Welcome to designing interactive systems 2021. These are the opening remarks.
I'm Wendy Ju.
And I'm Lora Ohelberg. We're the conference co-chairs.
The theme for DIS 2021 acknowledges the unprecedented state of the world
in that our theme is "everywhere and nowhere." So if you're watching this video,
congratulations, you are at DIS 2021.
The goal of this theme is to sort of acknowledge that the roles is a very
challenging place at this time.
And we've managed to somehow center ourselves in miss a lot of chaos and
uncertainty.
This is actually an opportunity for all of us to think a new about where we are
and where we want to go from here.
I'm sure you miss being able to go to conferences and see each other,
but we think that it's been really great to have, um,
the opportunity to still publish, um,
in Designing Interactive Systems without actually having to go through the craziness
of like trying to do something like that online. Um,
this is what is meant on our part to be in a minimalist humane conference,
um, to make things easier for the conference organizers ourselves,
but also for the volunteers, the authors and contributors that, um,
submit things to the conference and for the larger HCI research community.
As a result, we've pared down the conference too.
It's true in centrals of what's,
what's critical for us as a community to have is an opportunity to publish.
So as a result,
we've paired out a lot of the prior tracks that were available last year,
and instead focused on papers and pictorials and hosting a doctoral consortium.
Um, a lot of work, uh, has gone on into making this conference happen,
even though we're not all physically meeting.
And the program committee has been putting in effort for a year to like put on
this conference. So we hope you thank any of these people,
should you ever run across them?
So, as we mentioned, one of our tracks is a papers and pictorials track.
We had 623 paper and pictorial submissions of which 153 were
accepted.
So that's 127 papers and 26 pictorials that actually makes
for a 24.5% acceptance rate. To review all of these paper and pictorials,
we went through a full review cycle. Um,
so we'd like to thank our subcommittee chairs on the technical program
committee,
as well as our associate chairs who helped manage all of the reviews necessary
to bring these publications to you.
Um, we actually have some really great papers. Um,
some of which have won awards and special recognition.
We have four best paper awards with 19 honorable mentions. We also have, uh,
uh, this best pictorial award with four honorable mentions in that category,
as well as two papers that have special recognitions for diversity and inclusion
that were selected by the accessibility and inclusion chairs.
The other track that we have available for DIS is the doctoral consortium,
which is an online synchronous program happening on the 1st and 2nd of July.
Um, we have 12 participants invited to participate in this program and we look
forward to seeing how they turn out.
Um, after papers were accepted,
we had a considerable volunteer effort to put together the
published program.
35 volunteers reviewed the camera ready pre-prints and corresponded with authors
to prepare the publications for the ACM publication system.
And we'd like to thank them all. Here they all are. Uh, this was a huge effort,
um, something that is really new for our community,
and we're really grateful for all the effort that was put in to make this
possible.
So you might be wondering how do I see DIS 2021 content?
So all of our papers are available on the ACM digital library. Um,
there is a conference program and table of contents available at dis.acm.org and
all of our papers and pictorials have videos posted on SIGCHI YouTube.
So the perk of this is that all of our conference content is open regardless of
whether or not you have registered for the conference and is available
asynchronously. So there are no live sessions you must attend.
You can watch videos and read papers at your own convenience.
For accessibility and inclusion. We actually did a lot this year. Um, we,
um,
translated the call for papers into 12 languages so that people from all around
the world might actually know about, uh, DIS and be encouraged to submit.
Um, we wanted to thank our translation volunteers for making that possible.
We also created this special recognition category for diversity and
inclusion papers, and we have a special meet and create community event,
which is taking place online, but asynchronously, um,
from the 28th of June to July 1st.
Finally, we wanted to take a minute to, uh,
to recognize SIGCHI CARES. SIGCHI CARES is a resource, um,
for the ACM SIGCHI community who experience discrimination and or harassment
around professional events.
So CARES is a committee that supports such individuals by allowing them to work
with established members of the SIGCHI community. Um,
and these are people who are approachable and willing to listen and help
navigate through the SIGCHI and ACM reporting and accountability process.
So to learn more about SIGCHI CARES,
you can visit the website below or contact them directly by email.
And with that, uh, Lora,
abd I woould like to thank you and ask you to enjoy DIS 2021.