In a rapidly evolving digital society, user-centricity remains the essential compass guiding technological progress. The CENTRIC conference series continues to explore the principles, methods, and experiences that place the human being — with all cognitive, affective, and social dimensions — at the core of digital design and intelligent system development. Contributions are invited that advance the theoretical, methodological, and applied understanding of user-centered research across diverse contexts, from interactive systems and digital services to complex socio-technical ecosystems.

As technologies become increasingly autonomous, adaptive, and data-driven, user-centric design requires renewed attention to trust, transparency, ethics, and personalization. CENTRIC welcomes work that deepens the comprehension of user emotions, motivations, and experiences, as well as frameworks that measure, predict, and enhance usability and engagement. The conference also encourages studies bridging user experience with affective computing, human–AI collaboration, and intelligent environments, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges of designing for shared agency and adaptive interaction.

Through its long-standing tradition, CENTRIC provides a forum for researchers, designers, and practitioners to exchange results and insights on how humans shape, and are shaped by, digital technologies. Its tracks reflect a commitment to rigorous theory, methodological innovation, and empirical validation — advancing a user-centered vision where technology evolves responsibly, empathetically, and in harmony with human values and needs.

We solicit both academic, research, and industrial contributions. We welcome technical papers presenting research and practical results, position papers addressing the pros and cons of specific proposals, such as those being discussed in the standard fora or in industry consortia, survey papers addressing the key problems and solutions on any of the above topics short papers on work in progress, and panel proposals.

Industrial presentations are not subject to the format and content constraints of regular submissions. We expect short and long presentations that express industrial position and status.

Tutorials on specific related topics and panels on challenging areas are encouraged.

The topics suggested by the conference can be discussed in term of concepts, state of the art, research, standards, implementations, running experiments, applications, and industrial case studies. Authors are invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal in the following, but not limited to, topic areas.

All topics and submission formats are open to both research and industry contributions.

CENTRIC 2026 conference tracks:

Advances in the theoretical perspectives on user-centric research
Conceptual advances in UX and user-centricity; The role of UX in innovation and digital transformation; Experience design as a driver of organizational change; Agile UX management

Advances in user-centered systems and design methods
Methodological innovations in user-centered system design; User research in early-stage development and evaluation; Integrating UX and usability into agile and iterative workflows; Risks and trade-offs in user-centered innovation; Participatory design and co-creation approaches; Early-stage UX integration.

Affective and emotional user-centric research
Emotional design and affective user interfaces; Recognizing and responding to user emotions and moods; Measuring emotional responses in interaction; Empathy in digital agents and social interfaces; Designing for wellbeing, motivation, and engagement; Ethical considerations in affective UX and emotion recognition

User trust, privacy, and ethical experience research
User trust and transparency in digital systems; Perceived privacy and control in personalized services; Ethical UX and responsible design practices; Trust-by-design and human-centered security; User awareness, consent, and empowerment; Evaluating perceived fairness and accountability.

Personalization and adaptive experience design in socio-technical and organizational contexts
Context-aware and adaptive user interfaces; Personalized user journeys and experience flows; Balancing personalization, autonomy, and user control; Evaluating the UX impact of personalization; Social and cultural influences on UX perception; User experience in collaborative and community platforms; UX as part of digital transformation and organizational culture; Experience design for social and collective contexts

Advances in user experience and usability measurement and evaluation
Quantitative and qualitative UX metrics and models; Multi-dimensional UX evaluation frameworks; UX theory; Experience sampling and longitudinal UX research; Predictive and data-driven UX assessment.

User Experience in emerging interaction contexts
UX of immersive and interactive systems (AR, VR, MR); Designing for hybrid, mobile, and spatial experiences; Embodied interaction and gesture-based control; UX in smart environments and interfaces

User-centric human–AI interaction
Designing and measuring human-AI interfaces; Interaction for transparency, explainability, human control, and transparency; User experience of AI-assisted tools and recommender systems; Enhancing UX research with AI; Perception and evaluation of AI applications.

