Briteller: Shining a Light on AI Recommendations for ChildrenUnderstanding how AI recommendations work can help the younger generation become more informed and critical consumers of the vast amount of information they encounter daily. However, young learners with limited math and computing knowledge often find AI concepts too abstract. To address this, we developed Briteller, a light-based recommendation system that makes learning tangible. By exploring and manipulating light beams, Briteller enables children to understand an AI recommender system's core algorithmic building block, the dot product, through hands-on interactions. Initial evaluations with ten middle school students demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach, using embodied metaphors, such as "merging light" to represent addition. To overcome the limitations of the physical optical setup, we further explored how AR could embody multiplication, expand data vectors with more attributes, and enhance contextual understanding. Our findings provide valuable insights for designing embodied and tangible learning experiences that make AI concepts more accessible to young learners.2025XZXiaofei Zhou et al.University of Rochester, Department of Computer ScienceProgramming Education & Computational ThinkingSTEM Education & Science CommunicationCHI
Being in Virtual Worlds: How Interaction, Environment, and Touch Shape Embodiment in Immersive ExperiencesEmbodiment is an everyday experience that typically goes unnoticed. While we often take it for granted, with the adoption of virtual reality (VR) technology, embodiment in virtual bodies and worlds has become an important consideration for designers of immersive experiences. To date, the VR design community has primarily considered embodiment in terms of body ownership over a synchronized visual representation. In this paper, we construct an interactional framework of virtual embodiment, beginning by revisiting what it really means to be “embodied.” Our framework reconnects embodiment and presence in virtual environments founded in Dourish's concept of embodied interaction and Heidegger's Dasein or “being-in-the-world.” We discuss how embodiment, fundamentally rooted in past and present interactions, changes our understanding of body ownership and its extension into VR. Integrating theories from VR research, philosophy, HCI, and psychology we uncover the complex interplay of interaction, environment, and touch in shaping embodied experiences. We present a novel framework for understanding embodiment in VR rooted in interaction, enabling designers to create more immersive and meaningful virtual worlds.2025JDJohn Desnoyers-Stewart et al.Simon Fraser University, School of Interactive Arts and TechnologyMid-Air Haptics (Ultrasonic)Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputImmersion & Presence ResearchCHI
Noel: A Chatbot Persona to Support Children Designing for OthersDesigning for others encourages children to empathize with and consider different perspectives and needs. A chatbot persona could allow children to design for stakeholder groups that are challenging to involve directly in educational activities, such as people with disabilities. In this paper, we explore how an artificial intelligence chatbot persona leveraging the GPT-4 large language model can support children's design empathy while designing for others. We report the design, development process, and implementation of a chatbot persona representing a 12-year-old child with low vision named Noel. The exploratory case study consisted of three 90- to 120-minute workshop sessions with nineteen students (ages 11 to 13) in a grade 6/7 classroom. Results illustrate ways that Noel supported students throughout the design process, their expressions of design empathy, and their experiences. We present implications for developers and educators along with future directions for research.2025PLPriscilla Lo et al.Simon Fraser University, School of Interactive Arts and TechnologyIntelligent Voice Assistants (Alexa, Siri, etc.)Conversational ChatbotsCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)CHI
“They Don’t Come With a Handbook”: Exploring Design Opportunities for Supporting Parent-Child Interaction around Emotions in the Family ContextParenting practices have a profound effect on children�s well-being and are a core target of several psychological interventions for child mental health. However, there is only limited understanding in HCI so far about how to design socio-technical systems that could support positive shifts in parent-child social practices in situ. This paper focuses on parental socialisation of emotion as an exemplar context in which to explore this question. We present a two-step study, combining theory-driven identification of plausible design directions, with co-design workshops with 22 parents of children aged 6-10 years. Our data suggest the potential for technology-enabled systems that aim to facilitate positive changes in parent-child social practices in situ, and highlights a number of plausible design directions to explore in future work.2024NTNikki Theofanopoulou et al.Session 2a: Designing Technology for Parenting and Child DevelopmentCSCW
Untangling Cables: A Case Study of the Life & Afterlife of Digital Devices in Academic ResearchAs researchers and academics, we investigate our bad habitus—our everyday practices around technologies for research that reinforce dynamics of extraction, consumption and waste—in relation to the lifecycle of technology in academic research. Through qualitative interviews, observation, and visual documentation, this case study explores the consideration of sustainability in purchasing decisions, use, maintenance, and disposal processes of digital devices used in a North American university as well the institution’s related policies and procedures and faculty members’ practices. Through this research we find tensions that complicate sustainability in the university research context. We develop a rich description of the complexities of creating sustainable practices, policies, and procedures in a university setting as a step towards becoming more sustainable in our work and in our institutions, and we offer a set of recommendations for our academic institution and systems that both advance and thwart efforts to create sustainable practices.2024RMReese Muntean et al.Sustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingDIS
Supporting Cognitive Reappraisal With Digital Technology: A Content Analysis and Scoping Review of Challenges, Interventions, and Future DirectionsCognitive reappraisal (CR) is a critical emotion regulation skill that is strongly associated with mental well-being outcomes. While CR has been well theorized psychologically and many therapeutic approaches exist, CR remains one of the toughest skills to learn and develop. We explore the design space of using technologically-mediated CR supports through a dual approach. First, we draw on a content analysis of 30 therapeutic manuals combined with five clinician interviews to understand existing CR processes and challenges in therapeutic settings. Second, we compare the identified challenges with a scoping review of 42 HCI papers on technologically-mediated CR interventions. This allowed us to identify trends and gaps in a field where digital health innovations are critically needed; and suggest four design opportunities that warrant further exploration. Together, our work contributes theoretically-derived future research opportunities, and provides researchers with concrete guidance to explore these important design spaces.2024AKAlexandra Kitson et al.Simon Fraser UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
''I Call Upon a Friend'': Virtual Reality-Based Supports for Cognitive Reappraisal Identified through Co-designing with AdolescentsVirtual reality (VR) offers great promise to expand delivery models for therapeutic interventions to help adolescents develop adaptive emotion regulation skills. Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is an emotion regulation skill that involves changing your thinking to improve your emotional state. However, adolescents face developmental and implementation barriers to do CR successfully. To better understand adolescents' (15-18 years) lived experience of CR challenges and how they envision VR could support their skills learning and transfer to everyday life, we ran three co-design workshops (N=69). Our research weaves together the workshop findings with prior literature to identify directions for future VR-based CR interventions. From our study results, we generated design strategies leveraging best practices of existing research: embedded and embodied scaffolds, providing different points of view, and externalizing the inner self. To illustrate these strategies in practice, we show how each would work in a challenging emotional scenario identified by adolescents.2024AKAlexandra Kitson et al.Simon Fraser UniversityVR Medical Training & RehabilitationMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Exploring Opportunities to Aid Generation of Input Action Ideas for Tangible User InterfacesNovice tangible interaction design students often find it challenging to generate input action ideas for tangible interfaces. To identify opportunities to aid input action idea generation, we built and evaluated a tool consisting of interactive physical artifacts coupled with digital examples of tangible systems and technical implementation guidance. Through video recorded design sessions and interviews with twelve students, we investigated how they used the tool to generate input action ideas, how it supported them, and what challenges they faced. We found that the tool helped in generating input action ideas by enabling to experience input actions, supporting hands-on explorations, and introducing possibilities. However, introducing examples at times caused design fixation. The tool fell short in supporting the planning of technical implementation of the generated ideas. This research is useful for tangible interaction design students, instructors, and researchers to apply in education, design similar tools, or conduct further research.2021UBUddipana Baishya et al.Simon Fraser UniversityCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsCHI
Communicating Sustainable Consumption and Production in 360° VideoResearch at the intersection of technology and sustainability is increasing across disciplines. Virtual reality is one technology used to address social issues, though less work has explored how immersive environments might impact a viewer’s impression of complex environmental issues like sustainability. SCP in 360°: Sustainable Consumption and Production in 360 Degrees is a series of 360° videos aiming to make sustainable consumption and production understandable and engaging to a wider audience. In this paper, we describe the context and production of these videos, report on the visitor study conducted during the videos’ exhibition, and discuss the specifics of using 360° video for communicating sustainability and the broader implications for other 360° video projects and sustainability-focused interactive media. In contrast to research on empathy in virtual reality, our study suggests that 360° video supports participants in feeling compassion towards the situations viewed and understanding the context and complexity of sustainability solutions.2020RMReese Muntean et al.360° Video & Panoramic ContentSustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingDIS
