call for participation

Doctoral Symposium

The UIST Doctoral Symposium provides a unique opportunity for Ph.D. students to interact with established academic and industry researchers in the UIST community. Students can receive both feedback on technical aspects of their research as well as mentoring about different career options. The range of topics appropriate for the Doctoral Symposium is the same as the topics covered in the UIST Technical Papers program. Participants will be selected based on their anticipated contributions to the breadth and depth of the intellectual discussions at the Symposium. The Doctoral Symposium will be held in-person on Saturday, October 29, 2022 in Bend, OR at the conference venue. There will also be a dinner for all panelists and student attendees of the Symposium.

Submission deadline	Wednesday July 20, 2022 5pm PT
Acceptance notification	Wednesday August 17, 2022 5pm PT
Camera-ready versions due	August 24, 2022 5pm PT
Doctoral Symposium Date	October 29, 2022

Submission Information

Eligibility	Current Ph.D. student studying within the full range of disciplines and approaches that contribute to the UIST community. Single-author.
Submission Platform	All submission materials must be submitted electronically to PCS 2.0 before the submission deadline. In PCS 2.0, first click "Submissions" at the top of the page, from the dropdown menus for society, conference, and track select "SIGCHI," "UIST 2022," and "UIST 2022 Doctoral Symposium", respectively, and press "Go."
Submission Format and Length	We will adopt the ACM TAPS Workflow. 4 pages maximum + references.
Accompanying Video	Optional, but highly encouraged. Resolution of 1080p (1920 x 1080) or 4k (3840 x 2160 px), encoded as MP4 using the H.264 codec. Size: under 150 MB. No more than five minutes long. Subtitles are required using a separate .srt or .sbv file.
Maximum File Size	Maximum total size for all files must be under 150 MB.
Anonymity	Not anonymous, include the single author's name and institution(s) on the submission.
Selection Process	Juried by the UIST Doctoral Symposium chairs and invited panelists. Maximum 8 students will be selected. Criteria: anticipated contributions to the breadth and depth of the intellectual discussions of the symposium. Preference will be given to applicants beyond the proposal stage and well into their dissertation research. Does not include an author’s response or conditional acceptance, i.e. authors will only receive feedback along with the final decision.
Publication	Non-archival, ideas presented as the UIST Doctoral Symposium can be resubmitted. Doctoral Symposium abstracts (4 pager) will be included in the ACM digital library as adjunct proceedings and distributed in digital form to conference attendees.
Presentation Format	Talk at the Doctoral Symposium event, followed by extensive discussion with the panel and the other student participants. The student author is requested to attend. The exact times of sessions will be announced after the acceptance notification date.
Novelty of Work	The Doctoral Symposium abstract should describe ongoing work and might summarize the student's full dissertation work, or highlight a particular part in depth.
Posters for Accepted Submissions	Each student is encouraged to present a poster describing his or her work to the full conference. Posters will be presented within the UIST poster session.

Doctoral Symposium Chairs

Questions? Contact: doctoralsymposium2022@uist.org

Student Innovation Contest

Submission deadline	Friday July 29, 2022 11:59pm AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
Acceptance notification	Wednesday August 3, 2022
Submission of Project Video	Tuesday October 25, 2022 11:59pm AoE
Presentation of final demo	At the in-person UIST conference in Bend, Oct 29 - November 2, 2022

Apply here: SIC registration page.

In the UIST Student Innovation Contest (aka the "SIC"), we explore how novel input, interaction, actuation, and output technologies can augment interactive experiences! This year, in partnership with UCL we are seeking students who will push the boundaries of input and output techniques with the ultrasound haptics/levitation toolkit. Join the UIST SIC team and turn your ideas into reality! Meet amazing people! Win fabulous prizes! You can apply here: https://forms.gle/cSgRyiVLQ114Lnp3A.

The UIST SIC is your opportunity to shine and impress the world with your creative ideas! Participants will demo their work during the conference program, and contest winners will be announced during the conference. A jury composed of senior UIST community members will select one team to receive the SIC jury award. On top of that, conference attendees will get a chance to vote for their favorite teams in the People's Choice category. All categories receive prizes.

We will give away the hardware to all selected teams! This is made possible through our generous sponsor University College London! Thank you!

Ultrasound Levitation Kits

This year’s hardware consists of:

• Two ultrasound boards (156 transducers each).
• A set of polystyrene beads of assorted sizes (1-3mm, optimum for levitation).
• A set of pre-cut “LeviProps” and 2 A3 sheets of SuperOrganze, so that you can create your own.
• Access to the API and Unity framework.

The boards provide state of the art control of acoustic fields, allowing transparent delivery of 10K updates per second and capable of levitation (particles, LeviProps and PoV shapes), haptics and parametric audio, as well as multimodal combinations of such types of content. Details related to device control and acoustic solvers are encapsulated into a high-level engine (with C++ and Unity/C# APIs), meaning that you only need to worry about the types of contents that you want to create, their animations and transitions.

Documentation and tutorials are available, as to help you explore the types of contents you can create, and to get you started inventing your own. The kit also includes design files for you to create a frame holding the boards in a conventional top-bottom setup (recommended for levitation-heavy applications and used in our tutorials). However, the software provides flexibility in case you want to arrange them differently (e.g., side-by-side, one board facing each user). Also, the contents delivered by the boards can be combined with other external props to create truly playful and magical experiences.

The teams would require access to the following equipment, in order to use the kit:

• Laser cutter and acrylic (required to build the top-bottom frame).
• Access to a Windows computer and Visual Studio 2017.
• A computer with an NVIDIA graphics card (GeForce GTX 1050 or newer) and 2 USB ports (or a USB hub).
• Any additional devices you want to use (gesture control, tracking, projection, etc.).

