CfP | EXTENDED DL: JUNE 05 | FULL PAPERS, PICTORIAL AND WORKSHOP SUBMISSIONS: FICTIONAL, SPECULATIVE AND CRITICAL FUTURES in ACADEMIC MINDTREK 2026

TUNI Luottamuksellinen - Confidential (3Y)

Dear all,

The deadline for Academic Mindtrek 2026 has been extended to June  5th. So, you have still some time to submit to FICTIONAL, SPECULATIVE AND CRITICAL FUTURES TRACK at Academic Mindtrek 2026 (27–30 October) in Tampere, Finland. The track is chaired by Shaimaa Lazem, Paul Coulton, Oğuz 'Oz' Buruk and Ahmet Börütecene.

Please find the call for papers below—and also this year we welcome PICTORIAL submissions. For more information on the submission guidelines, please see here: https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2026/<https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2025/>
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EXTENDED DEADLINE: 5 June 2026, 23:59 (AoE)
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With recent rapid developments and deployment of a variety of emerging technologies  that will have major impacts on humanity by dramatically altering our ways of living we have an increasing need to anticipate their effects. Technologies that once were the domain of science fiction, such as intimate technologies, brain-machine interfaces, body augmentations, and artificial companions, are now here, or on the proximate 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 challenging with conventional HCI methods such as user tests, interviews or quantitative analysis. Because these technologies are not evenly distributed or have yet to enter our everyday experience making it difficult to directly observe their impacts on society.
Design Fiction, Speculative Design or Critical Design have been adopted within HCI as methods to explore possible futures and grapple with social, cultural, political and environmental challenges of emerging technologies. These methods create fictional and speculative worlds oriented around near and far futures of technology allowing researchers to contemplate the consequences and possibilities of new technologies free from commercial constraints. Speculative methods allow us to better understand the opportunities, pitfalls, and dangers of new technologies, and offer up new potentials for shaping futures. Speculative and critical methods require designers to think rigorously, systematically and often playfully about possible futures, to allow various stakeholders to explore a range of alternative futures. Therefore, the aim of this track is to create a venue for research projects which adopt less conventional methods including design fiction, pastiche scenarios, speculative research or critical design and in the long term become a frontier publication avenue for such research projects.
All papers that will be submitted to this track should have relevance to methods such as design fiction, speculative or critical design. Thus, although submissions may include a variety of methods, they MUST include a section that critically engages with the related research by methods, approaches and tools such as fictional abstracts, fictional prototypes, speculative design proposals, diegetic prototypes, experiential futures, or pastiche scenarios. Accordingly, we do not have a clear boundary on the topics we accept, however, to give an example, some of the topics that are of relevance to this track include:

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Body-integrated or Intimate Technologies
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Brain-Computer Interfaces
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Techno-Spiritual Studies
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Alternative forms/conceptions of intelligence
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Afrofuturism and Black Futuring
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Critical Feminist Perspectives and Feminist Futuring
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Indigenous Futurism
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Posthuman Subjectivities
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Dystopia and Utopia Studies
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Sustainable and Regenerative Futures
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Politics of race, class, gender, and ability in imagined futures
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Altered States of Consciousness
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Transhuman and Posthuman Technologies
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Robotic Agents & Artificial Intelligence
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Habitation of Space
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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 to this track. Moreover, these methods can help researchers to 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 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>


-- IMPORTANT DATES (all in 23:59 AoE)
Deadline for Full Paper, Pictorial and Workshop Submissions: June 5, 2026

Notification of Acceptance for Full Papers, Pictorials and Workshops: August 7, 2026

Camera-Ready Deadline for Full Papers, Pictorials and Workshops: August 21, 2026

Deadline for Poster and Demonstration Submissions: September 4, 2026

Notification of Acceptance for Posters and Demonstrations: September 25, 2026

Camera-Ready Deadline for Posters and Demonstrations: TBA

Conference Dates: October 27–30, 2026



--SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
All full-paper and pictorial submissions will be peer-reviewed and anonymous. Therefore, please remove any information that could give an indication of the authorship. The papers should contain 8-16 pages in the single-column ACM template, excluding the list of references. The pictorials can be a maximum of 16 pages. Please review the Academic Mindtrek website for further instructions on formatting.

We also accept workshop submissions (4-6 pages), poster and demonstration submissions (4-6 pages). Please see the full Call for Papers for details:https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2026/<https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2024/>

Please use the templates provided on the style guidelines site. A template for Word documents and LaTeX guidelines can be found on <https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions> https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions.

