A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Research on Goals for Behavior ChangeHCI research on goals and behavior change has significantly increased over the past decade. However, while emerging work has synthesized personal informatics goals, fewer efforts have focused on also integrating HCI research on behavior change to chart future research directions.We conducted a systematic reviewof 180 papers focused on goals and behavior change from over 10 years of SIGCHI journals and conference proceedings. We further analyzed 37 papers from the data set that included evaluations of interventions’ effectiveness in-the-wild. We also reported on the effectiveness of 76 of such technology-based interventions and the meta-analysis of 28 of these interventions. We find that most research has focused on goals in the health and wellbeing domains, centered on the individual, low intrinsic goals, and partial use of theoretical constructs in technology-based interventions. We highlight opportunities for supporting multiple-domain, social, high intrinsic, and qualitative goals in HCI research for behavior change, and for more effective technology-based interventions with stronger theoretical underpinning, supporting users’ awareness of deep motives for qualitative goals.2025JZJun Zhu et al.University of California, Irvine, InformaticsMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringPrivacy by Design & User ControlCHI
Functionality and User Review Analysis of Mobile Apps for Mindfulness Eating and Eating DisordersA growing number of mobile apps have focused on healthy or problematic eating, albeit limited research has focused on evaluating such apps from users’ perspectives. To address this, we evaluated the functionalities of 27 apps on mindfulness eating, and eating disorders from the Apple App, and Google Play Stores, and conducted a content analysis of 1248 user reviews, totalling over 60,000 words. Findings indicate the main functionalities of tracking data on eating behaviours, emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations, symptoms, as well as triggers of eating disorders, and of providing interventions such as mindfulness, goal setting, psychoeducation, CBT, and holistic ones. Findings also highlight key usability and ethical challenges, which we used to inform five design implications namely tracking and reflecting on multiple aspects of mindfulness and healthy eating, supporting personalized interventions and AI-based ones, as well as the sensitive design for diagnosis, and for tracking and monitoring problematic data.2024LGLala Guluzade et al.Cognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Mental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesDiet Tracking & Nutrition ManagementDIS
User Perspectives and Ethical Experiences of Apps for Depression: A Qualitative Analysis of User ReviewsApps for depression can increase access to mental health care but concerns abound with disparities between academic development of apps and those available through app stores. Reviews highlighted ethical shortcomings of these self-management tools, with a need for greater insight into how ethical issues are experienced by users. We addressed these gaps by exploring user reviews of such apps to better understand user experiences and ethical issues. We conducted a thematic analysis of 2,217 user reviews sampled from 40 depression apps in Google Play and Apple App Store, totaling over 77,500 words. Users reported positive and negative experiences, with ethical implications evident in areas of benefits, adverse effects, access, usability and design, support, commercial models, autonomy, privacy, and transparency. We integrated our elements of ethically designed apps for depression and principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, autonomy, and virtue, and we conclude with implications for ethical design of apps for depression.2022DBDionne Bowie-DaBreo et al.Lancaster UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesPrivacy by Design & User ControlCHI
The TAC Toolkit: Supporting Design for User Acceptance of Health Technologies from a Macro-Temporal PerspectiveUser acceptance is key for the successful uptake and use of health technologies, but also impacted by numerous factors not always easily accessible nor operationalised by designers in practice. This work seeks to facilitate the application of acceptance theory in design practice through the Technology Acceptance (TAC) toolkit: a novel theory-based design tool and method comprising 16 cards, 3 personas, 3 scenarios, a virtual think-space, and a website, which we evaluated through workshops conducted with 21 designers of health technologies. Findings showed that the toolkit revised and extended designers' knowledge of technology acceptance, fostered their appreciation, empathy and ethical values while designing for acceptance, and contributed towards shaping their future design practice. We discuss implications for considering user acceptance a dynamic, multi-stage process in design practice, and better supporting designers in imagining distant acceptance challenges. Finally, we examine the generative value of the TAC toolkit and its possible future evolution.2022CNCamille Nadal et al.Trinity College DublinMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesPrototyping & User TestingCHI
Sensory Probes: An Exploratory Design Research Method for Human-Food InteractionDesigning interactions with food holds potential for rich multisensory experiences but their pervasiveness can challenge our understanding of them. This paper presents the design and evaluation of Sensory probes, a novel, exploratory design research method aimed to sensitize participants towards their food experiences. We report on workshops with 8 participants for co-designing the probes, followed by iterative revision through two-week diary studies with 18 participants. Findings indicate strong engagement with the sensory probes and how they brought forward the bodily and sensory aspects of these experiences, alongside emotional and social ones. We highlight the design rationale for the sensory probes which has been both empirically- and theoretically-grounded, provide reflections on the value of these probes for enabling novel perspectives on food experiences, and on probes’ ability to capture what we called sensory fragments of participants’ experience reflecting distinct sensory aspects form both internal and external senses.2021TGTom Gayler et al.Food Culture & Food InteractionDIS
