workshops
Workshops are a venue for focused discussion and formulation of shared goals and agendas within the IH community about key topics. The workshops will be held the day before the IH conference begins. Workshop organizers will handle the acceptance to each workshop separately.
Important Dates
All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.
- Thursday, January 22nd 2026: Workshop proposal submission deadline
- Thursday, February 12th 2026 (or earlier): Notification to organizers
- Thursday, February 19th 2026: Organizer e-rights completion deadline
- Thursday, February 19th 2026 (or earlier): Call for participation released by workshop organizers and individual workshop website up and running
- Thursday, February 26th 2026: Initial TAPS upload deadline (Author must upload their paper to TAPS)
- Thursday, March 5th 2026: Publication-ready deadline (Authors upload FINAL TAPS-approved version to PCS)
- last week of March 2026: Participants should be notified approximately the last week of march, workshops can define a specific date as necessary to fulfill whatever selection process they have.
Submission Details
- Online submission: PCS Submission System
- Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column)
Submission Format
- Workshop proposals should be no more than 6 pages (excluding references). Proposals should include: Motivation, Organizers, Plans to Publish Proceedings, In-person, or Hybrid Plans, Asynchronous Engagement, Workshop Activities, Accessibility, 250-word Call for Participation, References.
- Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
- We recommend that authors read the following two policies before submitting:
- The April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the SIGCHI blog post about it.
- The 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans.
Selection Process
Workshops will be Reviewed by the co-chairs. Evaluations will consider fit and contribution to the HCI and Interactive Health community as well as relation to other submitted workshops.
Message from the Workshop Chairs
We invite you to submit proposals for workshops at IH 2026. Workshops are a gathering place for attendees with shared interests to meet in the context of a focused and interactive discussion. Workshops are an opportunity to move our field forward and build community: a chance to find people who care about the same issues, questions, and research agendas as you. IH workshops may address any topic relevant to the global IH community: e.g., questions of basic research as well as applied research, practice, education, new methodologies, emerging application areas, ethics, sustainability, or design innovations. Each workshop should generate ideas that will give the IH community a new, organized way of thinking about the topic or that suggest promising directions for future work. If you are working in an emerging area in IH, please consider organizing a workshop.
As Workshop Chairs, we will create a carefully curated list of workshops that reflects the needs and desires of the community. Please note that we might propose modifications and augmentations, such as suggesting that workshops be combined where appropriate.
The workshop ought to address timely topics and phenomena; therefore, it depends on the year which topics are considered particularly relevant and interesting. The space and technical limitations will also influence the number and form of the selected workshops.
What is a IH Workshop?
Workshops are intended to foster discussion around current ideas and a place to grow our community. Because focused interaction among participants is important, participants should have informed positions based on prior experience. This is typically expressed in position papers submitted by workshop attendees, but we highly encourage workshop organizers to explore new formats of presentation. Please note that workshops should not be miniature paper presentation sessions or panels, but focus on community building and communal knowledge creation through discussion and collective synthesis work.
Two groups of people are involved in a workshop: the organizers and the participants. Organizers are responsible for the workshop’s topic, logistics, and final outcome. Participants are responsible for the content and discussion. The following is an outline of the submission and organization process:
- Workshop organizers submit a workshop proposal (see below for content and format) to IH.
- The Workshop Chairs choose which workshops will be accepted for the conference through discussion with the Workshop Jury.
- Once a workshop is accepted, workshop organizers are responsible for publicizing the workshop and soliciting potential participants.
- Workshop organizers solicit participants for their workshops through their Call for Participation, which is posted to the IH website and includes a link to the workshop’s public website. The submission format is determined by the workshop organizers. It typically is a position paper.
- The workshop organizers will review submissions using their own criteria (not set by the Workshop Chairs or IH Committee) and decide on the final list of accepted submissions.
Preparing and Submitting Your Workshop Proposal
A workshop proposal must be prepared according to the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column). It must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The proposal must be no more than 6 pages (excluding references) and have the following structure:
- Motivation: Provide a strong rationale for the workshop, describe the issues to be addressed, and state concrete objectives.
