ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS)

ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS)

Conference positioning

ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS) is a top computer-science conference venue for interactive surfaces, tabletops, spatial interfaces, touch, tangible displays, and collaborative interaction. It rewards an interactive-surface paper where hardware, interaction technique, and user task fit are all visible. Treat this skill as a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal.

Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in ../../resources/conference-roster.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md.

When to trigger

• The author names ISS / ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces as the target venue.
• A manuscript in interactive surfaces needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted.
• The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative.
• The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue.

Scope & topic fit

• Core fit: interactive surfaces, tabletops, spatial interfaces, touch, tangible displays, and collaborative interaction.
• Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis.
• The paper should explain why the result matters to ISS's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context.
• Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness.
• If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence.

Venue-specific calibration

• Reviewer lens: Treat ISS as a interactive surfaces venue whose reviewers expect the scope and evidence to match its own community. Do not submit a generic CS paper until the introduction names the exact subcommunity, contribution type, and proof or empirical standard.
• Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar.
• Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: interactive surfaces, tabletops, spatial interfaces, touch, tangible displays, and collaborative interaction.
• Distinctive fingerprint for reviewer calibration: interactive, surfaces, tabletops, spatial, interfaces, touch, tangible, displays, collaborative, interaction, venue-specific, contribution.
• Official anchor domain: iss.acm.org. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit.

Close-neighbor routing guardrail

• Route to ISS when the paper is about interactive surfaces, spatial interaction, tangible environments, or collaborative physical/digital interaction spaces.
• Compare CHI for broader human factors, UIST for UI systems techniques, TEI for tangible embodied interaction, and AVI/VIS for visual-interface or visualization claims.

What distinguishes this venue from its closest siblings