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Call for Participation

Info

COMPASS workshop logistics are still in progress, so please check back soon for up-to-date information. For urgent questions, feel free to contact the organizers directly.

📆 Date: July 22 or 23, 2025
🇨🇦 Location (in person):
       Bahen Centre for Information Technology (Map)
       University of Toronto, Canada
       The workshop will be co-located with ACM COMPASS
⏳ Registration deadline: Early July 2025
📥 Registration site: Coming soon

Overview

This workshop explores the complex and often neglected relationship between sustainability and cybersecurity. A critical problem is emerging in our digital ecosystem: devices are being prematurely forced into e-waste streams due to shortsighted cybersecurity decisions and inadequate failure planning. Many products end up in landfills while still fully functional because cybersecurity choices have either permanently locked the device or deliberately induced unfixable failure modes.

This growing intersection of security and environmental sustainability demands urgent attention from the HCI community. As IoT devices proliferate and cybersecurity requirements evolve, the environmental consequences of our security decisions become increasingly urgent.

Workshop Goals

We intend for a highly interactive full-day workshop where participants have opportunity to engage in several activities, meet other researchers, and collaboratively brainstorm ways to address the cybersecurity and sustainability challenge. Our goal is for participants to:

  • Reflect on trade-offs and inter-dependence of cybersecurity and sustainability. For example, identify specific cybersecurity practices that could negatively impact sustainability efforts, and vice-versa.

  • Critique and improve design processes: Participants will collaboratively examine existing design processes, focusing on how security and sustainability could be mutually supported.

  • Foster interdisciplinary collaboration: The workshop seeks to broaden the scope of research and encourage future collaborations between sustainable HCI and cybersecurity researchers.

Format and Activities

Through hands-on activities, case study analysis, and design challenges, teams will explore concrete opportunities for integrating sustainability into the cybersecurity design process. Participants will work in interdisciplinary groups, bringing their unique experiences and perspectives to collaborative problem-solving.

Who Should Participate

We encourage participation from junior and senior researchers with interests in one or more of the following domains:

  • Sustainable HCI and design
  • Behavioral science and persuasion
  • Communication and interaction design
  • Accessibility and inclusive design
  • Prototyping and maker communities
  • User experience research
  • Usable security and privacy research
  • IoT and systems security
  • Applied cryptography

Participation Requirements

We ask that participants register through HotCRP (link will be posted soon). Participants should fill out the required form, providing:

  • A brief justification statement (max 200 words) explaining why they are interested in participating and what perspective they would bring to the workshop discussions
  • A short bio (max 100 words) suitable for distribution to workshop participants.