- Organizers: Present the organizers’ backgrounds and relevance to the workshop topic. The first author will be the main contact person.
- Plans to Publish Workshop Proceedings: State your plans to publish the content participants submitted. We strongly encourage the organizer to publish a collection of the submitted papers as workshop proceedings or ArXiv using report numbers.
- In-person, or hybrid: Please provide details about the mode of organizing the workshop, including what specific technical capacity will be necessary to support the workshop day. Provide clear justifications for the choice of the mode. Explain how the possible remote attendees will interact with in-situ participants and vice versa. We encourage organizers to support asynchronous online materials for participants who cannot attend in-person or synchronously in a virtual space. Please include accessibility requirements such as transcription, if needed.
- Asynchronous Engagement: Please include plans for providing asynchronous materials should any technical or accessibility issues arise that prohibit synchronous engagement. All organizers must support asynchronous online materials for participants unable to access in-person or synchronous virtual space.
- Workshop Activities: Explain the activities you plan to do during the workshop (e.g., keynote, workshop paper presentations). We encourage workshop organizers to explore ways how the workshop may connect workshop attendees with healthcare professionals, patients, or other non-researcher groups.
- Post-Workshop Plans: State your plans for follow-up and creation of tangible outcomes (e.g., poster presentation, publication of a workshop report, plans for a special issue of a journal).
- Call for Participation: Provide a 250-word Call for Participation that will be posted on the conference site to recruit participants for your workshop. This should appear at the end of your workshop proposal and should include the following:
- The format (including adequacy to in-person or hybrid format) and goals of the workshop
- The participant selection criteria
- Requirements for participants’ submissions (e.g., topics to address, page length, format)
- Where should these papers be submitted
- How accepted workshop papers will be published
- The requirement that at least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and that all participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the conference.
- A link to the workshop website.
- References: List of relevant references.
The workshop proposal is the only document that will be included in the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
Additional Rules and Instructions
- Authors are limited to being listed on a maximum of 1 workshop proposal.
- Organizers and participants may only attend one workshop scheduled at a time.
- All organizers must be listed on the initial submission. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata (author names, affiliation, author order) after the submission deadline will be allowed.
- There are a lot of factors and constraints that play into the scheduling decisions. Therefore, the workshop date and time will be scheduled by the Workshop Chairs and Technical Program Chairs instead of chosen by the workshop organizers.
- While breaks will include light refreshments for in-person workshops, lunch is not provided. Workshop organizers should plan on going to local restaurants or make other arrangements.
- The conference provides basic supplies such as pens and large paper pads for workshops during the in-person conference. Workshop organizers are responsible for supplying all additional materials needed. Requests for any special arrangements/logistics planning must be approved by the Workshop Chairs ahead of time (e.g., something beyond a standard room, namely: chairs, tables, and a projector).
- The confidentiality of workshop participants is to be determined by the individual workshop organizers and the content available on workshop websites.
Metadata Integrity
All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.
Accessibility
Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions before peer review begins, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility2026@ih.acm.org.
Selection Process
Workshops are a juried track, proposals will be selected by the Workshop Chairs through the recommendations of a jury. Once we confirm that workshops have met a basic quality standard, acceptance decisions will be based on assessing how compelling the workshop is likely to be for IH attendees and the overall portfolio of proposed workshops.
The Workshop Chairs will consider several factors during the selection process, including:
- The potential for the workshop’s topic to lead to new insights, e.g., a new, organized way of thinking about the topic or promising directions for future work.
- The potential for the topic of the workshop to generate stimulating discussions.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop is well-structured.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop fosters interactivity.
- The overall balance of topics in the workshops program and relevance to the main conference theme.
- The proposed size of the workshop, and whether there is a clear and workable plan for facilitating a lively environment for discussion for all participants, particularly for larger workshops.
- If multiple submissions are received on the same or similar topics, the multiple organizers will be encouraged to work collaboratively to merge them or differentiate them.
