Pictorials

Important Dates

Event	Deadline
Abstract Deadline	July 31, 2025, AoE
Full Submission Deadline	August 7, 2025, AoE
Video and Supplementary Material Deadline	August 14, 2025, AoE
Notification of Conditional Acceptance	October 15, 2025
Camera-Ready Deadline	November 20, 2025
TEI 2026 Conference	March 8-11, 2025

What are Pictorials?

Pictorials are archival research publications with the same weight as full papers. This format first appeared in the proceedings of the ACM DIS2014 conference to honour and recognise particular ways of documenting design knowledge that might not fit more conventional format outputs. Pictorials are research papers in which the visual components (e.g., diagrams, sketches, illustrations, renderings, photographs, annotated photographs, and collages) play a significant role in conveying novel concepts and research knowledge contribution.

At TEI, successful pictorials should report on tangible, embedded and embodied research, traversing different types of contribution, including (but not limited to) new technical processes, technological materials, tangible methods, digital fabrication approaches, interactive objects, and related theory.

What Pictorials are not

As this format is becoming increasingly popular in our community, we find it important to clarify the role of pictorials as knowledge production formats:

Pictorials are not to be confused with short papers. If the contribution is incipient in any way, your research will likely be much better received in the work-in-progress track.

Consequently, pictorials are not works in progress. Pictorials should offer a complete, well-articulated contribution where the communication of knowledge benefits from designerly, visual means.

⚠️ SOME IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN PREPARING YOUR PICTORIALS:

Does your work require a Pictorial format? Or would it benefit from a more traditional paper submission?
Is the contribution original and complete? If not, consider a WIP submission instead.
Are images/diagrams emphasized over text as the primary means of communicating the research contribution? This is important for pictorial submissions.
Are the implications for the TEI research community clear and sound?
Do images play a meaningful role in clearly presenting the idea? Or are they merely decorative?
Does the placement of images and text compose a good narrative?

Policy on Use of Generative AI / Large Language Models

Text and images generated from AI services, such as ChatGPT, must be clearly marked where such tools are used for purposes beyond editing the author's own text. Please carefully review the April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship before you use these tools. The SIGCHI blog post describes approaches to acknowledging the use of such tools, and we refer to it for guidance. While we do not anticipate using tools on a large scale to detect LLM-generated text, we will investigate submissions brought to our attention and desk-reject papers where LLM use is not clearly marked.

What to submit?

As this year's theme is 'Tide + Tied', we invite submissions that explore interdisciplinary knowledge, bridging the physical and digital, technology and humanity, resurgence and convergence. We expect submissions to be clearly framed within the rapidly developing tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction field. Works framed as research through design and more technical contributions are particularly welcome.

Submissions may cover diverse types of topics that include (but are not limited to):

Design decisions and methods employed to create new interactive techniques and tools.
Artistic explorations or practice-based research in or through tangible computational media technologies to support new human-machine interactions.
Perspectives on tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction range from arts to science and design to education.
Other insights, lessons learned, practices or processes of designing and evaluating tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction technologies.

Submission Guidelines

Pictorials must be submitted in the TEI2026 Pictorials format (see below) and not exceed 12 pages, excluding references. Submissions will be reviewed in a double-blind process, and authors must ensure that their names and affiliations do not appear on the submission. The author and affiliation sections of the 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. The first page of the submission should include the submission's title and a written abstract of no more than 150 words describing the background and contribution to the TEI community. Further written parts known from other conference formats, such as Introduction, Conclusion, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References, are optional. The body of the submission should be an annotated visual composition, and we encourage submissions to use the format creatively. All submissions should be anonymous and submitted via the TEI2026 Precision Conference (PCS) system by July 31, 2025 (abstract and authors' info) and August 7, 2025 (full submissions). If available, we advise you to use the InDesign template. Otherwise, the MS Word or PowerPoint templates are also accessible options.

PCS supports file sizes of up to 150 MB. However, we recommend reducing the resolution size so it is easier for reviewers to download the paper.

Creating accessible PDFs from InDesign, Word, or PowerPoint

Adobe has a great resource for creating accessible PDFs. You can find tutorials from Microsoft if you are using Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint.

Review and selection

The review process is the same as for the paper track. Pictorials will be reviewed in a double-blind process, where each submission will be assigned to two associate chairs (AC and 2AC), who will invite external reviewers to evaluate the quality of the submission and its appropriateness to the TEI community. Authors must ensure that their names and affiliations do not appear on the submitted papers. The author, affiliation, and acknowledgement sections of the template must be left blank. In preparation for the "camera-ready" submissions, all authors will receive instructions on how to prepare their pictorial for publication, including adding the authors, affiliation, and acknowledgements, 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. Submissions 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 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.

