In the face of climate change, pandemics, economic and political instability, and the accelerating pace of emerging technologies, the responsibilities of designing interactive systems have expanded well beyond the scope of traditional human-computer interaction. Today, interactive systems are entangled with broader sociocultural, political, economic, and ethical dimensions. We are increasingly witnessing how the deployment of new interactive technologies can produce unforeseen ripple effects across diverse domains.
This calls for a paradigm shift: from a focus on isolated interactions to an ecosystemic perspective—one that attends to the complex networks surrounding humans and more-than-human actors, and that engages with layered sociotechnical, cultural, political, economic, and ethical concerns.
We seek to provoke fundamental reexaminations of what it means to design interactive systems by asking:
To what extent does the notion of “interactivity” reinforce a dyadic model of human-system relations, potentially limiting our understanding of more distributed, entangled, or systemic forms of interaction? How do the things we design interact with broader sociocultural, political, economic, and planetary forces? What lies beyond “interaction” that should be made visible in our design processes? Given these interconnections, how should we redefine what is “interactive” in interactive systems? And how might such a redefinition help us better navigate their systemic impacts? Singapore offers a rich context for engaging these questions. As a hyper-urbanized, multicultural hub at the heart of Southeast Asia—and a global testbed for technological innovation—it provides a unique vantage point for rethinking the boundaries of interaction. At DIS 2026 in Singapore, we invite researchers, practitioners, and educators to critically and creatively explore the complexities beyond interaction.