Upon Acceptance of your IH Workshop
The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted paper has to follow the publication ready instructions (link to instructions to be added) on preparing and submitting a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready Deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove your contribution from the program. The publication-ready version has to follow the ACM template. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: proceedings2026@ih.acm.org.
Before the Conference
Workshop organizers will be responsible for the following tasks during the time leading up to the conference:
- Publicize your Workshop on the IH webpage: Organizers of accepted papers must provide a title, organizer list, call for participation, and link to the workshop website, which will be published on the IH website prior to the conference. All other submitted materials for accepted workshop proposal submissions will be kept confidential until the publication of the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
- Publicize Your Workshop: Organizers of an accepted workshop must set up and maintain their own website in which they provide further and updated information about their workshop. In order to have a successful and well-attended workshop, we recommend that you post your call for participation early and widely (e.g., publicize it on social media and on relevant mailing lists, such as CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS).
- Solicit Submissions from Potential Participants: While some organizers may choose alternate formats, a position paper generally outlines the author’s view on the workshop theme and the reasons for the submitter’s interest in the topic.
- Select Participants: Choose participants on the basis of the position papers submitted and your goals for the workshop. Workshop sizes will provisionally be capped at a certain size of participants to allow the workshop to be hosted in the IH venue. In such cases, the registration system will not allow more participants to register for your workshop. Under special circumstances, please contact the Workshop Chairs to inquire if a larger size of your accepted workshop might be possible.
- Provide a Participant List: A list of confirmed participants must be sent to the Workshop Chairs to verify their registration.
- Distribute Accepted Workshop Submissions and Pre-Workshop Materials: Materials and accepted submissions should be accessible to participants at least 1 week before the workshop day.
- Develop a final agenda of workshop activities.
- Develop a plan for any follow-up activities.
At the Conference
The workshop organizers are expected to facilitate discussion, help maintain productive interaction, and encourage participation. The emphasis should be on group discussion rather than on presentations of individual position papers. Diversity of perspectives should be encouraged.
After the Conference
It is expected that workshop results will be communicated to a larger audience. For example, workshop organizers may wish to consider producing a report for publication in ACM Interactions or a future IH submission, including a proposal for continuing the workshop at a subsequent conference. We encourage additional avenues of communication, such as organizing an informal Special Interest Group (SIG) at the conference, preparing an edited book or special issues of journals following the conference, or maintaining a website or email list to network with others who might be interested.
Accepted workshop proposals by the organizers will be published as IH Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library.
ACMs New Open Access Publishing Model
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
All submissions for the IH ’26 conference are not APC-eligible (i.e., they will not incur article processing charges).
workshops
Workshops are a venue for focused discussion and formulation of shared goals and agendas within the IH community about key topics. The workshops will be held the day before the IH conference begins. Workshop organizers will handle the acceptance to each workshop separately.
Important Dates
All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.
- Thursday, January 22nd 2026: Workshop proposal submission deadline
- Thursday, February 12th 2026 (or earlier): Notification to organizers
- Thursday, February 19th 2026: Organizer e-rights completion deadline
- Thursday, February 19th 2026 (or earlier): Call for participation released by workshop organizers and individual workshop website up and running
- Thursday, February 26th 2026: Initial TAPS upload deadline (Author must upload their paper to TAPS)
- Thursday, March 5th 2026: Publication-ready deadline (Authors upload FINAL TAPS-approved version to PCS)
- last week of March 2026: Participants should be notified approximately the last week of march, workshops can define a specific date as necessary to fulfill whatever selection process they have.
Submission Details
- Online submission: PCS Submission System
- Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column)
Submission Format
- Workshop proposals should be no more than 6 pages (excluding references). Proposals should include: Motivation, Organizers, Plans to Publish Proceedings, In-person, or Hybrid Plans, Asynchronous Engagement, Workshop Activities, Accessibility, 250-word Call for Participation, References.
- Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
- We recommend that authors read the following two policies before submitting:
- The April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the SIGCHI blog post about it.
