uist-workflow

UIST Workflow

A UIST year is engineered backwards from two fixed points: the paper deadline in late

March and the conference in the fall. Between them sits a pipeline with almost no

slack for hardware failures, video production, or study scheduling. This skill turns

the cycle into a managed project. All dates below are the verified 2026 numbers

(checked 2026-07-08); reopen uist.acm.org/<year>/cfp/ before committing a calendar.

The 2026 reference calendar

| Date (2026) | Event | Author obligation |

|---|---|---|

| Mar 24 | Abstract deadline (AoE) | Title, abstract, authors, track metadata in PCS |

| Mar 31 | Paper deadline (AoE) | PDF + video figure + supplementary, all anonymous |

| May 28 - Jun 5 | Rebuttal window | 5,000-character self-contained response |

| Jun 27 | Notification | Decisions are conditional on rebuttal-promised changes |

| Jul 24 | Camera-ready | TAPS source, alt text, final video, +10% page allowance |

| Nov 2 | Doctoral Symposium (in person) | Separate track, separate deadline |

| Nov 2-5 | Conference, Detroit | Talk + (typically) live demo of the system |

As of 2026-07-08 the live obligations are the camera-ready chain for accepted papers

and the adjunct tracks (Demos, Posters — deadlines 待核实, read the CFP) for everyone

else; new submissions target the 2027 cycle.

Backwards plan for a systems paper

Work in reverse from the paper deadline; the ordering below is where UIST projects

actually fail, not a generic writing schedule:

1. T minus 0-1 weeks — submission mechanics. PCS uploads, anonymity sweeps,

abstract-field consistency (see uist-submission).

1. T minus 1-3 weeks — video figure production. Scripting, capture, edit,

captions, anonymization. The video cannot be shot until the system is stable, and

it competes with the writing for the same people (see uist-supplementary).

1. T minus 3-6 weeks — evaluation. Technical benchmarks and any user study; IRB

approval must predate this window, so file it in the fall.

1. T minus 6-10 weeks — feature freeze. Everything demonstrated in the paper

must exist by here. Features added after freeze belong to the next paper.

1. T minus 10+ weeks — build. Include one full hardware re-spin or one major

refactor in the estimate, because there will be one.

Owners and risk register

Assign names, not roles, and write the mitigation before the risk fires:

RISK                              OWNER      MITIGATION
Hardware breaks in video week     <name>     Build two units; film B-roll early
Study participants no-show        <name>     Over-recruit 30%; pilot in freeze week
Video render/caption pipeline     <name>     Dry-run export at T-3w with dummy edit
Page-limit overflow (10pp body)   <name>     Appendix plan agreed at T-4w
Rebuttal week hits a holiday      <name>     Pre-draft objection playbook (uist-author-response)
Camera-ready owner on vacation    <name>     TAPS + alt-text buddy named at notification

The two parallel lanes

UIST is one conference with two archival containers, and a healthy group uses both:

• Papers lane (main proceedings): the full pipeline above.
• Adjunct lane (Demos, Posters — separate chairs, separate deadlines, adjunct

proceedings): a rejected paper's system can still appear at the conference as a

demo; early-stage work can test community reaction as a poster; the same work must

not be submitted to both Demos and Posters (the 2026 rule converts it to a demo and

drops the poster). Decide the fallback lane on notification day, not after the

adjunct deadlines pass.

Planning UIST 2027 from a mid-2026 vantage

For teams reading this in the live window (post-notification 2026), the next Papers

deadline is roughly nine months out and the calendar is not yet published (待核实 —

watch the 2027 site from its first announcement). Provisional planning rules that

survive cycle drift:

• Assume the abstract/paper pair lands in late March ± a few weeks and the

conference in the fall; anchor the feature-freeze ten weeks before the assumed

deadline and adjust when the real dates post.

• Anything involving human subjects needs ethics approval filed by roughly

December; anything involving custom hardware needs its final revision ordered

by January (fab and shipping queues do not respect AoE).

• Book video-production capacity — the person, the rig, the edit suite — for

the two pre-deadline weeks now; it is the least substitutable resource in the

pipeline.

• Draft the contribution list before the spring: if you cannot write three

capability claims in January, the project is a 2028 paper wearing a 2027 badge.

The month-by-month cadence (generic UIST year)

| Months before deadline | Focus |

|---|---|

| 9-7 | Routing decision, system architecture, ethics filing |

| 7-4 | Core build; related-work sweep running in parallel |

| 4-2.5 | Feature freeze; evaluation harness and pilots |

| 2.5-1 | Studies and technical characterization; paper skeleton |

| 1-0.5 | Video production; full drafts circulating |

| 0.5-0 | Submission mechanics only — nothing new enters the paper |

Between cycles

• File a post-mortem within two weeks of notification while reviews are fresh:

which review criticism was predictable at freeze time?

• Convert the submission's infrastructure — build scripts, benchmark harnesses,

capture rigs — into reusable lab property; UIST groups compound or burn out on

exactly this.

• Watch the next edition's site from its first announcement: dates shift by weeks

between editions and the length rules have changed across recent cycles.

Output format

[Cycle target] UIST <year> papers / demos / posters / DS
[Today's phase] build / freeze / evaluation / video / submission / review / rebuttal / camera-ready / conference prep
[Critical path] <the single task that moves the finish date>
[Risk register] top three, each with named owner
[Next fixed date] <date + obligation>