Academic Tracks

Chairs: Markku Turunen (Tampere University), Pauliina Baltzar (Tampere University), Vasiliki Mylonopoulou (University of Gothenburg), Mark Häkkinen (ETS)

Only some of the disabilities are visible in the physical world. When it comes to digital space, all disabilities are more or less invisible. From the physical society, we can identify accessibility barriers more easily: buildings can be accessed only using stairs. How about from a digital society? For some of the aspects we pay attention, such as too small font size, but do we pay attention to whether the websites work with screen readers? Do we acknowledge, if the digital world is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, is it accessible to all people?

Some ways have been created to support the inclusive, accessible design of digital society. In 2016 United Nations added the reformative promise NO ONE LEFT BEHIND to the Sustainable Developmental Goals. By 2018, countries in the European Union had to have relevant legislation to ensure the web accessibility of public services provided through apps or the web, via Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and in June 2025 European accessibility act comes into effect. These policies and derivatives show that accessibility to digital society is not just a perk but a necessity.

Up to recently, accessibility was an add-on feature to the digital world instead of being integrated in the design process. Involvement of various users through participatory design has increased throughout the years, organized bodies are created in different countries, and more people with diverse needs start to influence the design of digital interventions. Regardless of this involvement, we have a long way to create an accessible digital society.

In this track, we invite multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners who work with matters of diversity, accessibility, disability, and design justice to submit.

A range of types of papers can be submitted in this track including literature reviews, empirical studies, theoretical papers, and experimental studies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• AI and diversity including topics such as AI to assist in creation of accessible system, AI that is inclusive and free of risks and biases impacting people with disabilities.
• Accessibility and metaverse
• Game accessibility
• Accessibility in (digital) education
• Accessibility of tools, designs, and methods
• Design methods and tools for inclusive user research
• Designing technology and digital services for accessibility and inclusion
• Inclusion/exclusion of a population from the digital society

Chairs: Mattia Thibault (Tampere University), Anton Nijholt (Twente University), Linda Hirsch (Fraunhofer FIT), Manuel Baer (University of Auckland)

Throughout history, cities have been supporting communities turning spaces into places through innovation. From paved streets to extended realities, cities are dynamic centres of evolving and competing technological augmentations.

The interweaving of digital technologies into cities however requires continuous monitoring and adjustment. Paradigms such as Smart City and Smart Citizenship, attempt to codify the intricacies of the relations between digital and physical urban spaces.

Augmented Cities pave the way to a broad range of interactions and experiences, including playful use of technology, participatory approaches to data collection and interpretation (Baer et al. 2022), material innovations (Hirsch et al. 2022) and XR augmentations. These spaces are inhabited by Augmented Communities, made of increasingly smarter and more playful citizens, but also a variety of posthuman inhabitants such as animals, robots, and AI (Nijholt 2020).

The combinations between urban and citizen augmentations open the doors for all sorts of future developments that today we can only speculate about (Thibault et. al. 2020).

This track aims to explore current implementations, as well as future potential of Augmented Cities and Communities. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to concepts, methods, prototypes, tools, approaches and theories related to:

• Smart and Playable Cities: urban technologies, urban robots, digital twins, urban AI, urban gamification, hackable cities.
• Smart and Playful Communities: wearable urban technologies, bottom-up smart projects, transhuman citizens.
• Posthuman and post-Anthropocene cities: urban animals, AI, more than human design, Internet of Animals.
• Sustainability and inclusivity: ecologic and climate resilient cities, e-mobility, the fabrication city, accessibility, cities for all ages, gender-neutral cities.
• Urban Digitalisation: participatory urban data collection, generation, interpretation, participatory urban planning, citizen science, bottom-up urban sensor networks

References:
Baer, M. F., & Purves, R. S. (2022). Window Expeditions. Applied Geography, 148.
Hirsch, L., Economidou, E., Paraschivoiu, I., & Döring, T. (2022). Material meets the city. Interactions, 29(1), 58-63.
Nijholt, A. (2020). Virtual and Augmented Reality Animals in Smart and Playful Cities. In ICIEV, 1-7.
Thibault, M., et al. (2020). Transurbanism. In Proceedings of the DIS Conference, 1915-1928.

