Call for Participation
This in-person workshop will bring together 15-25 researchers, designers, and practitioners interested in the role of technology in supporting human-forest interactions. We approach this space as both promising and problematic: technology can help us notice, sense, and connect with forest ecologies in new ways, yet it can also risk alienation, commodification, or harm if designed uncritically. Our aim is to create a space to reflect on these tensions, speculate on how we can “get it right”, and explore what might be different ways to do so.
The workshop will be structured as a research-through-design conversation across two 90-minute sessions. Participants will share personal “forest stories” through boundary objects, collectively build a metaphorical “shared forest” exhibition, engage in speculative prototyping, and discuss the outcomes of these activities to uncover emerging directions for designing forest-related technologies that contribute positively to human-forest interconnectedness.
How to participate?
We welcome participants from across HCI and neighboring fields, including (but not limited to) more-than-human design, sustainable HCI, design for the outdoors, playful/slow/speculative design, design anthropology, and ecology. We especially invite diverse perspectives and positionalities, including those not traditionally present at CHI. In that sense, having done substantial work at the intersection of forests and technology is not strictly required.
To take part, please submit a short expression of interest in any accessible format (text, pictorial, short video…) to ferran.altarriba.bertran@eram.cat by February 20, 2026. Submissions should include:
• A brief bio.
• A note on your interest in the workshop theme.
• A rough idea of the forest story and/or boundary object you will bring to the workshop as material to design with (see more details on this below, under “Upon acceptance”). If at this time you still don’t have a clear idea of what your forest story or boundary object will look like, please do not let that dissuade you from submitting! You can also share a few notes on the process you intend to follow to produce them, or raise questions that are starting to come up as you begin to imagine how you’ll go about producing them. We do not expect you to have it all figured out at this point (you’ll have plenty of time to work it our later, see below), but rather for you to start thinking about it well in advance.
• Optionally, pointers to existing works in HCI and analogous fields that you feel could inform the workshop conversations and potentially be useful in the design space of technology-mediated human-forest interactions. These could be research prototypes, speculative concepts, theories, frameworks, methods, or approaches that, from your HCI design/research expertise(s), you feel might inform the conversations we’re planning to have. Your and other participants’ suggestions will be brought to the workshop as material that can be used to generate and/or reflect upon ideas.
After the submission deadline (February 20), expressions of interest will be reviewed by the workshop organizers. Notifications will be sent on March 2, two days before the conference’s early registration deadline. Selection will aim for diversity of perspectives, expertise, and positionalities.
Upon acceptance
Accepted participants will be asked to prepare for the workshop by producing (and submitting before April 3rd) a forest story that can be used as a starting point for prototyping forest technologies that “get it right”. By “forest stories”, we mean brief accounts of experiences participants have previously lived with(in) forests, which they believe are relevant to questions of what technology could, should, or should not do in human-forest interactions (and why). These forest stories should be accompanied with boundary objects that illustrate them, e.g. a forest material, artifact, photo, drawing, or such that embodies or otherwise represents the experience and the meaning(s) the participant associates with them.
To make it easier for you to produce your forest story and boundary object, in early March we will release illustrative examples from all organizers, along with short notes on what was our process for producing them. We invite you to use these examples and loose guidelines as orientative (rather than prescriptive) references for creating your own forest story, but we highly encourage you to diverge, experiment, and try different formats/approaches if you’d like.
Also, please know that that we are working toward organizing an optional, informal get-together in the forests surrounding Barcelona the weekend before the conference (April 11-12, exact day/time still TBD). All participants will be invited (but not expected) to join that gathering as an opportunity to consolidate their forest stories and begin to converse about them.
Link to organizers’ forest stories and approaches to producing them: [to be shared on March 2]
Key dates
February 20: Deadline for submitting expressions of interest
March 2: Acceptance notifications sent to authors + organizers’ forest stories and processes released
March 4: Early registration deadline (via the CHI 2026 website)
April 3: Deadline for submitting forest stories
April 11-12: Informal pre-workshop get-together
April 13-17: Conference dates (workshop day/time TBD)