- The 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans.
Selection Process
Workshops will be Reviewed by the co-chairs. Evaluations will consider fit and contribution to the HCI and Interactive Health community as well as relation to other submitted workshops.
Message from the Workshop Chairs
We invite you to submit proposals for workshops at IH 2026. Workshops are a gathering place for attendees with shared interests to meet in the context of a focused and interactive discussion. Workshops are an opportunity to move our field forward and build community: a chance to find people who care about the same issues, questions, and research agendas as you. IH workshops may address any topic relevant to the global IH community: e.g., questions of basic research as well as applied research, practice, education, new methodologies, emerging application areas, ethics, sustainability, or design innovations. Each workshop should generate ideas that will give the IH community a new, organized way of thinking about the
topic or that suggest promising directions for future work. If you are working in an emerging area in IH, please consider organizing a workshop.
As Workshop Chairs, we will create a carefully curated list of workshops that reflects the needs and desires of the community. Please note that we might propose modifications and augmentations, such as suggesting that workshops be combined where appropriate.
The workshop ought to address timely topics and phenomena; therefore, it depends on the year which topics are considered particularly relevant and interesting. The space and technical limitations will also influence the number and form of the selected workshops.
What is a IH Workshop?
Workshops are intended to foster discussion around current ideas and a place to grow our community. Because focused interaction among participants is important, participants should have informed positions based on prior experience. This is typically expressed in position papers submitted by workshop attendees, but we highly encourage workshop organizers to explore new formats of presentation. Please note that workshops should not be miniature paper presentation sessions or panels, but focus on community building and communal knowledge creation through discussion and collective synthesis work.
Two groups of people are involved in a workshop: the organizers and the participants. Organizers are responsible for the workshop’s topic, logistics, and final outcome. Participants are responsible for the content and discussion. The following is an outline of the submission and organization process:
- Workshop organizers submit a workshop proposal (see below for content and format) to IH.
- The Workshop Chairs choose which workshops will be accepted for the conference through discussion with the Workshop Jury.
- Once a workshop is accepted, workshop organizers are responsible for publicizing the workshop and soliciting potential participants.
- Workshop organizers solicit participants for their workshops through their Call for Participation, which is posted to the IH website and includes a link to the workshop’s public website. The submission format is determined by the workshop organizers. It typically is a position paper.
- The workshop organizers will review submissions using their own criteria (not set by the Workshop Chairs or IH Committee) and decide on the final list of accepted submissions.
Preparing and Submitting Your Workshop Proposal
A workshop proposal must be prepared according to the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column). It must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The proposal must be no more than 6 pages (excluding references) and have the following structure:
- Motivation: Provide a strong rationale for the workshop, describe the issues to be addressed, and state concrete objectives.
- Organizers: Present the organizers’ backgrounds and relevance to the workshop topic. The first author will be the main contact person.
- Plans to Publish Workshop Proceedings: State your plans to publish the content participants submitted. We strongly encourage the organizer to publish a collection of the submitted papers as workshop proceedings or ArXiv using report numbers.
- In-person, or hybrid: Please provide details about the mode of organizing the workshop, including what specific technical capacity will be necessary to support the workshop day. Provide clear justifications for the choice of the mode. Explain how the possible remote attendees will interact with in-situ participants and vice versa. We encourage organizers to support asynchronous online materials for participants who cannot attend in-person or synchronously in a virtual space. Please include accessibility requirements such as transcription, if needed.
- Asynchronous Engagement: Please include plans for providing asynchronous materials should any technical or accessibility issues arise that prohibit synchronous engagement. All organizers must support asynchronous online materials for participants unable to access in-person or synchronous virtual space.
- Workshop Activities: Explain the activities you plan to do during the workshop (e.g., keynote, workshop paper presentations). We encourage workshop organizers to explore ways how the workshop may connect workshop attendees with healthcare professionals, patients, or other non-researcher groups.
- Post-Workshop Plans: State your plans for follow-up and creation of tangible outcomes (e.g., poster presentation, publication of a workshop report, plans for a special issue of a journal).