Predictive User Experience and Data-driven Design
Predictive UX modeling and simulation techniques; Machine learning approaches for forecasting user satisfaction, usability, and UX; Early-stage UX prediction from interface prototypes or design artifacts; Behavioral analytics and user modeling for experience prediction; Integrating predictive UX insights into agile and DevOps pipelines

Industrial User Experience Research on interactive systems
UX research, evaluation, and design practice in corporate and professional environments, UX integration into early industrial system development, UX data-driven DevOps, New approaches for collaborative workflows between UX, engineering, and operations teams, Continuous UX evaluation and improvement analytics, automation, and adaptive design.

UX of intelligent and connected environments
Experience evaluation and design for smart and ambient environments; Context and situation awareness in user interaction; UX in IoT, wearables, and connected devices; User experience of context-aware recommender systems; AI agents and hybrid ecosystems.

Deadlines:

Deadlines differ for special tracks. Please consult the conference home page for special tracks Call for Papers (if any).

INSTRUCTION FOR THE AUTHORS

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions to one of the IARIA Journals.

Publisher: XPS (Xpert Publishing Services)
Archived: ThinkMind^TM Digital Library (free access)
Prints available at Curran Associates, Inc.
How to submit to appropriate indexes.

Only .pdf or .doc files will be accepted for paper submission. All received submissions will be acknowledged via an automated system.

Contribution types

• regular papers [in the proceedings, digital library]
• short papers (work in progress) [in the proceedings, digital library]
• ideas: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library]
• extended abstracts: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library]
• posters: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library]
• posters: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org]
• presentations: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org]
• demos: two pages [posted on www.iaria.org]

FORMATS

Only .pdf or .doc files will be accepted for paper submission. All received submissions will be acknowledged via an automated system.

Final author manuscripts will be 8.5" x 11", not exceeding 6 pages; max 4 extra pages allowed at additional cost.

Helpful information for paper formatting for MS Word can be found here.

There is a community provided LaTeX template: the CTAN package iaria (with full IARIA formatting rules, including IARIA citation style, but for providing citation style it is tightly bound to pdflatex+biblatex+biber). In addition, there is also iaria-lite (not bound to pdflatex+biblatex+biber, but compatible with any TeX stack; thus, it cannot provide the IARIA citation formattings, but only the titlepage and content-related IARIA formatting rules). Based on the iaria package, there is a minimal working example as Overleaf template. When you are using the LaTeX templates, please still adhere to the additional editorial rules.

Slides-based contributions can use the corporate/university format and style.

Your paper should also comply with the additional editorial rules.

Once you receive the notification of contribution acceptance, you will be provided by the publisher an online author kit with all the steps an author needs to follow to submit the final version. The author kits URL will be included in the letter of acceptance.

We would recommend that you should not use too many extra pages, even if you can afford the extra fees. No more than 2 contributions per event are recommended, as each contribution must be separately registered and paid for. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to ensure that the paper will be included in the conference proceedings and in the digital library, or posted on the www.iaria.org (for slide-based contributions).

CONTRIBUTION TYPE

Regular Papers (up to 6-10 page article -6 pages covered the by regular registration; max 4 extra pages allowed at additional cost- ) (oral presentation)
These contributions could be academic or industrial research, survey, white, implementation-oriented, architecture-oriented, white papers, etc. They will be included in the proceedings, posted in the free-access ThinkMind digital library and sent for indexing. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the appropriate contribution type. 12-14 presentation slides are suggested.

Short papers (work in progress) (up to 4 pages long) (oral presentation)
Work-in-progress contributions are welcome. These contributions represent partial achievements of longer-term projects. They could be academic or industrial research, survey, white, implementation-oriented, architecture-oriented, white papers, etc. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as work in progress. Contributors must follow the conference deadlines, describing early research and novel skeleton ideas in the areas of the conference topics. The work will be published in the conference proceedings, posted in the free-access ThinkMind digital library and sent for indexing. For more details, see the Work in Progress explanation page. 12-14 presentation slides are suggested.