If you have questions, please contact mattia.thibault@tuni.fi

Chairs: Henri Pirkkalainen (Tampere University), Kristian A. Bjørkelo (University of Bergen and Nord University)

The use of information technology (IT) provides numerous potentials and delights for individuals in work and non-work-related settings. Many potentials relate to increased productivity and performance as industries adopt new ways of working with IT due to digitalization. Despite these examples of potentials and delights, IT use has also been associated with a number of negatively-associated outcomes and side-effects.

The term “dark side of IT use” refers to a “collection of ‘negative’ phenomena that are associated with the use of IT, and that have the potential to infringe the well-being of individuals, organizations and societies”. Prior literature in the work-related context has examined aspects of employee’s technostress and coping, security and privacy concerns, information load and IT engagement, IT interruptions, and deviant workplace behaviors. In non-work-related context, researchers have examined serious negative phenomena such as technostress and well-being strains in the use of social networking sites, addiction to IT and computer games, excessive and problematic IT use, coping strategies for negative IT experiences, fake news distribution, illicit content on the Dark Web, alienation in smart homes, affording extremist and racist discourse and organization, fomenting civil strife, toxic discourse, and cyberbullying. More recently studies have investigated negative effects of machine learning-based Artificial Intelligence applied to organizational processes, such as algorithmic bias, surveillance and ethical issues.

As new technologies emerge, so do more and varied negative impacts. The prevalence and significance of the negative effects of IS use for individuals, organizations, and societies illustrate the importance of extending the research in this area. We invite submissions that explore new, emerging phenomena, advance prior literature and apply/develop new measures, methods and insights related to dark side of IT use. Thus, we invite theoretical/conceptual articles, empirical research (e.g., in-depth case/field/interview studies, surveys, experiments, longitudinal studies), meta-analyses and others embedded in work and non-work-related contexts.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Negative outcomes or side-effects of using emerging technologies (e.g., virtual/augmented/mixed reality, internet of things, wearable technology, ubiquitous systems)
• Issues on interacting with Artificial Intelligence (e.g., dehumanization)
• Deception and malicious use of IT (e.g., distribution of disinformation, fake news)
• Technostress and strains
• IT addiction, IT dependence and problematic IT use
• IT interruptions
• Multitasking
• The effects related to privacy and security concerns
• Toxic discourse, cyberbullying and internet stalking (doxxing)
• Work surveillance (e.g., Employee monitoring, IT-mediated control)
• Polarization of society
• Extremist content
• Memetic Warfare
• Algorithmic bias
• Rebound effects of digital sustainability technologies
• The Dark Web, illicit content, and disnormative information practices
• Dark patterns in the monetization of digital services
• Power misuse with Internet of Things related technologies
• Ethical issues with blockchain applications (e.g., cryptogames, NFTs, cryptocurrencies)

Chairs: Daniel Fernandez Galeote (Tampere University), Zampeta Legaki (Tampere University), Karpouzis Kostas (Panteion University)

During the last decade, the world’s data has been doubling every two years. At the pace at which humans create it, data is expected to increase exponentially. This technological trend could enhance our perspective on how we look at the world, how we understand it, and how we can forecast its future. However, given the vast amounts of data generated in parallel to human technological progress, society is faced with the challenge of transforming a world full of data into a data-driven world. In this context, games and other playful ways to interact with data (through interactive systems, either computer-based or analog) can provide engaging, insightful, and potentially transformative experiences so that this data-driven world has a purpose: to do good.

But what do we mean by good? Here, to do good means to engage (with) data for the flourishing of people and our planet. We may raise awareness, foster understanding, and support well-informed decision-making about current major societal challenges, including health and wellbeing; food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, water research, and the bioeconomy; secure, clean and efficient energy; smart, green and integrated transport; climate and pro-environmental action and resource efficiency; inclusive, innovative and reflective societies; protecting freedom, security, and at-risk populations; and ethics, both in research and in data-based practice.

