Call for Papers - HCSE 2026 - Paderborn, Germany (Sep 29 - Oct 2)

[Thiago Rocha Silva]

Call for Papers

HCSE 2026

11th International Working Conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering

September 29th to October 2nd, 2026 – Paderborn, Germany

http://www.hcse-conference.org

HCSE 2026 will be co-located with the 2026 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing  (VL/HCC).

Submission Dates:

Technical Full Papers and Late Breaking Results: Friday, May 8th, 2026

Demos, Posters, and Discussion Forum: Friday, July 3rd, 2026

About HCSE:

HCSE is a bi-annual, single-track, working conference organized by the IFIP Working Group 13.2 on Methodology for User-Centred System Design. We aim at bringing together researchers and practitioners interested in strengthening the scientific foundations of interactive system and user interface design, examining the relationship between software engineering, artificial intelligence, and human–computer interaction and on how to strengthen human-centered design as an essential part of software engineering processes.

Topics of interest include:

• contributions to the theory and best practices of user-centered design

• involvement of end-users, clients and stakeholders in the design and development process of interactive systems

• socio-technical aspects of interactive software development

• innovative methods for identifying end-user requirements for interactive systems

• rational design, design patterns, and traceability of design choices

• models and model-based approaches for building interactive systems

• methods and tools for low-code and no-code development paradigms

• end-user development, end-user programming, and end-user software engineering

• integration of multiple properties (e.g. usability, (cyber)security, reliability, user experience, privacy, accessibility, etc.) in software development and making them more accessible to developers and users

• design and integration of novel interaction techniques such as augmented, virtual, and mixed reality

• context-aware and adaptive interactive systems (e.g. in areas such as digital collaboration, digital and worker assistance)

• software architectures and architectural patterns for interactive systems

• support for new kinds of human–machine interaction (HMI) for increasingly autonomous systems and systems that use or provide artificial intelligence (e.g. autonomous driving or human–robot collaboration) 

• artificial intelligence and machine learning to support the development of interactive systems

• human-centered artificial intelligence

• human–AI collaboration and development of hybrid intelligence systems

Traditionally, HCSE as a working conference invites research papers, late-breaking results, tool demos, and posters. In addition, the Discussion Forum for PhD Students, introduced at HCSE 2024, is an interactive format that allows PhD students to present and intensively discuss with established researchers their research ideas and get feedback and/or guidance for the continuation of their work in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. Altogether, HCSE 2026 welcomes the following types of contributions:  

• Technical Full Papers (up to 20 pages + references) should describe substantial research contributions of novel work that has produced advanced and mature results including proper validation. Submitted contributions have to be anonymized and will be reviewed double-blind. 

• Late-Breaking Results Papers (up to 12 pages + references) should present work in progress, new practice and experience reports containing good (and bad) practices and/or recent practical evaluations of methods, techniques and tools. Submitted contributions have to be anonymized and will be reviewed double-blind. 

• Demonstration Papers (5–8 pages + references) should present descriptions of tools including user tasks and evidence of usefulness to end users. Demo submissions should summarize the system’s significance and its performance and should either include screenshots or link to an online-accessible resource. Industry contributions to demos are particularly welcome and highly encouraged. Posters can be displayed with demos at the conference, but are not requested for the submission process. Submitted contributions are not anonymous and will be reviewed single-blind.

• Poster Papers (5–8 pages + references, and poster design draft) should present concepts and initial ideas, ongoing work and/or early results. The poster design draft should show the planned design and content of the poster that will be presented at the conference. Industry contributions to posters are particularly welcome and highly encouraged. Submitted contributions are not anonymous and will be reviewed single-blind. 

• Discussion Forum Papers (5–8 pages + references, and poster design draft) are single-author short papers submitted by PhD students who want to attend the Discussion Forum, describing the suggested topic, accompanied by a poster design draft.  The paper will be discussed at the conference, with the aim of providing helpful and constructive guidance to the PhD students on how to move forward with their research. Submitted contributions are not anonymous and will be reviewed single-blind. Further information on this format can be obtained from the conference website.

All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series.

Discussion Forum for PhD Students

Different from a usual Doctoral Consortium format, the Discussion Forum (DF) is intended to give the possibility to students to receive advice on how to address critical points in their research work, and not on their overall PhD program.

The DF will be an open forum during the conference where PhD students, supported by a poster, present shortly their research work and the topic of discussion. The presentation will be followed by timeboxed discussions with a group of attendees. Each poster will be discussed with different discussion groups for up to 90 minutes.

PhD students who want to attend have to submit a short paper, describing the suggested topic (5–8 pages + references, and poster design draft). The short paper must include:

• The title of the work

• The student’s name, university, address, and e-mail address

• Name and e-mail address of the dissertation advisor/supervisor

• The research area or sub-area of the work 

• A brief description of their overall PhD research program 

• A longer description of the specific discussion topic and its relation to HCSE, its criticalities, why it is important, and what the PhD student wants to discuss with the attendees at the DF.

Submissions and Reviewing Process

All contributions should be submitted via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hcse2026). All submissions will be peer-reviewed for their relevance, originality, technical contribution, and presentation quality by the members of the international program committee. 

Technical Full Papers and Late Breaking Results Papers will be reviewed double-blind. Demonstrations, Posters, and PhD Student Discussion Forum submissions will be reviewed single-blind. Authors must prepare their submission files accordingly.

For Poster and PhD Student Discussion Forum submissions, both paper and poster design draft will be reviewed.

It will be possible for the program committee to suggest accepting submissions in other than their original submission categories.

Proceedings

All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by Springer. They must be formatted according to the guidelines of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series of Springer. Authors are requested to prepare submissions as close as possible to final camera-ready versions.

Presentations

All accepted submissions will be presented at the conference in technical sessions. It will be possible for authors of accepted Technical Full Papers and Late-Breaking Results Papers to give tool demos as well, without submitting additional Demonstration Papers.

Important Dates

Technical Full and Late-Breaking Results Papers

• Submission: Friday, May 8th, 2026

• Notification to authors: Friday, June 26th, 2026

• Camera-ready due: Friday, July 17th, 2026

Demos, Posters and Discussion Forum Papers

• Submission: Friday, July 3rd, 2026

• Notification to authors: Friday, July 17th, 2026

• Camera-ready due: Friday, July 24th, 2026

Conference Dates: September 29th – October 2nd, 2026

Organizers

General Conference Chair:

Stefan Sauer, Paderborn University, Germany

Technical Paper Chairs:

Carmelo Ardito, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy

Regina Bernhaupt, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Thiago Rocha Silva, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Local Organizers:

Stefan Sauer, Paderborn University, Germany

Enes Yigitbas, Paderborn University, Germany