To assist the students to develop their applications, we SIC chairs, as well as the developers of the API and hardware from UCL, will provide technical support if they have any questions.

UIST 2022 SIC Challenge: Aware in the Air

Your goal is to design and implement a new interactive system using the ultrasound platform we will provide to you and combining it with any other prototyping materials you have available. To successfully address this challenge, you need to figure out what task(s) you want your system to support, and what interaction(s) you want your system to enable. Your system should motivate the use case and articulate a clear set of assumptions on how it will be beneficial for users. Finally, your system does not have to be limited to one user— ideas that involve well executed, multi-user, simultaneous interactions are often crowd favourites at UIST! You will submit a video of your project demo by October 25th, and demonstrate your idea live at the in-person UIST event in October 29th - November 2nd. Your video will be uploaded and shared at the official ACM SIGCHI YouTube channel (e.g., see UIST 2021 SIC videos)

Application Areas and Design Space

You can build and design your system in a multitude of configurations, which affords the exploration of numerous design primitives. The main constraints are that you make use of the ultrasound platform and provide a way for users to meaningfully interact with the system. With these constraints in mind, you can tackle one or more application areas. Here, we list some of the example application areas and corresponding existing works for inspiration:

(From top left: Volumetric Display using Acoustic Trapping, LeviProps, High-speed Acoustic Holography, Luciora, ArituLev, Mouth Haptics, Mid-air Ballon Interface, LipNotif, PixieDust)

• Mid-air projection display (e.g., [LeviProps], [High-speed Acoustic Holography])
• Mid-air Volumetric 3D Display (e.g., [Volumetric Display], [Photophoretic-Trap Volumetric Display])
• Haptic output devices (e.g., [Ultrahaptics], [HaptoMime])
• Particle-based shape display (e.g., [PixieDust], [Holographic Acoustic Tweezers])
• Self-assembly (e.g., [ArticuLev])
• Wearable and body-based VR haptics (e.g., [Mouth Haptics])
• Tangible object manipulation and actuation (e.g., [Midair Balloon Interface])
• Directional and personal speaker (e.g., [Holographic Whisper])
• Communication and notification assistant (e.g., [LipNotif])
• Tactile communication devices (e.g., [Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display])
• Manipulating other media (e.g., [Volumetric Bubble Display])
• Data visualization and physicalization (e.g., [Floating Charts])
• Combining with meta-materials (e.g., [Metamaterial Bricks])
• Floating LED lights (e.g., [Luciora])
• Mid-air biochips
• Remote collaboration and communication
• Arts and creativity assistant
• Unobtrusive UI in cars/cockpits
• And much more!

Note that these are just examples of areas and scenarios where your system can have a positive impact on society. Feel free to explore more.

Logistics

One of the students of each team will receive the ultrasound set. You will have access to example code to help you get started with the hardware. Teams are encouraged to open source their efforts, and even build on each other’s work. To get you moving fast, we will also provide, on top of all the hardware, a list of tutorials and mentoring sessions to ensure you have everything you need to make your vision a reality!

Registration

To participate, follow the instructions on this form: https://forms.gle/cSgRyiVLQ114Lnp3A.

To complete your submission, you’ll need:

• A description of your idea, in about 100-words.
• Document with sketches or images to illustrate your idea. The document needs to be ACM Template with 2-Column Paper Format — the same as the full paper publication, but 2-page max without references. You can use Official ACM LaTeX template or Overleaf template or 2-Column Word template.
• Link to any additional supporting materials (video, sketches, images, etc.)
• Complete other items in the registration page (contact info, etc.)
• Decisions will be emailed to each team.

For accepted teams, one of your team members MUST register for the UIST conference and pay the registration fee. If you’ve been accepted as a student volunteer, you can let us know as well.

Contest Rules, Details, and Suggestions

• Pre-Selection Criteria: organizers will select up to 10 teams, judged based on usefulness, creativity, complexity, feasibility, and time/resource constraints.
• Maximum team size is 2, and you can’t be part of multiple teams!
• Eligibility: you MUST be a student to participate in this contest. Students of all levels (high school, bachelor's, master's, PhD) are encouraged to participate.
• Registration Requirement: If your team is accepted, at least one of your team members MUST register for the conference (or be accepted as a student volunteer). This is for three reasons: 1) you have to demo your idea at the in-person UIST event, 2) you have to claim your prizes, and 3) UIST is an awesome conference!
• Demo Ideas: during the contest voting period, teams will be allowed to demo one idea. Different demos of the same idea are permitted.
• Demo Code: We encourage you to open-source your code. The organizers will create a github organization where all teams will be able to post their code (don’t worry, we will not judge you on your code!).
• Demo Safety: Safety is our utmost priority. Make sure your demos follow reasonable safety guidelines (i.e., don’t light anything on fire!)

Awards

Innovation comes in many forms. At UIST, we provide Student Innovation Contest awards for the following categories: Jury Award and People's Choice (Attendee Votes). All teams get to keep the hardware kits. Winners will win prizes and a UIST SIC certificate. Note that we reserve the right to change the awards structure during the contest.

Submission Information

Eligibility	Current undergraduate and/or graduate students (Master or PhD) Team size is 2 students
Submission Platform	All submission materials must be submitted electronically to Google Forms before the submission deadline.
Submission Format and Length	2-column 2 pages maximum without references The authors can use Official ACM LaTeX template or Overleaf template or 2-Column Word template.
Anonymity	Not anonymous, include the author’s name and institution(s) on the submission
Selection Process	Juried by the UIST Student Innovation Contest chairs and invited panelists. Maximum 10 teams will be selected.
Presentation Format	At least one author is requested to present their demo during SIC sessions and to speak with conference attendees.

Student Innovation Contest Chairs

Questions? Contact: sic2022@uist.org