Designing 2026

3rd International Workshop on Designing Software

Software design is a set of activities and decisions that are involved in the construction of a software system, ranging from high-level architecture and conceptual design to code design. Decisions made during a design process have long-lasting impact on various qualities of a system, such as modularity, maintainability, scalability, robustness, security, usability, and performance. Despite its important role in software development, design is a subject that is still relatively little understood by both researchers and engineers – particularly in terms of design as an activity rather than design as a product/outcome. Although exceptions exist, in practice, design is frequently carried out in a somewhat ad-hoc, implicit manner. Teams often succeed in some way, though not always. Collectively, the research community has to date little systematic understanding of what makes certain designs and design processes successful, how to package and transfer knowledge about design and designing between teams and organizations, and how to design systems that are robust against a continuously evolving context. Teaching software design also remains a challenge for educators, with design being considered a skill that is acquired mainly through experience rather than something that can be taught in classrooms.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and educators who are interested in any aspect of software design, though we hope to place a specific focus on designing software as an activity in which developers, teams, and organizations engage. The workshop seeks to identify new directions and open challenges for the field. The workshop will be highly interactive and discussion-based, centered around a core set of topics on software design research and education. Each session will begin with short presentations by participants on a topic and proceed with breakout sessions to discuss the topic in depth. The outcome of the workshop is expected to be a report summarizing open problems, promising approaches, and next steps for advancing the state-of-the-art in software design practices and education.

Previous editions

• Designing 2025
• Designing 2024

Accepted Papers

Call for Papers

We invite submissions in the following categories (all page limits include references and appendices):

1. Technical papers presenting novel research or educational contributions on software design (max. 8 pages),
2. Extended abstracts, describing a new vision/direction for software design, preliminary results on a novel design approach, or a proposal for a workshop activity (max. 5 pages),
3. Case study papers describing a case study or a model problem that can be used by the community to compare and evaluate different approaches to design (max. 6 pages).

In particular, an activity proposal should outline a specific activity (45 min to 1 hour long) to be carried out together with attendees, such as workshopping a new, promising approach to designing or teaching.

Due to the ACM Open policies, all papers, except extended abstracts, need to have an OA institutional agreement or undergo article processing charges (APCs) to be paid by the authors in order to be published. Extended abstracts are free of APC charges. The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the proceedings are made available by ACM. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2026. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Empirical studies on software design
• Cognitive and social aspects of software design
• Designing software in hybrid and remote settings
• The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on software design; the role of design in AI-assisted software development
• Processes and evaluation standards for software design research
• Software design methodologies, principles, strategies, and patterns
• Case studies and analysis of design successes and failures
• Approaches for software design education, including pedagogies and curriculum development
• AI-assisted software design education
• Theory building for/of software design
• Software design for social dimensions (e.g., ethics, sustainability, privacy)
• Software design for emerging domains (e.g., cyber-physical systems, IoT)
• Rigorous approaches to software design (e.g., modeling, validation)

Submission Guidelines

Contributions must be submitted through the HotCRP site.

All submissions must strictly conform to the ACM conference proceedings formatting instructions. The following LaTeX code must be placed at the start of the LaTeX document: \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}

Submissions are single-blind: Authors’ names, institutions, and contact details should appear on the first page. Submissions will be evaluated based on (1) relevance to the workshop and potential to generate stimulating discussions, (2) novelty, and (3) presentation quality.

Maurício Aniche

Designing at Scale: Challenges, Pitfalls, and Lessons Learned

Abstract: Large-scale software systems have an inconvenient truth: every architectural decision eventually turns into a mistake. The only uncertainty is when. In this talk, I’ll talk about real architectural and design choices that once looked reasonable, or even “the best one”, but later became liabilities that constrained teams, slowed delivery, and complicated evolution. From these failures, I’ll extract recurring patterns of pain in large-scale design and challenge some of the assumptions we commonly rely on when “designing for the future.” This is not a talk about best practices or silver bullets. It’s about making trade-offs consciously, accepting that regret is inevitable, and learning how to leave fewer landmines for the engineers who will inherit your system, including your future self.