A poster is a standalone graphical display that offers prompts for discussion in a conversational way during AfriCHI’16. Posters can describe original work-in-progress, preliminary or late-breaking results or early insights in any area of HCI and suit discussion of stimulating or innovative ideas that are not yet fully validated/materialised. Written abstracts of posters will be double-blind peer-reviewed and, if accepted, will appear in the conference proceedings and a more widely accessible prestige online archive.

Submission format: Extended abstract
Online submission: Online submission system
Submission deadline: Thursday 16 June 2016
Notification: Wednesday 20 July 2016
Camera-ready final deadline: Wednesday 10 August 2016

Objectives

AfriCHI aims to increase HCI’s awareness of designs, tools, inventions, methods, theories and pedagogies for creating or using technology in Africa and to provide opportunities for Africans to benefit from expert feedback and new collaborations. Posters displayed throughout the conference create opportunities for AfriCHI attendees to casually browse new topics. Special interactive sessions around posters offer occasions for small groups or personal conversations with authors. Contributions can include, but are not limited to, any of the following in relation to Africa or Africans:

  • Teaching, learning, educating or developing HCI/Interaction Design capacity
  • Applying HCI in Governments and NGOs
  • Anything to do with Mobile HCI or “Ubiquitous computing”
  • HCI and Health
  • HCI and Educational Technology
  • HCI for Development (HCI4D) or Interaction Design for Developing Regions
  • Engaging indigenous or traditional knowledges in HCI/design
  • Local languages and/or orality and HCI/design
  • Participatory design or co-design
  • Case studies related to HCI in Africa
  • HCI for multi-user interaction
  • HCI and diversity e.g. transnationals, children etc.,
  • HCI and accessibility e.g. disabled people, rural dwellers etc
  • HCI and enterprise and organisational issues
  • HCI and sustainability

Submission

Your submission should include a poster abstract and poster draft, submitted together in a single PDF file of no more than 5 pages. Both items should be well-written and use English language (please see general conference guidelines about English use). The deadline for submission is Thursday 16 June 2016. For questions regarding the formatting and uploading of submissions, please contact: posters at africhi.net. Your abstract and draft must be fully anonymised, to enable double-blind review, please follow the additional instructions about anonymising Extended Abstracts carefully. Your abstract and poster draft must also reflect appropriate ethical practices, including all issues relating to participants’ or subjects’ privacy, intellectual property, personal/sensitive information.

1. A Poster Abstract

Your poster abstract should be formatted using the regular Extended Abstract template. It must be no longer than 4 pages, written in English and understandable to readers who have not viewed your poster. Please note that posters are anonymous and must not include authors’ names, affiliations or contact information until submission of the final camera-ready:

  • Title – on the first page, (with spaces for author(s) and their affiliation(s) that are kept blank until the camera-ready final)
  • Abstract and keywords on the first page
  • A concise description of work presented in the poster.
  • The implications of the work for the community.
  • An overview of future investigations for the work described.
  • References

Abbreviations should be defined the first time they appear in your text. Example: HEA (Higher Education Area), before being used as an abbreviation only. Please, do not define or use abbreviations in the title. Please avoid complex mathematical formulas. For the symbols ≤ or ≥, type instead <= or >=.

Posters should be well-written and use English language; however we do not restrict this to UK or American English. Rather, we encourage authors to use language that feels comfortable to them and to include local language terms if these improve meaning. For clarity, we expect authors to include a preface in English to explain their use of language and clarification within the main text or in additional footnotes, of non-English meanings or use of local idioms or phrasings. For example, the first of “sawa” in a Kenyan paper might include a parenthetical remark or footnote defining “sawa” as “okay”. For further questions or clarifications about language, please refer to the main Languages and Mentoring page or contact the Language chairs: language at africhi dot net.

Your poster abstract must be anonymised to permit double-blind peer-review by program committee members. Please ensure that the reviewers will be able to read and understand your paper without having to know who you are. Firstly, do not include your names and institutions anywhere in the document and omit acknowledgements – you will add these into your final camera-ready version. Secondly, ensure that the author(s) name/s or institution/s do not appear in the document properties (File… Info… Inspect Document or File… Properties). Finally, so that reviewers take into account all prior, related (or background) work relevant to your paper, you should not anonymise the references to your own work. However, when citing your own work please refer to these contributions in third person. For example, rather than “We extend our prior work [5]..” you might say “We extend Awori’s prior work [5]…”.

