Academic Tracks

CHAIRS:
Markku Turunen – Tampere University, Finland
Pauliina Baltzar – Tampere University, Finland
Vasiliki Mylonopoulou – University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Markku Hakkinen – ETS (Educational Testing Service), Princeton, USA

Are we truly designing a digital world for everyone?

While physical barriers to accessibility, like staircases without ramps, are easy to spot, digital barriers often remain invisible. In the digital space, all disabilities are, in a way, hidden. We may notice small font sizes or poor color contrast, but do we think about whether a website works with screen readers? Do we consider if digital platforms are truly usable and accessible for all users?

The push for an inclusive digital society is growing. In 2016, the United Nations introduced the transformative pledge “No One Left Behind” as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. By 2019, EU member states enforced legislation requiring public digital services to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). By June 2025, the European Accessibility extended these requirements to the private sector, reinforcing that digital accessibility is not an optional feature, it is a necessity.

True accessibility means ensuring that people with disabilities can fully participate in the digital world, just like anyone else. Accessibility has often been treated as an afterthought, an add-on feature rather than an integral part of design. While participatory design has gained traction and the voices of disabled communities are increasingly heard, we are still far from achieving an accessible digital society.

As artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs), and generative AI shape our digital future, we must confront the biases embedded within them. Who gets to participate in shaping AI? Whose needs are prioritized? How do we ensure that the next wave of technological advancements is inclusive rather than exclusionary?

This track welcomes multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners exploring themes of diversity, accessibility, disability, and design justice. We invite submissions of (but are not limited to) literature reviews, empirical studies, theoretical papers, and experimental research that address the critical intersection of accessibility and digitality.

Topics of Interest Include (but are not limited to):

• AI and accessibility
• Accessibility and the metaverse
• Accessible culture
• Game accessibility
• Education and accessibility
• Inclusive design methods and tools for user research
• Accessibility in everyday digital tools, interfaces, and services
• The social and ethical implications of inclusion/exclusion from the digital world

We encourage submissions from researchers, designers, technologists, policymakers, and advocates working toward a more inclusive digital future. Join us in shaping the conversation on accessibility and ensuring that no one is left behind in the digital age.

CHAIRS:
Mattia Thibault – Tampere University
Lieven Ameel – Helsinki University

The intersection of the digital and the urban is evolving rapidly, shaping new ways of living, working, and playing in our cities. As “smart city” technologies become more embedded in urban life, critical questions arise: What futures are we building? Who benefits from digital urbanization? How can we ensure cities remain playful, inclusive, and sustainable spaces for diverse communities?

The Future of Smart Cities Track explores these themes to investigate the role of emerging digital technologies in urban environments. We critically assess the promises and limitations of ”smart” urbanism, shifting focus toward agency, participation, play, and innovation in digital city-making. We encourage perspectives that challenge, rethink, and extend the role of technology in shaping urban experiences.

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Playable and Experiential Cities: urban gamification, playable media in public spaces, digital placemaking, interactive urban storytelling
• Critical Perspectives on Smart Cities: post-smart urbanism, algorithmic governance, surveillance and control, post-digital cities
• Emerging Urban Ecologies: AI-driven urbanism, robot-human interaction, digital twins, Internet of Animals
• Community and Participation: bottom-up projects, co-creation and civic engagement, citizen science in urban contexts
• Sustainable and Ethical Urban Technologies: climate-adaptive infrastructures, sustainable digital cities, ethics of urban AI

We invite submissions focusing on the current state of events as well as future oriented submissions that engage with utopian thinking, urban speculative design (Thibault et al. 2020), and fictional futures (Ameel 2016).

We particularly encourage submissions that push the boundaries of existing research, present speculative or experimental approaches, or engage with the intersections of urban technology, play, and community in novel ways.

References:
Ameel, L. (2016). Cities utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic. In The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City (pp. 785-800). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Thibault, M., et al. (2020). Transurbanism: Smart Cities for Transhumans. In Proceedings of the DIS Conference, 1915-1928.

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

CHAIRS:
Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk – Tampere University, Finland
Shaimaa Lazem – Informatics Research Institute, City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications, Egypt
Ahmet Börütecene – Malmö University, Sweden
Joseph Lindley – Lancaster University, United Kingdom

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 intimate technologies, brain-machine interfaces, body augmentations, circular economies 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 remarkably challenging with conventional HCI methods such as user tests, interviews or quantitative analysis. Because these technologies are still emerging it is not possible to directly observe their impacts on society.

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 or Intimate Technologies
• Brain-Computer Interfaces
• Techno-Spiritual Studies
• Alternative forms/conceptions of intelligence
• Afrofuturism and Black Futuring
• Critical Feminist Perspectives and Feminist Futuring
• 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, Finland
Benedikt Morschheuser – University of Bamberg, Germany

Games and Gamification represent one of the most prominent areas of contemporary development socially, economically, culturally and reach far beyond their original leisure permeating various aspects of everyday life, reshaping language, fashion, music, education, work, mobility, creativity, and even political and economic structures. Consequently, the continuously evolving research field on games is multifaceted and increasingly transdisciplinary, often serving as a pioneering and inspiring source of innovation for other domains and fields.

The central aim of this track at the Academic Mindtrek conference is to provide a platform for emerging and visionary research contributions that advance the field and extend its impact beyond traditional boundaries.