This track welcomes contributions that focus on persuasive technologies, human-computer interaction, and strategies (analog or digital) that aim to support public understanding, engagement, or dissemination of societal challenges (e.g., data-driven strategies, playful methodologies), and/or are related to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Data and/or games for good, data for change
• Information systems, data visualization, visualization analytics for and from social challenges
• Information design, data journalism, and data activism related to sustainability topics
• Prototypes, applications, and playful and gameful approaches and design for social change
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methodologies for the good of people and planet

Chairs: Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk (Tampere University), Ahmet Börütecene (Linköping University), Mark Blythe (Northumbria University), Jakita Owensby Thomas (Auburn University)

With recent rapid developments in human-computer interaction, we are now facing emerging technologies which will have major impacts on humanity, potentially dramatically altering our ways of living. Technologies that once were the domain of science fiction, such as brain-machine interfaces, body augmentations, mind upload, habituation of space and robotic companions, are now here, or on the immediate horizon. These emerging technologies promise exciting opportunities for humankind, but they come with many challenges and might lead to massive societal, cultural and individual paradigm shifts. Understanding the impacts of these emerging technologies is remarkably challenging with conventional HCI methods such as user experiments or interviews.

Design Fiction, Speculative Design or Critical Design have emerged as methods to grapple with the possible futures of emerging technologies. These methods create fictional worlds oriented around proximate futures of technology allowing researchers to contemplate the consequences and possibilities of new technologies. Speculative and critical methods help us think rigorously and systematically about the future, but also playfully. Our aim with this track is to create a venue for research projects which adopt less conventional methods and in the long term become a frontier publication avenue for such research projects.

Submissions may include a variety of methods, but they MUST include a section that critically engages with the related research by using tools such as fictional abstracts, fictional prototypes, speculative design proposals or pastiche scenarios. Accordingly, we do not have a clear boundary on the topics we accept, however, some of the exemplar topics include:

• Body-integrated Technologies
• Brain-Computer Interfaces
• Techno-Spiritual Studies
• Alternative forms/conceptions of intelligence
• Afrofuturism, Black Futuring, Feminist Science Fiction
• Indigenous Futurism
• Posthuman Subjectivities
• Dystopia and Utopia Studies
• Politics of race, class, gender, and ability in imagined futures
• Altered States of Consciousness
• Transhuman and Posthuman Technologies
• Robotic Agents & Artificial Intelligence
• Habitation of Space
• Solarpunk, Steampunk, Cyberpunk

If you are unfamiliar with the methods mentioned in this track but still would like to submit your research, we recommend a few readings that can lead to a successful submission (see here). These methods can help researchers form novel perspectives to engage with their topics. Therefore, we expect submissions from all fields and encourage authors to engage with the fictitious, speculative and critical design methods.

If you have questions, please contact oguz.buruk@tuni.fi

Chairs: Juho Hamari (Tampere University), Benedikt Morscheuser (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen)

Gamification is considered a “process of transforming any activity, system, service, product, or organizational structure into one which affords positive experiences, skills, and practices similar to those afforded by games, and is often referred to as the gameful experience” (Hamari, 2019). This is frequently employed, albeit optionally, with the aim of promoting changes in human behaviors or sparking cognitive processes. Given that the primary inspirations for gamification are games and play, gamification is implemented through the utilization of elements, principles, and technologies of game design (Morschheuser et al., 2018).

Gamification has become an umbrella concept that, to varying degrees, includes and encompasses other related technological developments such as serious games, game-based learning, exergames & quantified-self, games with a purpose/human-based computation games, alternate reality games, and persuasive technology.

