Caring about Care: A Meta-Narrative Review of HCI Research on Care

Paper Title

Caring about Care: A Meta-Narrative Review of HCI Research on Care

Publication Info

• Topic area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research on care and its conceptualizations.
• Keywords: HCI, care ethics, care technologies, meta-narrative review, SIGCHI, care framings, care-tech relations, feminist care ethics, relational care, care ecosystems.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Despite the growing interest in care as a domain and ethical stance in HCI, there is limited integrated understanding of the concept. It remains unclear how different applications of care relate to one another, align or contradict in their assumptions, and collectively shape HCI discourse.
• Significance: Understanding care in HCI is critical for designing technologies that address diverse care needs, support relational and ethical practices, and respond to structural inequalities in care systems.
• Motivation and related work: Prior reviews have focused on specific care domains (e.g., healthcare, self-care technologies) or theoretical lenses (e.g., feminist care ethics). However, these reviews often lack a comprehensive, cross-domain perspective and temporal analysis. This paper builds on and complements such work by mapping care research across 317 SIGCHI papers.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A meta-narrative review of 317 SIGCHI papers to map the landscape of care in HCI, identify six paradigmatic framings of care, and develop a conceptual map and interactive website to position these framings.
• Novelty:
  1. Identification of six paradigmatic framings of care in HCI.
  2. Development of a conceptual map connecting these framings with care-tech relations and temporal trends.
  3. Creation of an interactive website for exploring the reviewed literature and its metadata.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted a systematic search of SIGCHI publications using "care" and "caring" as keywords.
  • Screened 769 papers, resulting in a final corpus of 317 papers.
  • Applied Greenhalgh et al.'s meta-narrative review principles (e.g., pragmatism, pluralism, reflexivity).
  • Coded papers for study motivations, care definitions, care-tech relations, and other dimensions.
  • Synthesized findings into six framings and mapped them along two axes: condition-driven vs. relation-driven care, and individual/collaborative capacities vs. socio-cultural-political constructs.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Six framings of care in HCI: (1) Management of Conditions, (2) Everyday Living Support, (3) Supporting and Caring for Carers, (4) Politics and Advocacy, (5) Way of Living, Doing, and Relating, (6) Means of Knowledge Production.
  • Temporal trends show a shift from care as a problem to be solved (negative connotation) to care as a generative and emancipatory lens (positive and political connotations).
  • Care research is unevenly distributed across actors (e.g., older adults dominate), settings (e.g., formal care settings), and regions (e.g., dominated by Anglosphere countries).
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Extends prior reviews by integrating cross-domain perspectives, mapping temporal developments, and connecting care framings with care-tech relations.
  • Provides a practical tool (conceptual map and website) for navigating and positioning care research in HCI.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Data collection from SIGCHI publications (2008–2024).
  • Analysis of study methods, positionality, and care-tech relations.
  • Iterative synthesis workshops with authors and external experts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited geographical and cultural diversity in the reviewed literature.
  • Focus on English-language publications may exclude non-English perspectives on care.
  • Calls for bridging care ethics with core care contexts and expanding theoretical and methodological contributions.

Summary

This paper presents a meta-narrative review of 317 SIGCHI papers to map the landscape of care in HCI. It identifies six paradigmatic framings of care, ranging from managing health conditions to using care as a lens for knowledge production. A conceptual map illustrates the temporal development of care research, from addressing individual care needs to exploring care as a relational and political construct. The accompanying interactive website supports researchers in navigating and situating their work. The review highlights gaps in geographical diversity, theoretical development, and integration of care ethics into core care contexts, offering directions for future research.