Evaluating the Impact of a Mobile Neurofeedback App for Young Children at School and HomeAbout 18% of children in industrialized countries suffer from anxiety. We designed a mobile neurofeedback app, called Mind-Full, based on existing design guidelines. Our goal was for young children in lower socio-economic status schools to improve their ability to self-regulate anxiety by using Mind-Full. In this paper we report on quantitative outcomes from a sixteen-week field evaluation with 20 young children (aged 5 to 8). Our methodological contribution includes using a control group, validated measures of anxiety and stress, and assessing transfer and maintenance. Results from teacher and parent behavioral surveys indicated gains in children's ability to self-regulate anxiety at school and home; a decrease in anxious behaviors at home; and cortisol tests showed variable improvement in physiological stress levels. We contribute to HCI for mental health with evidence that it is viable to use a mobile app in lower socio-economic status schools to improve children's mental health.2019AAAlissa N. Antle et al.Simon Fraser UniversityBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Framed Guessability: Improving the Discoverability of Gestures and Body Movements for Full-Body InteractionThe wide availability of body-sensing technologies (such as Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect) has the potential to bring full-body interaction to the masses, but the design of hand gestures and body movements that can be easily discovered by the users of such systems is still a challenge. In this paper, we revise and evaluate Framed Guessability, a design methodology for crafting discoverable hand gestures and body movements that focuses participants’ suggestions within a “frame,” i.e. a scenario. We elicited gestures and body movements via the Guessability and the Framed Guessability methods, consulting 89 participants in-lab. We then conducted an in-situ quasi-experimental study with 138 museum visitors to compare the discoverability of gestures and body movements elicited with these two methods. We found that the Framed Guessability movements were more discoverable than those generated via traditional Guessability, even though in the museum there was no reference to the frame.2018FCFrancesco Cafaro et al.Indiana University-Purdue University IndianapolisFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputCHI
Opening up the Design Space of Neurofeedback Brain-Computer Interfaces for ChildrenBrain-computer interface applications (BCIs) utilizing neurofeedback (NF) can make invisible brain states visible in real time. Learning to recognize, modify, and regulate brain states is critical to all children’s development and can improve learning, and emotional and mental health outcomes. How can we design usable and effective NF BCIs that help children learn and practice brain state self-regulation? Our contribution is a list of challenges for this emerging design space and a conceptual framework that addresses those challenges. The framework is composed of five interrelated strong concepts that we adapted from other design spaces. We derived the concepts reflectively, theoretically and empirically through a design research process in which we created and evaluated a NF BCI, called Mind-Full, designed to help children living in Nepal who had suffered from complex trauma learn to self-regulate anxiety and attention. We add rigor to our derivation methodology by horizontally and vertically grounding our concepts, that is, relating them to similar concepts in the literature and instantiations in other artefacts. We illustrate the generative power of the concepts and the inter-relationships between them through the description of two new NF BCIs we created using the framework for urban and indigenous children with anxiety and attentional challenges. We then show the versatility of our framework by describing how it inspired and informed the conceptual design of three NF BCIs for different types of self-regulation: selective attention and working memory, pain management, and depression. Lastly, we discuss the contestability, defensibility and substantiveness of our conceptual framework in order to ensure rigour in our research design process. Our contribution is a rigorously derived design framework that opens up this new and emerging design space of NF BCI’s for children for other researchers and designers.2018AAAlissa N. Antle et al.Simon Fraser UniversityBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)CHI
G2G: The Design and Evaluation of a Shared Calendar and Messaging System for Grandparents and Grandchildren.Distance separated grandparents and grandchildren often face challenges in staying connected. To explore this topic, we designed G2G, a shared calendar and video messaging system to connect young children (ages 5-10) with their grandparents over distance. Our design focused on providing grandparents and grandchildren with an awareness of each other’s lives to support conversations and design elements to help reduce the need for parent scaffolding. A field study with two grandparent-grandchild pairs over two months showed that systems designed around structured communication can help young children develop a routine around staying in touch with their remote grandparents. Autonomy in maintaining awareness can help children to be engaged more easily. This suggests that designs focusing on connecting young children to their grandparents over distance should be flexible yet structured and designing to reduce parental scaffolding can lead to positive effects and strengthened relationships.2018AFAzadeh Forghani et al.Simon Fraser UniversityDomestic RobotsParticipatory DesignCHI
Child-Computer Interaction SIG: Ubiquity and Big Data - A Changing Technology Landscape for ChildrenThis SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss topics related to challenges brought about by the increasing ubiquity of computing in children’s lives, including the collection, and use of “big data”. Topics include control and ownership of children’s data, the impact of personalization on inclusion, the proper role for the quantification of children’s lives, and the educational needs of children growing up in a society with ubiquitous computing and big data.2018JHJuan Pablo Hourcade et al.University of IowaEarly Childhood Education TechnologySpecial Education TechnologyCHI