deadline on October 23) and setting the paper deadline accordingly (e.g., around September 15, 2026).

Some workshops may choose to extend their submission deadlines to attract more submissions. However, we recommend that dates be adjusted so that final author notifications are sent at least 5 days prior to the conference's early-bird registration deadlines.

We invite workshop organizers to contact the ISS’26 Workshop Chairs with any questions or requests for support.

Conference Registration

For each accepted workshop, a full conference registration for ISS 2026 must be completed by the early-bird registration deadline.

Workshop Co-Chairs

  • Florian Alt, LMU Munich, Germany
  • Sebastian Feger, Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences, Germany

If you have questions about Workshops for ISS 2026, contact the Workshops Chair at workshops2026@iss.acm.org

Important Dates AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Conference
Nov. 23-26, 2026 Main Conference
Submissions and Deadlines
Workshops submission due
Workshops prop. notification to authors
Workshops papers notification to authors
Workshops prop. camera-ready due