UNLOOP

Symposium On Interaction and Computational Media Design

26 June, 2026 | Porto, Portugal + Online

Unloop symposium explores the friction, inconvenience, and playfulness in the interaction with computational media as inducers of meaning, reflectiveness and higher-order thinking.

Unloop aims to question the dominant paradigms of Human-Centred Design, that centre on flow and user satisfaction and that, despite having been contributing to the production of usable artefacts, have also been leading users into hedonistic loops that reinforce automatic, familiar, and repetitive behaviours.

Unloop takes place in the context of the Break the Loop research project, explores how friction, inconvenience, and other playful strategies can be used to promote meaning-making and reflectiveness in users, and to develop tools for designers and other stakeholders to access this knowledge.

Call for Abstracts

Unloop calls for extended abstracts by scholars, designers, artists, and students working within the expanded field of this theme. We invite you to submit theoretical, practice-based or experimental research work, considering, but not limited to:

  • User-Centered, Human-Centred, More-Than-Human Design;
  • Playful, Gameful, Emotional Design;
  • Critical, Speculative, Activist Design;
  • Pervasive, Persuasive, Deceptive, Seamless, Smooth Design;
  • Friction, Slow, (Dis)Engagement Design.
Submit extended abstracts of up to 1.500 words (excluding references), in English, following the formatting in the provided template. Reviews of submissions will be double-blind, so ensure the file is completely anonymised (i.e., omit author-related information and explicit self-citations). Accepted abstracts will be invited to hold a 10-minute presentation at Unloop and to submit a full paper for a Special Issue of the Journal of Digital Media and Interaction to be published later in 2026.

Submissions

  • All works must be submitted via Microsoft CMT;
  • Submissions must be original and not previously published;
  • At least one author of each selected abstract must register and present at the symposium to be eligible for an invitation to submit a full paper to a Special Issue of the Journal of Digital Media and Interaction.
  • The symposium’s working language is English.

Important Dates

  • DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS
    16th of March 29th of March
  • Notification to Authors
    30th of March 13th of April
  • Registration
    Deadline for Authors
    17th of April 27th of April
  • Symposium
    26th of June

Programme

  • 09:30 - 10:00  Opening
  • 10:00 - 11:00  Paper Session 1
  • 11:30 - 12:30  Paper Session 2
  • 13:00 - 14:30  Lunch Break
  • 14:30 - 15:30  Paper Session 3
  • 15:45 - 16:45  Paper Session 4
  • 17:00 - 18:00  Keynote Address: Laura Beloff
    Laura Beloff

    Laura Beloff (Ph.D.) is an internationally acclaimed artist and researcher based in Finland. She functions in-between artistic production and academic research with a core in artistic methods and practice. Beloff’s concept- and practice-driven research engages with art, humans, environment and society in affiliation with science and technology development. Beloff’s interest in recent years has focused on investigating the diminishing gap between concepts and disciplines of biology and technology. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Media and Vice-Dean for Artistic and Creative Practices at Aalto University - School of Art, Design and Architecture.

    realitydisfunctions.org @laurabeloff

Registration

  • Authors must register before 17th of April 27th of April.
  • Co-authors and the general audience should register before 25th of June.
  • Registration is free. Please register via the Eventbrite page.

Presentation

Authors of accepted submissions may choose to present either on-site or remotely. The final programme will be defined according to the number of registrations in each modality.

Venue

The symposium will take place at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), where the Break the Loop project is based within the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS).

Team

Contact

For any questions, please contact pcardoso@fba.up.pt