Thus, in this track, we welcome the latest research related to games, gaming, and game culture. We invite novel theoretical contributions based on empirical and/or conceptual research on, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Design (interaction, mechanics, interfaces, aesthetics…)
• Evaluation (game experience, playability, usability…)
• Development (tools, engines, AI, audiovisual…)
• Business (digital distribution, crowdfunding, revenue models, virtual goods, online gambling, game analytics…)
• Platforms (online, social, mobile, desktop, VR/AR/XR…)
• eSports (culture, streaming, fandom…)
• Hybrid games (digital-physical, board games, toys…)
• Players (demographics, inclusivity, accessibility…)
• Indie (innovation, modding, transgressive…)
• Content (content generations, user-generated content, graphics, sound…)
• Challenges (Toxicity, cheating, radicalization, dark pattern…)

Beyond Games and cultures around them, applied games and gamification is increasingly shaping human practice outside the sphere of games themselves via motivational and engaging design that aims to promote changes in human motivations, attitudes, and behaviors. Gamification has become an umbrella concept that, to varying degrees, includes and encompasses other related technological developments such as serious games, game-based learning, gameful design, exergames & quantified-self, games with a purpose/human-based computation games, alternate reality games, and persuasive technology.

Topics in this field may involve:

• Users (engagement, experience, user types…)
• Education (gamification in education, serious games, game-based learning…)
• Media (streaming, social media and gamification, gamification in journalism & media…)
• Commerce (marketing, business models, consumer behavior…)
• Work (organizational gamification, gameful work, gamification in leadership, playbour…)
• Technology (gamification in engineering, software development, playful and gameful robotics, IoT…)
• Health (quantified self, games & gamification for sports and health, mental health…)
• Culture (ludification, history of games and gamification, gamification in society, social structures, storification…)
• Environment/Climate (bioeconomy, climate-change engagement, circularity, human/forest interactions…)
• Governance (democracy, participation, law enforcement, e-justice, cyber forensics, urban planning, smart and playable cities, surveillance…)
• Design (design principles, design methods, designing gamification, gamification artifacts, playful and speculative design…)
• Theories/concepts/methods (contributions to science around gamification)

CHAIR:
Samuel Chovanec – Moholy‑Nagy University of Art and Design, Hungary
Damla Cay – Moholy‑Nagy University of Art and Design, Hungary
Piumi Perera – University of Melbourne, Australia

This track aims to bring together research exploring how to design interactive technologies that support, encourage, and inform human-nature interaction. We welcome a broad range of research topics, projects, and methodologies exploring the potential of technology to enhance the experience of humans and/or more-than-human actors. We are particularly interested in works that transcend the bounds of techno-solutionism; that is, works that explore how technology could contribute to ecosystemic wellbeing beyond productivist or otherwise utilitarian frames. We welcome works embracing the importance of values such as multi-species kinship, care, joy and fun, grounded in specific places, ecosystems, and communities, attending to the particular relationships, species, and environmental conditions that define a given locale. We embrace works that engage with indigenous and non-Western knowledge traditions, including place-based histories, rituals, and relational ontologies, and that reflect critically on how these perspectives can inform or challenge dominant framings of human-nature interaction.

We invite papers and pictorials, as well as workshops, posters, and demonstrations representing various research approaches and methodologies in a range of different submission types, including design cases, empirical studies, theoretical works, argumentation essays, annotated portfolios and pictorials, artworks, and method papers. The track is open for contributions from HCI, design research as well as social sciences, arts and humanities.

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

• The impact of technology on ecosystems and entities part of it (humans, more-than-humans)
• Design that mediates interaction between human, more-than-human entities
• Exploring, building, sensitising towards, fostering empathy between human and more-than-human entities
• Design centred on values of multi-species kinship, joy and/or care (for the environment, for oneself, for other humans, for other species…)
• Soma Design / Somaesthetic Design
• Technology that imitates, simulates, or augments nature experiences
• Design research that touches upon environmental and ecological justice
• Conservation, restoration, and long-term sustaining of ecosystems
• Designing for the emotional and psychological impacts of climate change
• Novel methods for co-designing and participatory engagements to, for, and/or with nature
• Design research for and with local flora and fauna
• Playful or gameful designs targeting nature experiences
• Research that engages with indigenous and non-Western knowledge traditions including place-based histories and rituals.
• Critical, speculative, future-oriented framings and/or theoretical works that reflect upon these themes and concerns.

CHAIRS:
Nannan Xi – Tampere University, Finland
Marc Riar – IÉSEG School of Management, France
Zhongyun Zhou – Tongji University, China

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, access, usability, comfort, functionality, interactivity, vividness, privacy, ethical and legal issues, and unexpected adverse outcomes. Such hurdles and concerns warrant researchers’ attention in view of prevailing private control over technologies and the lag in legislative regulation of AI and XR development and use. At the same time, as these technologies hold new opportunities for businesses, communities, and creatives, we invite contributors to reflect on how a metaverse can redefine, among other things, economic, business, political, artistic, and educational practices, and what new forms of sociality and agency can emerge from it.

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, affordances, 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, exchange of ideas, and knowledge management
• Social interaction: e.g., crowdsourcing, grassroots activism, team and community 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, empowerment, trust, pro-environmental outcomes, sustainability, human rights, and cultural aspects
• Power structures, governance, and regulation: e.g., centralized control by governments, technology corporations, and financial structures vs decentralized community-run platforms and applications

CHAIRS:
Biju Thankachan – Tampere University, Finland
Yixiao Wang – Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Priyanka Sebastian – University of Oulu, Finland

Our lives are more technology-rich than ever. From Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies that impact our lives in various ways, such as, LLMs affecting how we work, think, write, and imagine. To robots, rapidly spreading to all spheres of life and taking on more roles in society, such as massive industrial automation to applications in education, medicine, and households. However, Robots and AI in our everyday lives are not without concerns and consequences.

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 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.