Invitation To Submit


Deadlines      Participation Categories

The annual CHI conference is the leading forum for the exchange of ideas on all aspects of human-computer interaction. CHI 96 invites you to submit work to share with the CHI community.

This year's theme is Common Ground and CHI 96 seeks the active participation of everyone interested in human computer interaction. CHI is one of the most diverse communities we can think of anywhere, with contributors from many disciplines, institutional settings, geographical locations and intellectual perspectives. Where else can you meet graphic designers, writers, computer scientists, anthropologists, teachers, industrial designers, software engineers, lawyers, psychologists and many others, from every continent except Antartica, all under one roof? At this year's conference we stress communication across groups, for the purposes of learning from one another, influencing one another, and collaborating with one another.

CHI is interested in social, cognitive, aesthetic, engineering, legal, commercial and educational aspects of human computer interaction. Because CHI is a large heterogeneous community, there are a number of different participation categories.

Submissions at a Glance

PARTICIPATION CATEGORY                           DEADLINE

Papers 
Report research or practical results            15 September 1995     

Panels
Discuss and debate pressing issues              15 September 1995     

Tutorials
Teach HCI methods and theory                    28 July 1995          

Short Papers
Present late-breaking results, 
ongoing work in lecture format                  15 December 1995      

Interactive Posters
Present late-breaking results,
ongoing work in interactive format              15 December 1995      

Late Short Papers and Interactive Posters
Last minute submissions                         16 February 1996      

Formal Demonstrations
Present demo in a formal setting                22 September 1995     

Design Briefings
Report process of building an interface         15 September 1995     

Videos
Show and report on dynamic interactions         22 September 1995	

Organization Overviews
Summaries of HCI work taking place in
institutions, organizations, or groups          15 September 1995       

Informal Demonstrations
Present demo in informal setting                Sign up at conference   

SIGs
Meet people with similar interests in 
informal setting                                15 December 1995        

Social Action Interactive Posters
Share community outreach Work                   15 December 1995        

Workshops
Discuss focused topic in a 
small-group setting                             15 September 1995       
 
Doctoral Consortium
Ph.D. students share their work                 13 October 1995         

Basic Research Symposim
Active researchers explore new ideas            1 February, 1996

Choosing A Participation Category

If you are unsure of which category to submit to, please consult the Co-Chairs of categories that seem relevant, or a Technical Program Co-Chair.

CHI Mentoring * NEW *

Every year CHI submissions from people unfamiliar with the CHI community are rejected because authors do not understand the expectations for a CHI submission. Sometimes the rejected submissions are from non-North American authors, or from practitioners, or from other groups. We are missing a lot of interesting viewpoints at the CHI Conference because of this problem. If you are not familiar with how to write a good CHI submission, please ask for a mentor. A mentor is a person who helps you learn something unfamiliar through a personal one-on-one relationship. Ask for a mentor by contacting a Technical Program Co-Chair through electronic mail, fax or phone.

If you want to ask for a mentor we will need to hear from you no later than 10 weeks prior to the submission deadline for the chosen category. We highly recommend that you request a mentor even earlier.

You may need a mentor to help you choose a submission category, or to help you figure out how to prepare your submission, or both. The mentor does not prepare the submission for you but helps you do a better job of it yourself. The mentor would address questions such as, but not limited to:

Are the issues addressed relevant to the CHI community? How could the work be made more relevant?
Is he work adequately related to and differentiated from other relevant work that CHI community members are likely to be familiar with?
Is the information given about methodology and results at the right level of detail and rigor for a CHI audience?

We expect mentoring will be most useful for participants from outside of North America or from areas that have not traditionally contributed to CHI (e.g., from a particular application domain). However, mentoring is available to any submitter on a first come, first serve basis.

Please note that there are no guarantees that participating in this program will ensure that your submission will be accepted by the review committee. The mentoring process is completely independent of the review process.

The mentor does not become a co-author. The mentor need not appear in the acknowledgements of an accepted submission, as mentoring is a private matter between mentor and submitter. In the Proceedings we will have a page listing those who mentored to acknowledge their contribution, but acknowledgement is completely separate from an individual submission.

If you are interested in having a mentor, please apply early, even before you have written your submission. We have limited resources (volunteers) available, so mentors will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. Furthermore, the feedback given by the mentor may require extensive modifications to the submission, which cannot easily be done at the last minute.

Mentoring is available to submitters in all participation categories covered in this Call for Participation.

Multiple and Related Submissions

You may prepare as many submissions as you like in the same or different categories. In a given category, materials should be presented only once.

Language of the Conference

In keeping with the international character of CHI 96, the written and spoken language of the conference is English.

Quality

To get a CHI submission accepted you must have something new and significant to say. All submissions should address the following:

The relationship of your work to similar work in the field.
- Review the literature carefully. Please read and cite relevant material from previous CHI Proceedings and Companions as a minimum.
Content.
- State your message clearly.
- What methods did you use and why?
- What are your findings or what are the issues?
Consequences.
- What should the audience do differently if and when they have accepted your message?
- What are the directions for future work based on your work?

Review Process

All submissions will be reviewed by the technical area Co-Chairs and their committees. Submissions will be evaluated according to accepted CHI standards of excellence. If you have questions about these standards, please see information in the individual submission categories, retrieve the additional electronic documents mentioned there, or contact one of the Co-Chairs.

If you need further help please request a CHI mentor.

Publication: Conference Proceedings, Companion and CD-ROM

Accepted papers will be published in the CHI 96 Conference Proceedings. Other material will be published in the Conference Companion, a separate volume. The Conference Companion is a citable archival source: it will have an ISBN number and will be available for sale through ACM.

Accepted submissions will also be published electronically on the CHI 96 CD-ROM.

Reaching the Entire CHI Community

CHI 96 encourages participation from the entire CHI community in the following ways:

International Relations Co-Chairs represent CHI communities from America, Asia, Australia, and Europe and may be contacted to get more information on any aspect of participation in the Conference.
Conference committees are composed of individuals from a variety of countries and disciplines.
Mentoring is available.
Guides to successful submission and answers to frequently asked questions are available. Please see individual submission categories for details on where to find this information.
For the Technical Program, the technical merit of submissions is more important than the quality of the English used in the submission. However, the better your English is, the more readily your ideas communicate. Submitters are encouraged to find a native speaker of English to help edit the submission or ask for a CHI mentor.