Secondly, gamification also manifests in a gradual, albeit unintentional, cultural, organizational and societal transformation stemming from the increased pervasive engagement with games, gameful interactions, game communities and player practices (Hamari, 2019). For example, recently, we have witnessed the popular emergence of augmented reality games and virtual reality technologies that enable a more seamless integration of games into our physical reality. Moreover, the media ecosystem has also experienced a degree of ludic transformation: with user-generated content becoming an important competitor for large media corporations. This transformation has led to the development of several emerging phenomena such as the Youtube and modding cultures, esports, or the ‘metaverse’, that have penetrated the cultural membrane allowing games to seep into domains hitherto dominated by traditional media.

Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

• Users: e.g. Engagement, experience, motivations, user/player types
• Education: e.g. Serious games, game-based learning, simulation games
• Media: e.g. eSports, streaming
• Commerce: e.g. Game business models, free-to-play, gamification as marketing, adoption
• Work: e.g. Organizational gamification, gameful work, games-with-a-purpose, playbour
• Technology: e.g. VR, AR, MR, gameful wearables, metaverse and IoT
• Toys & playfulness: e.g. Digital puppetry, smart toys
• Health: e.g. Quantified-self, games for health, health benefits
• Theories/concepts/methods: Contributions to science around gamification

Hamari, J. (2019). Gamification. The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology, 1-3.
Morschheuser, B., Hassan, L., Werder, K., & Hamari, J. (2018). How to design gamification? A method for engineering gamified software. Information and Software Technology, 95, 219-237.

Chairs: Velvet Spors (Tampere University), Ferran Altarriba Bertran (Escola Universitària ERAM), Sebastian Prost (Northumbria University), Sarah Webber (University of Melbourne)

This track aims to bring together a body of exciting research into the design of interactive technologies to support, encourage, and inform human-nature interaction. We welcome a broad range of research topics and projects that explore the potential of tech to enhance people’s experiences of and relationships with(in) nature. In particular, we are interested in works that transcend the bounds of techno-solutionism; that is, works that explore how technology could contribute to enriching human-nature interactions beyond productivist or otherwise utilitarian frames, thus embracing the importance of alternative values such as joy, fun, care, or multi-species kinship. Overall, we intend to stimulate a conversation around the potential of technology to support future human-nature interactions that are experientially rich, socio-culturally meaningful, ecologically caring, fun and/or which elicit awe or joy.

We welcome papers and pictorials, as well as workshops, posters, and demonstrations representing various research approaches and methodologies. Due to the track’s theme and focus, we expect the conversation to have a slight orientation towards HCI, interaction design, and design research. However, we also welcome submissions from other disciplines such as social sciences or the arts, e.g. in the form of research or artistic work centred on the impact of tech on people’s relationship with nature. We invite a range of different submission types, including theoretical works, argumentation essays, empirical studies, design cases, annotated portfolios and pictorials, experiences, artworks, and methods papers.

In summary, this track’s topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• The impact of technology on human-nature interactions
• Technology design centred on values of joy and/or care (for the environment, for oneself, for other humans, for other species…)
• Celebratory technology for nature-related activity
• Technology that augments, imitates, simulates, or otherwise digitizes nature experiences
• Design research that touches upon environmental and ecological justice, restoration, sustainability, and/or climate change
• Participatory engagements that reflect on local flora and fauna through technology
• Playful or gameful designs targeting experiences of the natural world
• Novel methods for co-designing for and/or from natural ecosystems, let them be on land (forests, grasslands, agricultural land, mountains, deserts…) or in water (oceans, coasts, lakes, rivers, wetlands…)
• Critical, speculative, and/or theoretical works that reflect upon these themes and concerns
• Nature-related future making
• Design for noticing and attuning to (being part of) nature and the more-than-human world
• Human-Nature collaborations in food practices, for example food production, gardening, foraging, processing, re-using, etc.