For camera-ready submissions, we will ask that all authors make their pictorials accessible by ensuring the document follows best practices in accessibility. Please see the following attachment for more information: PDF accessibility guidelines (coming soon).

Important Update on ACM's Open Access Publishing Model for 2026 ACM Conferences

Beginning January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access.

Accepted authors should ensure they have obtained permissions to use licensed content and images that depict identifiable people in their conference contributions (papers/pictorials, videos, and presentations). Authors will also be required to grant permission for their contributions to be included in the ACM Digital Library. Authors may either assign copyright or a license to ACM, or pay a fee for Open Access.

Under ACM's new model, authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles:

ACM Open Institutional Model – Authors affiliated with one of the 1,800+ participating institutions (currently covering ~70–75% of ACM publications) will not be required to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs).
Article Processing Charges (APCs) – Authors from non-participating institutions will be responsible for APCs, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. For details, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review ACM's APC Waivers and Discounts Policy.

To support the transition in 2026, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy:

$250 APC for ACM/SIG members
$350 APC for non-members

This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

As part of the rights management process, presenting authors will also be asked to opt in and grant permission for their presentations to be recorded and/or streamed at the conference.

More information on rights management is available at: https://authors.acm.org/

Attendance

For the final paper to be published in the conference proceedings, at least one author of each accepted submission must register for the conference by the early registration deadline.

TEI2026 is planned to offer a hybrid experience for certain programs. While only in-person attendance can provide the full 'tangible and embodied' experience, the Paper and Pictorials tracks will provide options for authors to present either in-person OR remotely (recorded presentation + live Q&A, tentatively).

The accepted authors will later be asked for their final plan of the presentation format (in-person/remote) in the conference, while this is not asked or considered through the reviewing process.

Previous Pictorial examples

Fiona Bell, Camila Friedman-Gerlicz, and Leah Buechley. 2025. Biomaterial Recipes for 3D Printing: A Cookbook of Sustainable and Extrudable Bio-Pastes.

Sosuke Ichihashi, Noura Howell, and HyunJoo Oh. 2025. Swell by Light: An Approachable Technique for Freeform Raised Textures.

Valentina Nisi, Mathilde Gouin, Marta Galvão Ferreira, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2025. From visual sketching to knotted figurations: Fabulating in the contact zone.

Oliver Child, Ollie Hanton, Colin Kellett, Matt Sutton, Bruce Drinkwater, and Mike Fraser. 2024. Tangible Explorations of Sonolithography.

Yuzhen Zhang, Ruixiang Han, Ran Zhou, Peter Gyory, Clement Zheng, Patrick C. Shih, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Malte F Jung, Wendy Ju, and Daniel Leithinger. 2024. Wizard of Props: Mixed Reality Prototyping with Physical Props to Design Responsive Environments.

Lea Albaugh, Jesse T Gonzalez, and Scott E Hudson. 2024. Tensions and Resolutions in Hybrid Basketry: Joining 3D Printing and Handweaving.

Elzelinde Van Doleweerd, and Miguel Bruns Alonso. 2023. The Creation of a Holistic Interactive Dining Experience with Shape-Changing Food Materials at Restaurant Alchemist.

Mafalda Gamboa. 2023. My Body, My Baby, and Everything Else: An Autoethnographic Illustrated Portfolio of Intra-Actions in Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Dianya Mia Hua, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2023. Embodied Embroidery: Somaesthetic Interaction Design for Women's Masturbation.

Karen Anne Cochrane, Kristina Mah, Anna Ståhl, Claudia Núñez-Pacheco, Madeline Balaam, Naseem Ahmadpour, and Lian Loke. 2022. Body Maps: A Generative Tool for Soma-based Design.

Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Enrique Encinas, and Dimitrios Raptis. 2022. Spicing It Up: From Ubiquitous Devices to Tangible Things Through Provocation.

Iddo Yehoshua Wald and Oren Zuckerman. 2021. Magnetform: A Shape-change Display Toolkit for Material-oriented Designers.

Sangwon Jung, Ruowei Xiao, Oğuz 'Oz' Buruk, and Juho Hamari. 2021. Designing Gaming Wearables: From Participatory Design to Concept Creation.

Sara Nabil and David Kirk. 2021. Decoraction: a Catalogue for Interactive Home Decor of the Nearest-Future.