- Call for Participation: Provide a 250-word Call for Participation that will be posted on the conference site to recruit participants for your workshop. This should appear at the end of your workshop proposal and should include the following:
- The format (including adequacy to in-person or hybrid format) and goals of the workshop
- The participant selection criteria
- Requirements for participants’ submissions (e.g., topics to address, page length, format)
- Where should these papers be submitted
- How accepted workshop papers will be published
- The requirement that at least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and that all participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the conference.
- A link to the workshop website.
- References: List of relevant references.
The workshop proposal is the only document that will be included in the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
Additional Rules and Instructions
- Authors are limited to being listed on a maximum of 1 workshop proposal.
- Organizers and participants may only attend one workshop scheduled at a time.
- All organizers must be listed on the initial submission. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata (author names, affiliation, author order) after the submission deadline will be allowed.
- There are a lot of factors and constraints that play into the scheduling decisions. Therefore, the workshop date and time will be scheduled by the Workshop Chairs and Technical Program Chairs instead of chosen by the workshop organizers.
- While breaks will include light refreshments for in-person workshops, lunch is not provided. Workshop organizers should plan on going to local restaurants or make other arrangements.
- The conference provides basic supplies such as pens and large paper pads for workshops during the in-person conference. Workshop organizers are responsible for supplying all additional materials needed. Requests for any special arrangements/logistics planning must be approved by the Workshop Chairs ahead of time (e.g., something beyond a standard room, namely: chairs, tables, and a projector).
- The confidentiality of workshop participants is to be determined by the individual workshop organizers and the content available on workshop websites.
Metadata Integrity
All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.
Accessibility
Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions before peer review begins, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility2026@ih.acm.org.
Selection Process
Workshops are a juried track, proposals will be selected by the Workshop Chairs through the recommendations of a jury. Once we confirm that workshops have met a basic quality standard, acceptance decisions will be based on assessing how compelling the workshop is likely to be for IH attendees and the overall portfolio of proposed workshops.
The Workshop Chairs will consider several factors during the selection process, including:
- The potential for the workshop’s topic to lead to new insights, e.g., a new, organized way of thinking about the topic or promising directions for future work.
- The potential for the topic of the workshop to generate stimulating discussions.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop is well-structured.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop fosters interactivity.
- The overall balance of topics in the workshops program and relevance to the main conference theme.
- The proposed size of the workshop, and whether there is a clear and workable plan for facilitating a lively environment for discussion for all participants, particularly for larger workshops.
- If multiple submissions are received on the same or similar topics, the multiple organizers will be encouraged to work collaboratively to merge them or differentiate them.
Upon Acceptance of your IH Workshop
The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted paper has to follow the publication ready instructions (link to instructions to be added) on preparing and submitting a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready Deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove your contribution from the program. The publication-ready version has to follow the ACM template. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: proceedings2026@ih.acm.org.
Before the Conference
Workshop organizers will be responsible for the following tasks during the time leading up to the conference:
- Publicize your Workshop on the IH webpage: Organizers of accepted papers must provide a title, organizer list, call for participation, and link to the workshop website, which will be published on the IH website prior to the conference. All other submitted materials for accepted workshop proposal submissions will be kept confidential until the publication of the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
- Publicize Your Workshop: Organizers of an accepted workshop must set up and maintain their own website in which they provide further and updated information about their workshop. In order to have a successful and well-attended workshop, we recommend that you post your call for participation early and widely (e.g., publicize it on social media and on relevant mailing lists, such as CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS).
- Solicit Submissions from Potential Participants: While some organizers may choose alternate formats, a position paper generally outlines the author’s view on the workshop theme and the reasons for the submitter’s interest in the topic.
- Select Participants: Choose participants on the basis of the position papers submitted and your goals for the workshop. Workshop sizes will provisionally be capped at a certain size of participants to allow the workshop to be hosted in the IH venue. In such cases, the registration system will not allow more participants to register for your workshop. Under special circumstances, please contact the Workshop Chairs to inquire if a larger size of your accepted workshop might be possible.
