Papers

General Information

TEI2021 is the 15th annual conference dedicated to presenting the latest results in tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction. The ACM-TEI conference has gained substantial visibility and activity over the past decade. It brings together researchers, practitioners, businesses, artists, designers and students from various disciplines, including engineering, interaction design, computer science, product design, media studies and the arts.

The theme for TEI2021 is The Art of Interaction, which invites participants to speculate on a vision of how art impacts, inspires and shapes interaction. We consider art in the broadest sense: from physical to virtual works as well as across all genres, such as interactive installations, performance, visual art, and (tangible) sculptures.

Topics and application areas are diverse, including: tangible user interfaces, physical interaction design, flexible and shape changing displays, haptic interaction, smart objects and cities, interactive surfaces, augmented and mixed reality, ubiquitous computing, interactive art and performance, social and wearable robotics, hybrid games, embodied cognition and perception, fashion and material design, furniture and architectural design, learning and education, music and sound interfaces, human-augmentation, as well as productivity and creativity tools in domains ranging from scientific exploration to artistic practice. We invite submissions from a wide variety of perspectives: theoretical, philosophical, conceptual, technical, applied, and/or artistic. 

The intimate size of this single-track conference provides a unique forum for exchanging ideas and presenting innovative work through talks, demonstrations, posters, art installations and performances, and participation in hands-on studios and theoretical workshops.

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Contribution Types

Authors are invited to submit high-quality papers that contribute to advancing this rapidly developing field. The length of a submission should be commensurate with its contribution. The shortest version of your paper is probably the best. Previous TEI papers had between 4-10 pages in the ACM two-column format, not including references.

We highlight the following non-exclusive set of contribution types:

Artefact: We welcome submission of research artefacts that advance the state of the art in Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Artefacts can demonstrate new technologies (e.g., new sensing techniques or algorithms), new forms of input (e.g., novel interaction techniques) or new designs (e.g., provocative or evocative objects, systems or services). 

Method: Tools, approaches and techniques that enable researchers, technologists, designers and practitioners to study, research and work on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Methods can include new forms of study design or data analysis, new engineering processes or  frameworks that can structure and constrain generative design activity. 

Theory: Explorations, extensions, refutions, instantiations and other developments of and to the theories pertaining to Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, such as theories of cognition or the mind and designerly theories and conceptual frameworks. 

Empirical: Studies and data that add to our understanding of Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction by, for example, providing quantitative accounts of salient aspects of human performance or qualitative characterizations of experiences with tangible artefacts and systems. Empirical submissions can detail outcomes from a very wide range of lab, field and online studies. 

Respecting the diversity of approaches and methods that together make up TEI, each contribution type will be peer-reviewed on its own merits. We seek high-quality work regardless of the specific subdomain or topic and we expect the work to be positioned firmly in, and building on, prior research in our field, in particular wherever relevant referencing work that was presented at earlier TEI conferences.

Accepted submissions of all contribution types will be included as papers in the conference proceedings, which will be available in the ACM Digital Library.

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Submission guidelines

Format Requirements

IMPORTANT: TEI2021 will fully switch to the new ACM workflow for submission templates and published papers. This requires the use of a simplified one-column template for submission, while the final two-column paper has to be rendered for publication after acceptance. We strongly recommend using the LaTeX templates rather than Word. For further details please follow the provided instructions or contact our Publication Chairs.

Presentation format

Regardless of length and contribution type, a paper may be presented as a talk, demo and/or poster. Please do consider the most appropriate presentation format for your work. TEI is particularly strong in demonstrations and installations.

Review process

Submissions will be reviewed in a double-blind process, and authors must ensure that their names and affiliations do not appear on the submitted papers. The author and affiliation sections of the ACM SIGCHI template must be left blank. In case of acceptance, authors will be asked to provide a camera-ready copy that includes this information, along with any recommended improvements as suggested by the reviewers.

Furthermore, all references should remain intact. If you previously published a paper and your current submission builds on that work, the reference – with authors – should appear in the references. Submission should NOT have blank references (e.g., “12. REMOVED FOR REVIEWING”). We encourage authors to refer to their previous work in the third person. Further suppression of identity in the body of the paper, while encouraged, is left to the authors’ discretion.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality of submissions will be 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.

File size

Please note that the maximum size of your submission should not exceed 40 Mb. If your requirements exceed this limit, please contact the program chairs to make alternative arrangements. It will be possible to submit large videos via a link to online content (e.g., YouTube or Vimeo) posted on an anonymous account.

Attendance

One author of each accepted submission must register for the conference before the early registration deadline in order for the final paper to be published in the conference proceedings.

Submission process

All papers must be submitted electronically via the Precision Conference (PCS) website. Submissions need to meet the abstract deadline on July 24 by providing the planned paper title and abstract, while the final paper submissions need to be uploaded until August 7. After the conditional acceptance of your paper on October 9, you have time to upload your revised paper along with a summary of changes until October 30 via PCS. You will be informed about the final acceptance by November 20.

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Program chairs

Katrin Wolf, Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Ian Oakley, UNIST, Ulsan, Republic of Korea
program_chairs@tei.acm.org