UIST

Welcome to UIST 2012, the Twenty-Fifth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

UIST is the premier forum for the presentation of research innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces. Sponsored by ACM's special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), UIST brings together researchers and practitioners from many areas, including web and graphical interfaces, new input and output devices, information visualization, interactive displays, tangible computing, and computer supported cooperative work. The single-track schedule, intimate size, and location in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place rich in history of technical innovations, make UIST 2012 an ideal place to exchange results and to forge future collaborations.

We received a record 288 paper submissions from more than 20 countries. After a thorough review process, the program committee accepted 62 papers (21.5%). Each anonymous submission was first reviewed by a primary program committee member and three external reviewers. If any of the four reviewers deemed a submission to pass a rejection threshold we asked the authors to submit a short rebuttal addressing the reviewers' concerns. The secondary committee member then wrote a fifth review of the paper taking into account the authors' rebuttal. The program committee met in person in Redmond, WA, on June 7--8, 2012, to select the papers for the conference. Submissions were finally accepted only after the authors provided a final revision addressing the committee's comments.

In addition to the presentations of accepted papers, this year's program includes a keynote by Margaret Livingstone (Harvard Medical School neuroscientist) on how art affects the brain. Posters, demos, the ninth annual Doctoral Symposium, and the fourth annual Student Innovation Contest (this year focusing on a new touch-sensitive device from Synaptics called Jedeye) complete the program.