UIST Day 3 was a great final day. Thank you all!

by the UIST Publicity Team: Ailie Fraser, Elena Glassman, Haemin Ryu, April Wang, and Josh Urban Davis

Thank you to everyone who attended UIST 2020, hosted virtually October 21–23, 2020. Check out the highlights of the last day of UIST!

Interactive Demos, Posters, and Student Innovation Contest Demos

The last day of UIST opened with our second interactive session and the Student Innovation Contest (SIC) on Discord. Attendees engaged in posters and demo video channels as well as seeking out the rooms which did not have much traffic, to meet with all the presenters who put in a lot of effort. In the live interactive demos, posters, and SIC demos, people made great conversations. After the virtual SIC and demos ended, attendees and judges voted for their favorite ones. In the Closing Remarks, the winners of the SIC and Demos were announced: ‘poimo’ for Best Demo Award; ‘DefeXtiles’, ‘RealitySketch’, and ‘Wearable Subtitles’ for Best Demo Honorable Mention; and ‘Ele-Robo’ for Best SIC Award. Congratulations to all! 🎉

Best Papers Awards

The last parallel paper sessions took place on Zoom with discussions on Discord as well, and we found two more best papers of this year during the sessions.

If you would like to have a more immersive and realistic Virtual Reality experience, please take a deep look at this Best Paper: In the session ForceFeedback and Haptics in VR, “ElaStick: A Handheld Variable Stiffness Display for Rendering Dynamic Haptic Response of Flexible Object” suggested a new shakable and swingable VR haptic controller. By dynamically changing the stiffness of four custom elastic tendons, ElaStick simulates the dynamic response resulting from shaking or swinging flexible virtual objects.

In the Transcribing Words and Directing Voice session, “Multi-Modal Repairs of Conversational Breakdowns in Task-Oriented Dialogs” introduced SOVITE, a new speech plus direct manipulation modal interface. Using mobile app GUI screenshots, SOVITE helps users discover, identify the causes of, and recover from conversational breakdowns for grounding.

Closing Keynote by Sasha Costanza-Chock

The closing keynote this year was by Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock, entitled “Design Justice and User Interface Design.” Dr. Costanza-Chock explored the theory and practice of design justice, discussing how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people. Using an experience with the TSA full-body scanners as an example, Sasha insisted that we can make products more accessible for both majority and minority people. Sasha defines design justice as a framework for analysis of how the design of sociotechnical systems influences the distribution of benefits and burdens between various groups of people. The point of a design justice analysis is to recognize that affordances, disaffordances, and dysaffordances privilege some people over others. The Design Justice Network is a growing community of practice that aims to challenge the social impacts of design, design for good, and ensure equitable distribution of design’s benefits and burdens. Dr. Costanza-Chock implored us to consider how user interface design can contribute to building “a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.”

Closing Remarks

Despite the circumstances, this UIST proved to be as fantastic as ever. This year, we surpassed 700 attendees at UIST 2020! The technology worked surprisingly smoothly for demos and posters, as well as for talks and networking. Using pre-recorded lectures for the paper sessions was a smart decision on behalf of the organizers, as it facilitated a fluid, stream-lined procession through the lecture program. Chat on Discord was lively as well throughout the conference, with plenty of engagement during the #welcome-reception and lively #townhall. Popular chat rooms this year included the wonderful discussion and planning in the #diversity-and-inclusion channel, as well as the playful #introduce-your-pet channel, where attendees were able to take a break and flip through photos of their colleagues’ companion floofs.

On behalf of the entire organizing committee, we’d like to extend a HUGE thank you to our fabulous group of Student Volunteers, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to keep UIST running smoothly. Thank you SVs!

Thank you to our wonderful sponsors who made all this possible: Facebook Reality Labs, Autodesk, Adobe, Microsoft, and ACM!

We’d also like to thank the entire UIST 2020 organizing committee, especially our fearless leaders Shamsi Iqbal & Karon MacLean, and our superheroes David Lindlbauer & Thomas Langerak (Virtual Experience & Operations) and Oliver Schneider & Jasper Tran O’Leary (Web & Design)! If you missed the opening plenary, check out the video below introducing all our fabulous committee members:

Finally, Shamsi and Karon passed the virtual baton to next year’s general chair, Jeff Nichols. Next year, the conference will be held either virtually or physically in San Diego or Portland, USA. Paper submissions will be due in April 2021. See you in 2021!

After the conference… What now?

Plenary recordings will be posted on the website for attendees as soon as we can process them. (Day 1 plenaries are already up!) The Discord server will remain open as long as there are people active on it, so please hang out for the unofficial after-party in the social channels and keep the conversation going, especially in channels #diversity-and-inclusion, #townhall, #job-search-and-offers, and our sponsor channels.

Please take a moment to help us understand how UIST 2020 went for you by filling out our survey, which you should have received via the email you registered with or seen in the #announcements channel on Discord. Your feedback will be used to assess the sustainability of the conference and help us better plan for UIST 2021. We expect the survey should take no more than 10 minutes of your time. Should you have any questions or concerns related to the survey, do not hesitate to contact the Sustainability Team, Kristin Williams & Chris Clarke. Thanks and good night!