Note that since the papers will be published by the ACM digital library all authors need to sign an ACM copyright form. The copyright form would be sent through an automated system only for accepted papers



-- CONTACT AND STAY INFORMED
More details about the other full-paper tracks and submission types please visit the Academic Mindtrek 2026 website:https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2026/<https://www.mindtrek.org/academic-mindtrek-2024/>



READINGS:
Erete, S., Rankin, Y., & Thomas, J. (2023). A method to the madness: Applying an intersectional analysis of structural oppression and power in HCI and design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 30(2), 1-45.
Blythe, M. (2014, April). Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 703-712).
Lazem, S., Adamu, M. S., Abdrabou, Y., Muashekele, C., Erete, S., Thomas, J., ... & Peters, A. (2023, November). What if?.. Fabulating African HCI Futures within the Veil of HCI. In Proceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference (pp. 295-299).
Baumer, E. P., Blythe, M., & Tanenbaum, T. J. (2020, July). Evaluating Design Fiction: The Right Tool for the Job. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 1901-1913).
Tanenbaum, T. J., Tanenbaum, K., & Wakkary, R. (2012, May). Steampunk as design fiction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1583-1592).
Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2013, April). What is" critical" about critical design?. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 3297-3306).
Muller, M., Bardzell, J., Cheon, E., Su, N. M., Baumer, E. P., Fiesler, C., ... & Blythe, M. (2020, April). Understanding the past, present, and future of design fictions. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-8).
Lindtner, S., Bardzell, S., & Bardzell, J. (2016, May). Reconstituting the utopian vision of making: HCI after technosolutionism. In Proceedings of the 2016 chi conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1390-1402).
Sturdee, M., Coulton, P., Lindley, J. G., Stead, M., Ali, H., & Hudson-Smith, A. (2016, May). Design fiction: How to build a Voight-Kampff machine. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 375-386).
Noortman, R., Schulte, B. F., Marshall, P., Bakker, S., & Cox, A. L. (2019, May). HawkEye-Deploying a Design Fiction Probe. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
Baumer, E. P., Ahn, J., Bie, M., Bonsignore, E. M., Börütecene, A., Buruk, O. T., ... & Guha, M. L. (2014). CHI 2039: speculative research visions. In CHI'14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 761-770).
Buruk, O. O., Özcan, O., Baykal, G. E., Göksun, T., Acar, S., Akduman, G., ... & Genç, H. U. (2020, April). Children in 2077: Designing Children's Technologies in the Age of Transhumanism. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
Börütecene, A., & Buruk, O. (2019, November). Otherworld: Ouija Board as a Resource for Design. In Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019 (pp. 1-4). (pp. 1-12).
Thibault, M., Buruk, O. O., Buruk, S. S., & Hamari, J. (2020, July). Transurbanism: Smart Cities for Transhumans. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 1915-1928).
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.
Lawson, S., Kirman, B., Linehan, C., Feltwell, T., & Hopkins, L. (2015, April). Problematising upstream technology through speculative design: the case of quantified cats and dogs. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2663-2672).
Börütecene, A., & Buruk, O, O. (2022, February). The spirit of scientific communication. Retrieved from https://interactions.acm.org/blog/view/spirit-of-scientific-communication.
Coulton, P., Lindley, J., Sturdee, M. and Stead, M., 2017, March. Design fiction as world building. In Proceedings of the 3nd biennial research through design conference (pp. 1-16).
Gonzatto, R.F., Van Amstel, F.M., Merkle, L.E. and Hartmann, T., 2013. The ideology of the future in design fictions. Digital creativity, 24(1), pp.36-45.
Auger, J., 2013. Speculative design: crafting the speculation. Digital Creativity, 24(1), pp.11-35.
Candy, Stuart, and Jake Dunagan. "Designing an experiential scenario: The people who vanished." Futures 86 (2017): 136-153.
Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Lone Koefoed Hansen. 2018. Intimate Futures: Staying with the Trouble of Digital Personal Assistants through Design Fiction. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 869–880. https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196766
Noura Howell, Britta F. Schulte, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Rocío Fatás Arana, Sumita Sharma, and Grace Eden. 2021. Calling for a Plurality of Perspectives on Design Futuring: An Un-Manifesto. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 31, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3450364
Christina N. Harrington, Shamika Klassen, and Yolanda A. Rankin. 2022. “All that You Touch, You Change”: Expanding the Canon of Speculative Design Towards Black Futuring. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 450, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502118
Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, and Lone Koefoed Hansen. 2015. Immodest Proposals: Research Through Design and Knowledge. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2093–2102. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702400
Noortman, R., Funk, M., Andersen, K., & Eggen, B. (2021, June). What would Margaret Atwood do? Designing for ustopia in HCI. In Proceedings of the 24th international academic mindtrek conference (pp. 72-80). https://doi.org/10.1145/3464327.3464344


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