Important Dates
| Event | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Submission deadline | |
| Notification of acceptance | November 20, 2023 AoE |
| Camera-ready deadline | December 1, 2023, AoE |
|
TEI 2024 conference |
February 11-14, 2024 |
Touching the Edge: Tangible Interactions for Social Good
Today’s world faces a variety of challenges; the climate is collapsing, people are facing poverty through wars or natural disasters, or are discriminated against based on their ethnicity, gender, age, or else. Now, more than ever, we need to work together to find human- and nature-centered solutions. In the Student Design Competition we aim to engage with these pressing issues, which are all “on the edge” as they are affecting a particular edge of people, are only realized by a subset of people, or are caused by only a few. What if we envisioned tangible interactions that focus on one of these edges, using the transformative power that technologies can have?
We explicitly call for ideas that address a societal challenge and that make use of technologies in unexpected ways through innovative interminglings of the physical world with digital environments. For the Student Design Challenge (SDC), we invite students to contribute by submitting a 4 page document (pictorial or paper), vision video and, and if selected, a physical prototype which will be exhibited at the TEI conference.
We do not expect to receive fully functional prototypes, but rather probes, mock-ups, videos and/or scenarios of machines that go beyond what we can build right now. We expect to see how the proposed artifacts (or organisms/systems…) will be used, and in what context as well as a short list of technical/social “breakthroughs” that would have to happen for this to become mainstream (or a strong argument why this should happen yesterday rather than tomorrow). The high-level goal is to provoke discussion and speculation as to how we can design that future.
Accepted TEI 2024 Student Design Challenge submissions will become a physical part of an exhibition we will run at the in-person part of the TEI conference. Accepted papers will be published in the TEI2024 proceedings, part of the ACM Digital Library. Submissions will further be made accessible online in the form of a virtual guided tour with statements of the authors. The jury will award three prizes: Best Physical Prototype, Most Innovative Vision, and Best Narrative. The jury will further prepare a Jury Statement for all accepted submissions.
General Information
Tangible Interactions for Social Good
Only slowly, it seems, we realize as a society that grand challenges are waiting to be solved. The climate crisis, pollution, poverty, discrimination – these and further challenges will require our attention. Their effects are huge, yet often affect those more who caused them less. At the same time, we see tremendous technological developments that have the potential to help solving at least some of our problems, if only we used them wisely. Way too often we disconnect questions of equality, sustainability, and nature from those of technological innovation. In the Student Design Competition, however, we aim to connect those things, address “edges” that are often overseen, including disadvantaged users or nature.
As the TEI-community we ask ourselves, how can we rethink tangible interactions for the social good? How can we make use of technological innovation now, and in the near or distant future? How does a world look like that we hope to see, and how can we make it happen by means of tangible interactions? For example, how might emerging XR technologies incorporating tangible interactions be applied for social good in diverse areas such as health, education and building communities? How can embedded systems become inherently sustainable (e.g., biodegradable)? Could novel, shape-changing interfaces help people in marginalized groups, or change the way we design for accessibility?
These are just some of the dimensions of the design challenge. We are sure there are many more we are overlooking right now. A good submission ideally tackles one such challenge (not limited to what we wrote here, we highly encourage exploring other dimensions!) or a combination of different challenges and paints a picture of how this will develop in the upcoming decade(s).
Useful Research Examples
Submission Guidelines
This year’s TEI Student Design Challenge will take the form of designs for technology which would have a positive impact on an edge, whether people or nature on the edge. Students should submit a demonstration video and a document with rationale/motivation for their particular vision. Submissions will be selected by a jury and should include all author names, affiliations and contact information, and are thus not anonymous.
Upon acceptance, we invite students to send a physical demonstration model which will be exhibited at the in-person part of the conference.
Format Requirements
TEI2024 uses 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. For further details please follow the provided instructions or contact our Publication Chairs.
For the Student Design Challenge, you will have to submit an up to 4-pages (excluding references) paper in the simplified one-column template, or pictorial (for guidance and templates, see the pictorials section of the TEI 2024 website), a high-resolution image, and a video. You will also have to commit to producing an exhibition piece for the in-person conference which you can prepare on-site and attend the panel discussion.
The paper/pictorial should clearly describe the submitted vision and give a rationale for the decisions that lead to this vision. You should also include a high resolution photo of the exhibition piece as a separate file. The remaining space should be used to contextualize the vision and discuss elements like what technology would have to be developed to unlock this future. The acknowledgements section should indicate whether any assistance was drawn from outside the student team (e.g., from advisors, faculty, domain experts, existing solutions, users, etc.).
We will showcase the visions at an exhibition in the live-conference. This exhibition will serve as a platform for conversation during the conference and beyond.
The video length should be maximum 5 minutes. The video should demonstrate your vision and ideally use the exhibition piece to illustrate this: how, where, by whom is it used? How is it made? You are free to upload the video on other channels for publicity.
Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. You might perhaps also be submitting your project to other TEI formats such as the WIP or Demos. This is allowed, but you will still need to produce and submit a tailored submission and video for the SDC and attend the panel discussion. The different kinds of conference submission will be reviewed and handled independently.
Selection Process
Submissions will be reviewed and selected by the SDC Chairs and a jury of selected academic and professional design experts. The submissions should include all author names, affiliations and contact information, and are thus not anonymous. Confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity.
Material to Submit Upon Acceptance
Authors of accepted submissions will be notified on November 20, 2023. Accepted submissions should be finalized by preparing the camera-ready revisions of the paper and submitted by December 1, 2023.
At the Conference
During the TEI conference, there will be the in-person exhibition and the virtual guided tour with quotes from the authors on permanent exhibit. There will be a 1-hour panel session with the chosen candidates, ideally members of the jury and the chairs in which we discuss and brainstorm about the different visions. (Virtual) Attendees of TEI are welcome to attend/join in.
Attendance
At least 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 and the exhibit to be shown at the conference.
Submission Process
All work except the exhibition piece itself must be submitted through the Precision Conference submission system (PCS). If any of the above information is unclear or you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us, the design challenge chairs:
Student Design COMPETITION Chairs
Verena Fuchsberger, University of Salzburg, Austria
Aiden Kehoe, Logitech, Cork, Ireland
Miriam Sturdee, University of St Andrews, UK