- Provide a Participant List: A list of confirmed participants must be sent to the Workshop Chairs to verify their registration.
- Distribute Accepted Workshop Submissions and Pre-Workshop Materials: Materials and accepted submissions should be accessible to participants at least 1 week before the workshop day.
- Develop a final agenda of workshop activities.
- Develop a plan for any follow-up activities.
At the Conference
The workshop organizers are expected to facilitate discussion, help maintain productive interaction, and encourage participation. The emphasis should be on group discussion rather than on presentations of individual position papers. Diversity of perspectives should be encouraged.
After the Conference
It is expected that workshop results will be communicated to a larger audience. For example, workshop organizers may wish to consider producing a report for publication in ACM Interactions or a future IH submission, including a proposal for continuing the workshop at a subsequent conference. We encourage additional avenues of communication, such as organizing an informal Special Interest Group (SIG) at the conference, preparing an edited book or special issues of journals following the conference, or maintaining a website or email list to network with others who might be interested.
Accepted workshop proposals by the organizers will be published as IH Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library.
ACMs New Open Access Publishing Model
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
All submissions for the IH ’26 conference are not APC-eligible (i.e., they will not incur article processing charges).
workshops
Workshops are a venue for focused discussion and formulation of shared goals and agendas within the IH community about key topics. The workshops will be held the day before the IH conference begins. Workshop organizers will handle the acceptance to each workshop separately.
Important Dates
All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.
- Thursday, January 22nd 2026: Workshop proposal submission deadline
- Thursday, February 12th 2026 (or earlier): Notification to organizers
- Thursday, February 19th 2026: Organizer e-rights completion deadline
- Thursday, February 19th 2026 (or earlier): Call for participation released by workshop organizers and individual workshop website up and running
- Thursday, February 26th 2026: Initial TAPS upload deadline (Author must upload their paper to TAPS)
- Thursday, March 5th 2026: Publication-ready deadline (Authors upload FINAL TAPS-approved version to PCS)
- last week of March 2026: Participants should be notified approximately the last week of march, workshops can define a specific date as necessary to fulfill whatever selection process they have.
Submission Details
- Online submission: PCS Submission System
- Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column)
Submission Format
- Workshop proposals should be no more than 6 pages (excluding references). Proposals should include: Motivation, Organizers, Plans to Publish Proceedings, In-person, or Hybrid Plans, Asynchronous Engagement, Workshop Activities, Accessibility, 250-word Call for Participation, References.
- Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
- We recommend that authors read the following two policies before submitting:
- The April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the SIGCHI blog post about it.
- The 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans.
Selection Process
Workshops will be Reviewed by the co-chairs. Evaluations will consider fit and contribution to the HCI and Interactive Health community as well as relation to other submitted workshops.
Message from the Workshop Chairs
We invite you to submit proposals for workshops at IH 2026. Workshops are a gathering place for attendees with shared interests to meet in the context of a focused and interactive discussion. Workshops are an opportunity to move our field forward and build community: a chance to find people who care about the same issues, questions, and research agendas as you. IH workshops may address any topic relevant to the global IH community: e.g., questions of basic research as well as applied research, practice, education, new methodologies, emerging application areas, ethics, sustainability, or design innovations. Each workshop should generate ideas that will give the IH community a new, organized way of thinking about the topic or that suggest promising directions for future work. If you are
working in an emerging area in IH, please consider organizing a workshop.
As Workshop Chairs, we will create a carefully curated list of workshops that reflects the needs and desires of the community. Please note that we might propose modifications and augmentations, such as suggesting that workshops be combined where appropriate.
The workshop ought to address timely topics and phenomena; therefore, it depends on the year which topics are considered particularly relevant and interesting. The space and technical limitations will also influence the number and form of the selected workshops.
What is a IH Workshop?
