ISS

We are pleased to welcome you to the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS) 2015, held from 15-18 November 2015 in Funchal on the wonderful island of Madeira in Portugal, and organized with the support of the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI). The island of Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal located 310 miles from the African coast and 620 miles from continental Europe. Madeira is one of Europe's most longstanding holiday island destinations. Historical figures from Sisi (Empress Elisabeth of Austria) to Winston Churchill have enjoyed its mild climate. ACM ITS takes place in Portugal for the first time and is hosted by M-ITI, a research and innovation institute of the University of Madeira. M-ITI was established as an independent non-profit R&D organization founded by the University of Madeira, the Regional Government and Carnegie Mellon University. The institute operates in the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interaction and its vision is to become a world leading center of excellence in design for global change.

ITS 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of this series of annual research workshops and conferences that began in 2006 in Adelaide, Australia. Over the last ten years, the field of interactive tabletops and surfaces has seen significant change with low-cost touch-enabled surfaces in a wide range of form factors and sizes, that are now available off-the-shelf. Ideas from the community have gone from research prototypes to global consumer products and can be found in a wide variety of private and public spaces from museums, offices, schools and airports to hotels, medical centers and homes. To celebrate this, we are introducing a "10-year impact" award this year to recognise the research that was presented at the inaugural meeting of our community and has shown to be the most influential.

Sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and generously supported by SMART and Microsoft, the ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and interest areas. The intimate size of this single-track symposium provides an ideal venue for leading researchers, practitioners, and students to share research results and experiences. As ever, our main goal has been to provide an engaging and high quality program. We have retained the successful format of previous years: a three-day conference event preceded by one day of workshops, tutorials and a doctoral symposium. This year we were delighted to receive 122 paper and note submissions of which we accepted 18 papers and 11 notes (resulting in a highly competitive overall acceptance rate of 24%). Submissions were assessed over the summer by a committee of program committee members, their reviewers, and finally at a remote PC meeting. The topics of this year's papers, notes, posters, and demos reflect the diversity of ideas and perspectives that comprise the ITS community, ranging from wall-sized surfaces to shape changing displays, from pen-and-paper to free-space interaction, and from education to projection systems for bike riding. What brings this all together is a commitment to innovation that expands our understanding of design considerations of ITS technologies and of their applications. The Doctoral Symposium (DS) accepted 7 doctoral students to present and discuss their research with both peers and a panel of experienced ITS researchers. The conference also includes an interactive hands-on reception that presents a juried selection of 26 posters and 12 demos. Finally, we have accepted 7 workshops that bring together researchers and practitioners in a focused setting to advance the state-of-the-art in specific areas related to interactive surfaces.

We are especially pleased to have two exciting keynote speakers this year. Charles Spence, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, will open the conference with his talk "In Touch with the Future". Charles is interested in how we perceive the world around us, in particular how our brains manage to process the information from each of our difficult senses (such as smell, taste, sight. hearing, and touch) to form the extraordinarily rich multisensory experences that fill our daily lives. His research focuses on how a better understanding of the human mind will lead to the better design of multisensory foods, products, interfaces, and environments in the future. The conference will close with Jinha Lee's talk on "From Surface to Space". Jinha is a designer and engineer working at the boundary of the physical and digital world. He is exploring ways to weave digital information into physical space and material. Lee is currently on leave from his Ph.D. studies at MIT Media Lab directing the Interaction Group at Samsung Electronics. Jinha was named on MIT Technology Review's list of 35 young innovators and Fast Company's list of 32 greatest living designers.