Exploring Personalized Vibrotactile and Thermal Patterns for Affect RegulationThe growing HCI interest in wellbeing has led to the emerging area of haptics for affect regulation. In such technologies, distinct haptic patterns are usually designed by researchers; however, current work provides a limited reflection on the rationale for the implemented patterns or the choice of haptic modality. We also know little about how people may benefit from engagement in designing such patterns and what design principles underpin them. We explored vibrotactile and thermal modalities to address these gaps and report on a study with 23 participants. These created haptic patterns for affect regulation during stress elicitation. Findings indicate that subjective and objective measures of anxiety and stress were lower in participants who received haptic patterns than those who did not, and highlighted key experiential qualities of vibrotactile and thermal patterns, and their potential for affect regulation. These open up new design opportunities for affect regulation technologies, including supporting implicit affect regulation through entrainment of slow bodily rhythms, decoupling it from predominant vibrotactile modality, designing thermal biofeedback patterns, and supporting personalized and adaptive patterns.2021MUMuhammad Umair et al.Vibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationHaptic WearablesDIS
Interoceptive Interaction: An Embodied Metaphor Inspired Approach to Designing for Meditation Meditation is a mind-body practice with considerable wellbeing benefits that can take different forms. Novices usually start with focused attention meditation that supports regulation of attention towards an inward focus or internal bodily sensations and away from external stimuli or distractors. Most meditation technologies employ metaphorical mappings of meditative states to visual or soundscape representations to support awareness of mind wandering and attention regulation, although the rationale for such mappings is seldom articulated. Moreover, such external modalities also take the focus attention away from the body. We advance the concept of interoceptive interaction and employed the embodied metaphor theory to explore the design of mappings to the interoceptive sense of thermoception. We illustrate this concept with WarmMind, an on-body interface integrating heat actuators for mapping meditation states. We report on an exploratory study with 10 participants comparing our novel thermal metaphors for mapping meditation states with comparable ones, albeit in aural modality, as provided by Muse meditation app. Findings indicate a tension between the highly discoverable soundscape’s metaphors which however hinder attention regulation, and the ambiguous thermal metaphors experienced as coming from the body and supported attention regulation. We discuss the qualities of embodied metaphors underpinning this tension and propose an initial framework to inform the design of metaphorical mappings for meditation technologies.2021CRClaudia Daudén Roquet et al.Lancaster UniversityHaptic WearablesShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsCHI
ThermoPixels: Toolkit for Personalizing Arousal-based Interfaces through Hybrid CraftingMuch research has shown the potential of affective interfaces for reflection on, and understanding of bodily responses. Yet, people find it difficult to engage with, and understand their biodata which they have limited prior experience with. Building on affective interfaces and material-centered design, we developed ThermoPixels, a toolkit including thermochromic and heating materials, as well as galvanic skin response sensors for creating representations of physiological arousal. Within 10 workshops, 20 users with no expertise in biosensors or thermochromic materials created personalized representations of physiological arousal and its real-time changes using the toolkit. We report on participants’ material exploration, their experience of creating shapes and the use of colors for emotional awareness and regulation. We discuss embodied exploration and creative expression, the value of technology in emotion regulation and its social context, and the importance of understanding material limitations for affective sense-making.2020MUMuhammad Umair et al.Force Feedback & Pseudo-Haptic WeightHaptic WearablesComputational Methods in HCIDIS
Material Food Probe: Personalized 3D Printed Flavors for Emotional Communication in Intimate RelationshipsInteractions with food are complex, integrating rich multisensory experiences within emotionally meaningful social contexts. Yet, the opportunities for food as material resource for emotional communication have been less explored. We describe a two-month project with 5 couples centered on the co-design of personalized flavors for emotional communication. These were experienced through a three-day preliminary study involving a 3D food printer in participants’ homes. We discuss the value of our findings indicating preferences for both remembered and imagined positive flavors and their integration in focal intimacy practices to support emotional coregulation. We also discuss material food probes and their value for exploring and inspiring both design-with, and design-around food.2020TGTom Gayler et al.Food Culture & Food InteractionDIS