Ideas contributions (2 pages long) (oral presentation)
This category is dedicated to new ideas in their very early stage. Idea contributions are expression of yet to be developed approaches, with pros/cons, not yet consolidated. Ideas contributions are intended for a debate and audience feedback. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Idea. Contributors must follow the conference deadlines, describing early research and novel skeleton ideas in the areas of the conference topics. The work will be published in the conference proceedings, posted in the free-access ThinkMind digital library and sent for indexing. For more details, see the Ideas explanation page. 12-14 presentation slides are suggested.

Extended abstracts (2 pages long) (oral presentation)
Extended abstracts summarize a long potential publication with noticeable results. It is intended for sharing yet to be written, or further on intended for a journal publication. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Extended abstract. Contributors must follow the conference deadlines, describing early research and novel skeleton ideas in the areas of the conference topics. The work will be published in the conference proceedings, posted in the free-access ThinkMind digital library and sent for indexing. 12-14 presentation slides are suggested.

Posters (paper-based, two pages long) (oral presentation)
Posters are intended for ongoing research projects, concrete realizations, or industrial applications/projects presentations. The poster may be presented during sessions reserved for posters, or mixed with presentation of articles of similar topic. A two-page paper summarizes a presentation intended to be a POSTER. This allows an author to summarize a series of results and expose them via a big number of figures, graphics and tables. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Poster Two Pages. Contributors must follow the conference deadlines, describing early research and novel skeleton ideas in the areas of the conference topics. The work will be published in the conference proceedings, posted in the free-access ThinkMind digital library and sent for indexing. 8-10 presentation slides are suggested. Also a big Poster is suitable, used for live discussions with the attendees, in addition to the oral presentation.

Posters (slide-based, only) (oral presentation)
Posters are intended for ongoing research projects, concrete realizations, or industrial applications/projects presentations. The poster may be presented during sessions reserved for posters, or mixed with presentation of articles of similar topic. The slides must have comprehensive comments. This type of contribution only requires a 8-10 slide-deck. Please submit the contributions following the instructions for the regular submissions using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Poster (slide-only). The slide-deck will be posted, post-event, on www.iaria.org.
8-10 presentation slides are suggested. Also a big Poster is suitable, used for live discussions with the attendees, additionally to the oral presentation.

Presentations (slide-based, only) (oral presentation)
These contributions represent technical marketing/industrial/business/positioning presentations. This type of contribution only requires a 12-14 slide-deck. Please submit the contributions following the submission instructions by using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Presentation (slide-only). The slide-deck will be posted, post-event, on www.iaria.org.
12-14 presentation slides are suggested.

Demos (two pages) [posted on www.iaria.org]
Demos represent special contributions where a tool, an implementation of an application, or a freshly implemented system is presented in its alfa/beta version. It might also be intended for thsoe new application to gather the attendee opinion. A two-page summary for a demo is intended to be. It would be scheduled in special time spots, to ensure a maximum attendance from the participants. Please submit the contributions following the submission instructions by using the "Submit a Paper" button and selecting the contribution type as Demos. The Demos paper will be posted, post-event, on www.iaria.org.

Tutorial proposals
Tutorials provide overviews of current high interest topics. Proposals should be for 2-3 hour long. Proposals must contain the title, the summary of the content, and the biography of the presenter(s). The tutorial slide decks will be posted on the IARIA site.
Please send your proposals to tutorial proposal

Panel proposals
The organizers encourage scientists and industry leaders to organize dedicated panels dealing with controversial and challenging topics and paradigms. Panel moderators are asked to identify their guests and manage that their appropriate talk supports timely reach our deadlines. Moderators must specifically submit an official proposal, indicating their background, panelist names, their affiliation, the topic of the panel, as well as short biographies. The panel slide deck will be posted on the IARIA site.
Please send your proposals to panel proposal