Workshops are intended to foster discussion around current ideas and a place to grow our community. Because focused interaction among participants is important, participants should have informed positions based on prior experience. This is typically expressed in position papers submitted by workshop attendees, but we highly encourage workshop organizers to explore new formats of presentation. Please note that workshops should not be miniature paper presentation sessions or panels, but focus on community building and communal knowledge creation through discussion and collective synthesis work.
Two groups of people are involved in a workshop: the organizers and the participants. Organizers are responsible for the workshop’s topic, logistics, and final outcome. Participants are responsible for the content and discussion. The following is an outline of the submission and organization process:
- Workshop organizers submit a workshop proposal (see below for content and format) to IH.
- The Workshop Chairs choose which workshops will be accepted for the conference through discussion with the Workshop Jury.
- Once a workshop is accepted, workshop organizers are responsible for publicizing the workshop and soliciting potential participants.
- Workshop organizers solicit participants for their workshops through their Call for Participation, which is posted to the IH website and includes a link to the workshop’s public website. The submission format is determined by the workshop organizers. It typically is a position paper.
- The workshop organizers will review submissions using their own criteria (not set by the Workshop Chairs or IH Committee) and decide on the final list of accepted submissions.
Preparing and Submitting Your Workshop Proposal
A workshop proposal must be prepared according to the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column). It must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The proposal must be no more than 6 pages (excluding references) and have the following structure:
- Motivation: Provide a strong rationale for the workshop, describe the issues to be addressed, and state concrete objectives.
- Organizers: Present the organizers’ backgrounds and relevance to the workshop topic. The first author will be the main contact person.
- Plans to Publish Workshop Proceedings: State your plans to publish the content participants submitted. We strongly encourage the organizer to publish a collection of the submitted papers as workshop proceedings or ArXiv using report numbers.
- In-person, or hybrid: Please provide details about the mode of organizing the workshop, including what specific technical capacity will be necessary to support the workshop day. Provide clear justifications for the choice of the mode. Explain how the possible remote attendees will interact with in-situ participants and vice versa. We encourage organizers to support asynchronous online materials for participants who cannot attend in-person or synchronously in a virtual space. Please include accessibility requirements such as transcription, if needed.
- Asynchronous Engagement: Please include plans for providing asynchronous materials should any technical or accessibility issues arise that prohibit synchronous engagement. All organizers must support asynchronous online materials for participants unable to access in-person or synchronous virtual space.
- Workshop Activities: Explain the activities you plan to do during the workshop (e.g., keynote, workshop paper presentations). We encourage workshop organizers to explore ways how the workshop may connect workshop attendees with healthcare professionals, patients, or other non-researcher groups.
- Post-Workshop Plans: State your plans for follow-up and creation of tangible outcomes (e.g., poster presentation, publication of a workshop report, plans for a special issue of a journal).
- Call for Participation: Provide a 250-word Call for Participation that will be posted on the conference site to recruit participants for your workshop. This should appear at the end of your workshop proposal and should include the following:
- The format (including adequacy to in-person or hybrid format) and goals of the workshop
- The participant selection criteria
- Requirements for participants’ submissions (e.g., topics to address, page length, format)
- Where should these papers be submitted
- How accepted workshop papers will be published
- The requirement that at least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and that all participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the conference.
- A link to the workshop website.
- References: List of relevant references.
The workshop proposal is the only document that will be included in the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
Additional Rules and Instructions
- Authors are limited to being listed on a maximum of 1 workshop proposal.
- Organizers and participants may only attend one workshop scheduled at a time.
- All organizers must be listed on the initial submission. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata (author names, affiliation, author order) after the submission deadline will be allowed.
- There are a lot of factors and constraints that play into the scheduling decisions. Therefore, the workshop date and time will be scheduled by the Workshop Chairs and Technical Program Chairs instead of chosen by the workshop organizers.
- While breaks will include light refreshments for in-person workshops, lunch is not provided. Workshop organizers should plan on going to local restaurants or make other arrangements.
