CFP – Pictorials

Call for Pictorials

IDC 2024 invites the submission of pictorials that build on the IDC 2024 theme of “Inclusive happiness”. Pictorials leverage the power of visual communication to integrate images, layout, and typography in novel forms of presentation that are essential to the work itself.

Full papers and pictorials published at IDC are ACM archival publications and will be made available through the ACM in the Digital Library. 

General Information

Pictorials were first introduced at DIS2014 with the aim of supporting the presentation and communication of research ideas, design practices, methods, provocations, insights, and contributions in a more visually rich format. Since then, they have been successfully implemented at DIS, C&C, and TEI conferences. Pictorials at IDC were first introduced in 2022.

What are Pictorials?

Pictorials are papers in which the visual components (e.g., diagrams, sketches, illustrations, renderings, photographs, annotated photographs, and collages) play a primary role in conveying ideas and research contributions in addition to the accompanying text. Pictorials leverage the power of visual communication with the effective use of visual languages and high-quality images. They may have a practical or theoretical nature or both.

Through Pictorials, researchers, practitioners, industry professionals, artists, designers, and students from various disciplines, including engineering, interaction design, computer science, product design, media studies, and the arts are encouraged to express and unpack their design practices and projects in visually rich ways.

As such, pictorials are equivalent contributions to Full Papers in every way (e.g., production standards, archival qualities, reviewing standards, presentation times, institutional reporting).

Pictorials are meant to contribute to knowledge in themselves rather than merely document concepts, methods, and processes that we already know. Visual components can be contributions to design knowledge in and of themselves, as a form of making, but they should also be accompanied by a narrative that helps the audience understand what the knowledge contribution is. It is this scaffolding that transforms a Pictorial into research and guarantees that it can be treated as an argument in research discourse. At the same time, the textual narrative should be just that – a scaffolding to support the contribution of the visual content.

Like full papers, the content of your pictorial is expected to be your own original work for the most part. While it is perfectly fine to include some visual materials created by others with attributions and permissions, such materials must be clearly marked as reference rather than main argument. Just as you would not write a text-oriented paper that is mostly quotes to others, your pictorial must not primarily rely on visual materials created by others. On the other hand, your pictorial is expected to reference and build on the work of others with the same scholarly integrity as a full paper.

Some important points to consider when preparing your pictorials:

  • Does your work require a Pictorial format, or would it be clearer in a more conventional textual form?
  • Is the contribution that is presented original and complete? If not, you may want to consider a WIP submission instead.
  • Is the production value for the images and/or diagrams of high quality?
  • Are images/diagrams emphasized over text as the primary means of communicating the research contribution?
  • Does every image used in the Pictorial play a meaningful role and clearly present the idea on its own or with the support of text?
  • Does the placement of images and text compose a good narrative?

Submission Guidelines

Pictorials must be submitted in the IDC 2024 Pictorial format (see below) and not exceed 12 pages, excluding references. The first page of the submission should include the submission’s title, author(s) and their affiliation(s) (leave blank for double-blind review), and a written abstract of no more than 150 words succinctly describing the background and context of the pictorial as well as its contribution to the IDC community. Further written parts known from other conference formats such as Introduction, Conclusion, Discussion, and Acknowledgements are optional.

References and the “Selection and Participation of Children” are mandatory sections that do not count towards the page limit. The main part 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 IDC2024 Precision Conference (PCS) system. Please make sure to select the IDC 2024 Pictorials track inside of PCS.

We strongly advise you to use the InDesign template to compose your Pictorial. If you do not have access to InDesign, please use the Figma, Word, or Powerpoint templates.

Important Dates (Midnight in AoE)

  • January 17, 2024: Abstracts due
  • January 24, 2024: Pictorial submissions due
  • March 18, 2024 :  Author notifications
  • April 29, 2024: Camera-ready submissions due

Review and Selection

Submissions for review should be anonymized according to the CHI Anonymization Policy. Specifically, authors MUST remove their names and institutions from the manuscript heading, and they MUST NOT remove citations to their prior work. We encourage authors to refer to their previous work in the third person. We also encourage suppression of identity in the body of the paper. Submissions that are not anonymized, do not follow the length guidelines or are not in English will be desk-rejected. Submissions will go through a double-anonymous, peer review process. Once accepted for publication, a light second review process might be needed. 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. Accepted IDC Pictorials will be distributed by the conference and in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to researchers and practitioners worldwide. Authors will be expected to attend the conference and will be assigned a time and location to present accepted submissions to conference attendees.

Example Pictorials

For reference, here are some examples of pictorials from IDC 2022 and 2023:

  • Roque, R. 2023. Imagining Alternative Visions of Computing: Photo-Visuals of Material, Social, and Emotional Contexts from Family Creative Learning. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, Chicago, IL, USA, 68–81. https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589235 
  • Ricarose Roque and Mariana Aki Tamashiro. 2022. Making Learning Visible in Constructionist Learning Contexts. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3534093 
  • Sandra Monica Câmara Olim, Valentina Nisi, and Elisa Rubegni. 2022. Periodic Fable Augmenting Chemistry with Technology, Characters and Storytelling. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3534092 
  • Ceylan Beşevli, Tilbe Göksun, and Oğuzhan Özcan. 2022. Designing Physical Objects for Young Children’s Magnitude Understanding: A TUI Research Through Design Journey. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 109–122. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3534091 

And several exemplar Pictorials from DIS, TEI, and C&C are provided for reference:

  • Cláudia Silva, Catia Prandi, Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2019. Towards Locative Systems for, and by, Children: A Cognitive Map Study of Children’s Perceptions and Design Suggestions. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition (C&C ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 382–395. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3325480.3326568
  • Irene Posch. 2021. Crafting Stories: Smart and Electronic Textile Craftsmanship for Interactive Books. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 100, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3446076
  • Svetlana Mironcika, Annika Hupfeld, Joep Frens, Jessica Asjes, and Stephan Wensveen. 2020. Snap-Snap T-Shirt: Posture Awareness Through Playful and Somaesthetic Experience. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 799–809. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3375013