Chairs: Nannan Xi (Tampere University), FIona Nah (City University of Hong Kong), and Philipp A. Rauschnabel (Universität der Bundeswehr München)

With the rapid development and maturity of innovative information and computing technologies, the vision of an alternate and decentrally organized digital world has arisen – often referred to as the “metaverse”. The ongoing debates and research initiatives have not yet fully concluded what exactly constitutes a – or the – metaverse but we know from research that virtual and hybrid reality formats, often summarized under the umbrella term “XR” (X can be replaced by any form of new reality), will play a dominant role. More specifically, concepts such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) will provide access to Metaverse-environments. Within these environments, cryptocurrencies, digital twins, avatars, digital identities, and new social/legal systems will likely play important roles in distinguishing the metaverse concept from digital environments we know today.

On a broader level, little is known about the general “nature” of the metaverse concept (e.g., how different players define and evaluate it or how it can impact societies at large). In contrast to the idea of the metaverse, XR technologies have been on the market for several years and they provide multiple opportunities for research that include, but are not limited to, usability, comfort, functionality, interactivity, vividness, privacy, ethical and legal issues, and unexpected adverse outcomes. Such hurdles and concerns warrant researchers’ attention.

We encourage submissions from any disciplinary background that uses any research approach. Authors of accepted papers in this track are also invited to submit an expanded version of their papers to the AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (THCI) after the conference.

Topics of interest to this track include but are not limited to:

• Usability: e.g. design, interface, and evaluation
• Adoption: e.g. acceptance, usage, and satisfaction
• Dark side: e.g. challenges, risks, and ethical concerns
• Experience: e.g. affect, enjoyment, playfulness, presence, immersion, embodiment, flow, interactivity, and vividness
• Information and knowledge: e.g. cognitive skill, learning performance, training, information processing, and knowledge management
• Social interaction: e.g. crowdsourcing, collaboration platform, team building, co-creation, collaboration, competition, and social capital
• Organizational system: e.g. decision making, strategic management, leadership, innovation, and communication
• Value and outcomes: e.g. individual wellbeing, self-efficacy, trust, pro-environmental outcomes, sustainability, human rights, and cultural aspects

Chairs: Sumita Sharma (University of Oulu), Yixiao Wang (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Carlos Aguiar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Our everyday lives are more technology rich than ever with fast emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies impacting our lives in various ways – from ChatGPT taking the world by storm when it comes to student essays or journalism, to propagation of biases (such as gender, racial) in algorithmic decision making. Robots are also rapidly spreading to all spheres of life and taking more roles in society, from massive industrial automation to supportive application in education, medicine, and households.

For this track, we welcome papers focusing on all things related to Robots and AI! This includes how various demographics of people interact with robots and AI in their everyday lives, the impact of such interactions on the people, community, and society at large, the ethical and societal issues that arise, and also explorations of newer ways of interactions.

We especially encourage papers that present explorations, experiments, and/or field studies focusing on AI-embedded robotics that are socially interactive/intelligent. This track is a great opportunity to initiate a multidisciplinary discussion on the key challenges and opportunities of human-robot-interactions and human-machine(AI) interactions on theoretical and practical levels.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Sciences
• Human-robot communication and interactions
• Ethical perspectives to Robots and AI (data privacy, security, trustworthiness, transparency, fairness, accountability)
• User-centred and machine-centred design: theories, methods, frameworks
• UX in Robots and AI

Chairs: Muhterem Dindar (Tampere University), Oleksandra Poquet (Technical University of Munich)

Rapid technological advancements have fastened uptaking of digital tools and environments in the educational landscape. Games, simulations, extended reality mediums, and internet-enabled platforms have been increasingly used for teaching and learning within and outside the schools. The challenges in designing effective, efficient and enjoyable learning experiences with digital technologies have drawn the attention of scholars from a broad range of fields including psychology, learning sciences, and computer science. This track provides an opportunity for the researchers to partake in transdisciplinary discussions and collaborations on designing and implementing context-aware, social, adaptive, personalized, and playful technologies for education.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Gamified/Game-based Learning
• Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality Applications in Education
• Teaching and Learning with Artificial Intelligence
• Learning Analytics
• Human-Computer Interaction in Educational Technology
• Online Learning Platforms (e.g. MOOCS, and video conferencing systems)
• Mobile Learning Systems
• Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
• Data and Methodological Issues in Digital Education