AfriCHI Papers are original, peer-reviewed and exceptional scholarly accounts from all areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and connected technologies. We welcome submissions from a wide variety of research areas where “interaction” may be applied in the African context in particular and the Global South in general. Papers are published in conference proceedings. Papers will have a maximum length of 10 pages excluding references. Authors will present their accepted Papers at the AfriCHI conference. Accepted manuscripts appear in the conference proceedings, which appear in the ACM Digital Library. Accepted Papers will have expansive impact on the development of HCI and associated technology’s theory, design, method, and practice. AfriCHI paper co-chairs might ask Papers that do not meet expectations be revised to Notes.
Submission deadline for Papers: Monday 19th June, 2023
Notification of outcome: Monday 7st August, 2023
Camera-ready deadline: Monday 25th September 2023
Objective
AfriCHI is a platform that showcases evidence-based HCI/Interaction design research and design practices in Africa and about Africa. We invite Paper submissions from people who are African, based in Africa, or undertake projects for, about or with Africa/Africans. Papers are not limited to the conference topics of interest. Accepted Papers should be valid and reproducible, and may come from any area of HCI activity: academia or industry; science, engineering, architecture or craft; analysis or design. Accepted Papers should be original work and/or an ongoing work. Emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic and its potential impact on certain research (e.g., difficulty in running user and lab studies), we welcome submissions that introduce new and innovative approaches to conducting interactive research and designs. The main theme of AfriCHI 2023 is “Beyond Limits”. Therefore authors should consider how the topic, such as those in the list below, is relevant to African people, or places, events, processes, phenomena, languages, experiences, meanings, values, livelihoods or aesthetics in Africa etc. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Contexts: Places; people, users or developers; communities or groups; events; every day or unusual phenomena; languages; perspectives; trans-national, cross-cultural or cultural aspects etc.
- Meanings, values and experiences: Health, education, governance, citizenship, well-being, designing things that matter, empowerment, ethics, sustainability, privacy, gender and cultural diversity, accessibility, engagement, aesthetics, fun etc.
- Processes: Techniques, tools or methods for researching, designing, co-designing, evaluating, deploying or using interactive systems, etc.
- Technologies: Mobile devices; multi touch and touchless interaction; Web 2.0 technologies; social media; personal, community and public displays; decentralized (mesh) networks; Big Data; Quantified Self; Internet of Things, etc.
- HCI and AI: Predictive Interaction, UI/UX Design of AI tools, User Study on different AI domains; User Research on Different AI applications deployment, User Evaluation on different AI algorithms, AI technology assessment, Human-Centered AI
- Pedagogies and epistemologies: Teaching, learning or developing capacity in HCI/Interaction Design; Afro-centric research, theory or invention; indigenous or traditional knowledge in HCI/design; post-colonial perspectives etc.
- HCI for Emerging Technologies: Immersive Technology, 3D Printing, Robotics, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Context-Aware Computing, Multi-Nodal Interaction, Green Technology, Bioinformatics etc.
- All-Encompassing HCI (Intersection & Union): haptic/hardware design/material science factor in facilitating and improving interactions between different fields. Intersection & Union of HCI with other fields such as arts, media studies, architecture etc. Unlimited Virtual Design.
- Usable Security & Privacy: Field studies of security or privacy technology; Usability evaluations of new security and privacy technologies such as blockchain; Usability evaluations of new or existing security or privacy features; Security testing of new or existing usability features; Longitudinal studies of deployed security or privacy features, User study on Cybersecurity, Usable Password/Authentication etc.
- African Identity for HCI: Definition, Design and Implementation, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, African Arts and Design
- Theory & Practice: Interaction Paradigms, Research Methodologies, Collaborative Systems, Workplace Studies, interactive displays, intelligent user interfaces
Content – Preparing and Submitting Your Paper
Your Paper submission must be original; this means that it should not be published nor under review elsewhere. No two papers must be the same. 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 avoid complex mathematical formulas. Papers 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”.
Paper submissions 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. This means that:
- Authors’ names and/or institutions should not appear anywhere in the submission manuscript. Also ignore acknowledgements at this time – you will add all these into your final camera-ready version.
- Authors’ name/s and/or institution/s should not appear in the document properties (File… Info… Inspect Document or File… Properties).
Note that there is need for reviewers to take into account all prior, related (or background) work relevant to your paper. Therefore you should not anonymise the references to your own previous work. However, when citing it, please refer to these contributions in the third person tense. For example, rather than “We extend our prior work [5]…”, you might say “We extend Awori’s prior work [5]…”.
Authors must submit their Paper title, and abstract must be 300 word max. Papers will have a maximum length of 10 pages excluding references excluding references. Please ensure that you use the correct template; a single column format must be used for the reviewing phase. AfriCHI encourages excellent referencing practices. Therefore we ask authors to follow the reference styles in the submission template.
Format & Template
Paper submissions must follow the ACM CHI proceeding format. We recommend you download the submission template in MS Word and replace the text with your content. The link to the template is https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template.
The main content pages of Papers include the title, (anonymised) author list, an abstract of up to 150 words, all the body text, figures, tables, and any appendices. We will not accept Papers that exceed the prescribed page limit (10 pages) excluding references.
Review & Selection
We encourage Paper authors to submit a complete paper and not a draft manuscripts. Authors who require assistance in preparing Papers or Notes for review should consider participating in the mentoring process offered by the conference organizers, which is completely independent of reviewing and selecting papers for AfriCHI.
Presenting at AfriCHI
At least one author of accepted Paper submission must register and present at AfriCHI’23 conference. Paper presentation could be hybrid. Each presentation will last 20 minutes in an assigned thematic session. You will be informed of your session reference and the time of your presentation about 4 weeks before the event. If your personal circumstances restrict you to presenting your paper on a specific date, please send us an email with your request as soon as possible.
Paper after the conference
Accepted manuscripts appear in the conference proceedings, which appear in the ACM Digital Library.
Paper Co-chairs
- Makuochi Samuel
- Mennatallah Saleh
- Andrew Bayor
Contact: papers@africhi2023.org