We seek to encourage excellent referencing practices in order to contribute to advancing HCI. Referencing with the greatest potential to advance knowledge includes illustrating the relevance and value of African action, research, theory, innovation and intellectual products to discourse in HCI, and allied fields. Thus, we adopt the CHI’16 guidelines for referencing that discourage overly selective citation due to constraints on the length of manuscripts (see below). Examples of the most common reference types formatted for ACM are in lower half of the page available at: http://www.acm.org/publications/submissions/latex_style.

As well as printed publications these include online document/WWW resources, and video. Examples of a video citations include:

[1] Dave Novak. 2003. Solder man. Video. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2003 Video Review on Animation theater Program: Part I – Vol. 145 (July 27-27, 2003). ACM Press, New York, NY, 4. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/99.9999/woot07-S422

[2] Barack Obama. 2008. A more perfect union. Video. (5 March 2008). Retrieved March 21, 2008 from http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6528042696351994555

A performed orature or other spoken public communication, such as a keynote (e.g. [3]) can be cited. For example, an author might write: “As Mandela said, “Our road to that glorious future lies through collective hard work to accomplish the objective of creating a people-centred society …” [4]”

The reference should use a descriptor that appropriately expresses the type of speech (e.g., Address, Keynote Speech) and be formatted in the references as follows:

Speaker’s name, (year), Title of the speech (if any) in italics. Type of speech. Name of the occasion and organization (if any). Date in parentheses. Location of the occasion.
[4] Nelson R Mandela, 1994. State of the Nation Address by President of South Africa. Address. South African Parliament. (23 May 1994) Cape Town. Western Cape.South Africa

Private communications should be acknowledged in the main text, not referenced (e.g., “[Borriello, personal communication]”). Posters are double-blind reviewed, so text in your initial submission must not make it explicit that a citation refers to your own material.

2. A Visual Poster Draft

You must also submit an electronic draft of your poster, that is scaled down to one A4 page. This draft is an indication of what your actual visual poster, which will be displayed during the conference, will look like and therefore is an important component of your submission. Although there is no prescribed orientation or format for the actual poster that will be displayed at the conference, it must NOT be larger than size A0 (841mm × 1189mm), which you must keep in mind when creating your scaled down poster draft. Please do not include authors’ names, affiliations and contact information.

The poster should include :

  • The project’s or proposed solution’s title
  • The approach taken to address research and/or design challenges(s)
  • A very concise description of the solution
  • Clear illustrations of principal aspects of the approach or solution

Selection & Review

Posters will be double-blind reviewed. Each submission will be carefully reviewed by three independent experts on the topic addressed in the poster. There will be only one round of reviews and assessment will account for the following:

  • Significance: the work addressed is significant and beneficial to the community
  • Originality: the work presented is novel and unpublished in other venues
  • Written presentation: the abstract is clear, conforms to the Extended Abstracts template and is no longer than 4 pages
  • Visuals: the visual poster design is aesthetically attractive, clear and coherent
  • Engagement: the poster should foster discussions and feedback beneficial to the author

You will receive notification on Wednesday 20 July 2016 of a confirmed rejection or a conditional acceptance. Along with the notification you will receive a report that consolidates the reviewers’ opinions and indicates your submission’s strengths and weaknesses and recommended improvements.

Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All submitted materials will be kept confidential until the date of the conference. Provided the final version of your poster conforms to all requirements by Wednesday 10 August 2016, it will appear in the proceedings.

Camera-ready

We will include information to guide preparing and submitting the final camera-ready versions of your Poster’s Extended Abstract with notifications of conditional acceptance. You should revise your Extended Abstract according to the reviewers’ report and submit your final camera-ready, Extended Abstract by Wednesday 10 August 2016 using the online submission system. A member of the program committee will check that the final version of each abstract to confirm it meets publication requirements and, if so, will finalise acceptance. If an abstract does not meet publication requirements by the camera-ready deadline then we may omit it from the programme.

Along with the notification of acceptance we will send further information about preparing Posters for display.

Poster presentation at AfriCHI

At least one author of the poster must register for AfriCHI’16, otherwise the submission may be omitted from the conference proceedings. Registered authors are expected to bring their own printed poster, which should not deviate from the visual draft. At AfriCHI’16, each author will be assigned a time and location to present their poster to conference attendees. Thus s/he must be physically present at the poster during all the sessions on their designated day(s).

Please note that it is possible that poster presentations may span more than a day thus please keep that in mind while making travel arrangements. We will provide information about these sessions and about hanging up and taking down posters, a month before the conference.

Volunteers and Chairs of the poster track will be on hand to assist authors.