- The conference provides basic supplies such as pens and large paper pads for workshops during the in-person conference. Workshop organizers are responsible for supplying all additional materials needed. Requests for any special arrangements/logistics planning must be approved by the Workshop Chairs ahead of time (e.g., something beyond a standard room, namely: chairs, tables, and a projector).
- The confidentiality of workshop participants is to be determined by the individual workshop organizers and the content available on workshop websites.
Metadata Integrity
All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.
Accessibility
Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions before peer review begins, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility2026@ih.acm.org.
Selection Process
Workshops are a juried track, proposals will be selected by the Workshop Chairs through the recommendations of a jury. Once we confirm that workshops have met a basic quality standard, acceptance decisions will be based on assessing how compelling the workshop is likely to be for IH attendees and the overall portfolio of proposed workshops.
The Workshop Chairs will consider several factors during the selection process, including:
- The potential for the workshop’s topic to lead to new insights, e.g., a new, organized way of thinking about the topic or promising directions for future work.
- The potential for the topic of the workshop to generate stimulating discussions.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop is well-structured.
- The organizers’ ability to demonstrate the proposed workshop fosters interactivity.
- The overall balance of topics in the workshops program and relevance to the main conference theme.
- The proposed size of the workshop, and whether there is a clear and workable plan for facilitating a lively environment for discussion for all participants, particularly for larger workshops.
- If multiple submissions are received on the same or similar topics, the multiple organizers will be encouraged to work collaboratively to merge them or differentiate them.
Upon Acceptance of your IH Workshop
The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted paper has to follow the publication ready instructions (link to instructions to be added) on preparing and submitting a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready Deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove your contribution from the program. The publication-ready version has to follow the ACM template. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: proceedings2026@ih.acm.org.
Before the Conference
Workshop organizers will be responsible for the following tasks during the time leading up to the conference:
- Publicize your Workshop on the IH webpage: Organizers of accepted papers must provide a title, organizer list, call for participation, and link to the workshop website, which will be published on the IH website prior to the conference. All other submitted materials for accepted workshop proposal submissions will be kept confidential until the publication of the IH Extended Abstracts proceedings.
- Publicize Your Workshop: Organizers of an accepted workshop must set up and maintain their own website in which they provide further and updated information about their workshop. In order to have a successful and well-attended workshop, we recommend that you post your call for participation early and widely (e.g., publicize it on social media and on relevant mailing lists, such as CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS).
- Solicit Submissions from Potential Participants: While some organizers may choose alternate formats, a position paper generally outlines the author’s view on the workshop theme and the reasons for the submitter’s interest in the topic.
- Select Participants: Choose participants on the basis of the position papers submitted and your goals for the workshop. Workshop sizes will provisionally be capped at a certain size of participants to allow the workshop to be hosted in the IH venue. In such cases, the registration system will not allow more participants to register for your workshop. Under special circumstances, please contact the Workshop Chairs to inquire if a larger size of your accepted workshop might be possible.
- Provide a Participant List: A list of confirmed participants must be sent to the Workshop Chairs to verify their registration.
- Distribute Accepted Workshop Submissions and Pre-Workshop Materials: Materials and accepted submissions should be accessible to participants at least 1 week before the workshop day.
- Develop a final agenda of workshop activities.
- Develop a plan for any follow-up activities.
At the Conference
The workshop organizers are expected to facilitate discussion, help maintain productive interaction, and encourage participation. The emphasis should be on group discussion rather than on presentations of individual position papers. Diversity of perspectives should be encouraged.
After the Conference
It is expected that workshop results will be communicated to a larger audience. For example, workshop organizers may wish to consider producing a report for publication in ACM Interactions or a future IH submission, including a proposal for continuing the workshop at a subsequent conference. We encourage additional avenues of communication, such as organizing an informal Special Interest Group (SIG) at the conference, preparing an edited book or special issues of journals following the conference, or maintaining a website or email list to network with others who might be interested.
Accepted workshop proposals by the organizers will be published as IH Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library.
ACMs New Open Access Publishing Model
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
All submissions for the IH ’26 conference are not APC-eligible (i.e., they will not incur article processing charges).