Body Matters: Exploration of the Human Body as a Resource for the Design of Meditation Technologies Much research on meditation has shown its significant benefits for wellbeing. In turn, there has been growing HCI interest for the design of novel interactive technologies intended to facilitate meditation in real-time. In many of these systems, physiological signals have been mapped onto creative audiovisual feedback, however, there has been limited attention to the experiential qualities of meditation and the specific role that the body may play in them. In this paper, we report on workshops with 24 experts exploring the bodily sensations that emerge during meditation. Through material speculation, participants shared their lived experience of meditation and identified key stages during which they may benefit from additional aid, often multimodal. Findings emphasize the importance of recreating mindful physical sensations during moments of mind-wandering; in particular for supporting the regulation of attention through a range of embodied metaphors and haptic feedback, tailored to key transitions in the meditation process.2020CRClaudia Dauden Roquet et al.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputSleep & Stress MonitoringDIS
ManneqKit: A Kinesthetic Empathic Design Tool for Communicating Depression Experiences through Postures and VignettesWhile depression is a mood disorder with significant societal impact, the experiences of people living with depression are yet not easy to access. HCI’s tenet to understand users, particularly addressed by the empathic design approach, has prioritized verbal communication of such experiences. We introduce ManneqKit, a kinesthetic empathic design tool consisting of 15 cards with bodily postures and vignettes leveraging the nonverbal aspects of depression experiences. We report the co-design of ManneqKit with 10 therapists, its piloting with 4 therapists and 10 non-therapists, and evaluation through design workshops with 9 interaction designers and 3 therapists. Findings describe metaphorical descriptions of depression experiences and their postures, as well as cards’ ability to elicit strong empathy. We discuss the value of these findings for interaction design in terms of novel empathic design tools capturing nonverbal qualities of lived experiences, support for richer understanding of vulnerable users experiencing depression, design ideation underpinned by ethical values, and the need to balance empathy with distancing for designers’ wellbeing.2020CSCorina Sas et al.Cognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Empowerment of Marginalized GroupsDIS
Supporting Stimulation Needs in Dementia Care through Wall-Sized DisplaysBeside reminiscing, the increasing cognitive decline in dementia can also be addressed through sensory stimulation allowing the immediate, nonverbal engagement with the world through one's senses. Much HCI work has prioritized cognitive stimulation for reminiscing or personhood often on small screens, while less research has explored sensory stimulation like the one enabled by large displays. We describe a year-long deployment in a residential care home of a wall-sized display, and explored its domestication through 24 contextual interviews. Findings indicate strong engagement and attachment to the display which has inspired four psychosocial interventions using online generic content. We discuss the value of these findings for personhood through residents' exercise of choices, the tension between generic/personal content and its public/private use, the importance of participatory research approach to domestication, and the infrastructure-based prototype, illustrated by the DementiaWall and its generative quality.2020CSCorina Sas et al.Lancaster UniversityMixed Reality WorkspacesElderly Care & Dementia SupportPrototyping & User TestingCHI
From Biodata to SomadataBiosensing technologies are increasingly available as off-the-shelf products, yet for many designers, artists and non-engineers, these technologies remain difficult to design with. Through a soma design stance, we devised a novel approach for exploring qualities in biodata. Our explorative process culminated in the design of three artefacts, coupling biosignals to tangible actuation formats. By making biodata perceivable as sound, in tangible form or directly on the skin, it became possible to link qualities of the measurements to our own somatics — our felt experience of our bodily bioprocesses — as they dynamically unfold, spurring somatically-grounded design discoveries of novel possible interactions. We show that making biodata attainable for a felt experience — or as we frame it: turning biodata into somadata — enables not only first-person encounters, but also supports collaborative design processes as the somadata can be shared and experienced dynamically, right at the moment when we explore design ideas.2020MAMiquel Alfaras et al.PLUX Wireless Biosignals S.A.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringCHI
Designing for the Infrastructure of the Supply Chain of Malay Handwoven Songket in TerengganuThe growing HCI interest in developing contexts and cultural craft practices is ripe to focus on their under-explored homegrown sociotechnical infrastructures. This paper explores the creative infrastructural actions embedded within the practices of songket's supply chain in Terengganu, Malaysia. We report on contextual interviews with 92 participants including preparation workers, weavers, designers, merchants, and customers. Findings indicate that increased creative infrastructural actions are reflected in these actors' resourcefulness for mobilizing information, materials, and equipment, and for making creative artifacts through new technologies weaved within traditional practices. We propose two novel approaches to design in this craft-based infrastructure. First, we explore designing for the social layer of infrastructure and its mutually advantageous exploitative relationships rooted in culture and traditions. Second, we suggest designing for roaming value-creation artifacts, which blend physical and digital materializations of songket textile design. Developed through a collaborative and asynchronous process, we argue that these artifacts represent less-explored vehicles for value co-creation, and that sociotechnical infrastructures as emerging sites of innovation could benefit from HCI research.2019MZMin Zhang et al.Lancaster UniversityDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)Participatory DesignMuseum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationCHI
Exploring and Designing for Memory Impairments in DepressionDepression is an affective disorder with distinctive autobiographical memory impairments, including negative bias, overgeneralization and reduced positivity. Several clinical therapies address these impairments, and there is an opportunity to develop new supports for treatment by considering depression-associated memory impairments within design. We report on interviews with ten experts in treating depression, with expertise in both neuropsychology and cognitive behavioral therapies. The interviews explore approaches for addressing each of these memory impairments. We found consistent use of positive memories for treating all memory impairments, the challenge of direct retrieval, and the need to support the experience of positive memories. We aim to sensitize HCI researchers to the limitations of memory technologies, broaden their awareness of memory impairments beyond episodic memory recall, and inspire them to engage with this less explored design space. Our findings open up new design opportunities for memory technologies for depression, including positive memory banks for active encoding and selective retrieval, novel cues for supporting generative retrieval, and novel interfaces to strengthen the reliving of positive memories.2019CQChengcheng Qu et al.Lancaster UniversityCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)CHI
HCI and Affective Health: Taking stock of a decade of studies and charting future research directionsIn the last decade, the number of articles on HCI and health has increased dramatically. We extracted 139 papers on depression, anxiety and bipolar health issues from 10 years of SIGCHI conference proceedings. 72 of these were published in the last two years. A systematic analysis of this growing body of literature revealed that most innovation happens in automated diagnosis, and self-tracking, although there are innovative ideas in tangible interfaces. We noted an overemphasis on data production without consideration of how it leads to fruitful interventions. Moreover, we see a need to promote ethical practices for involvement of people living with affective disorders. Finally, although only 16 studies evaluate technologies in a clinical context, several forms of support and intervention illustrate how rich insights are gained from evaluations with real patients. Our findings highlight potential for growth in the design space of affective health technologies.2019PSPedro Sanches et al.KTH Royal Institute of Technology in StockholmMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
An Exploration of Bitcoin Mining Practices: Miners' Trust Challenges and MotivationsBitcoin blockchain technology is a distributed ledger of nodes authorizing transactions between anonymous parties. Its key actors are miners using computational power to solve mathematical problems for validating transactions. By sharing blockchain's characteristics, mining is a decentralized, transparent and unregulated practice, less explored in HCI, so we know little about miners' motivations and experiences, and how these may impact on different dimensions of trust. This paper reports on interviews with 20 bitcoin miners about their practices and trust challenges. Findings contribute to HCI theories by extending the exploration of blockchain's characteristics relevant to trust with the competitiveness dimension underpinning the social organization of mining. We discuss the risks of collaborative mining due to centralization and dishonest administrators, and conclude with design implications highlighting the need for tools monitoring the distribution of rewards in collaborative mining, tools tracking data centers' authorization and reputation, and tools supporting the development of decentralized pools.2019IKIrni Eliana Khairuddin et al.Universiti Teknologi MARAAlgorithmic Transparency & AuditabilityAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasCHI
Exploring DIY Practices of Complex Home TechnologiesWe are surrounded by increasingly complex networks of smart objects, yet our understanding and attachment to them is rather limited. One way to support stronger end users’ engagement with such complex technologies is by involving them in the design process and, with the advent of Arduino prototyping platform, even in their making. While DIY practice offers the potential for stronger user engagement with physical artifacts, we know little about end users’ DIY practice of making complex electronic technologies and their potential to ensure engagement with such devices. In this article, we report on interviews with 18 participants from two green communities who built and used an open source DIY energy monitor, with the aim to explore the end users DIY practices of making such complex electronic devices. Findings indicate four key qualities of DIY monitors: transparent modularity, open-endedness, heirloom, and disruptiveness, and how they contribute to more meaningful engagement with the DIY monitors, elevating them from the status of unremarkable objects to that of things. We conclude with three implications for design for supporting end user development of complex electronic DIY: designing transparent open hardware technologies, standardizing communication protocols for the current and future DIY of IoT, and deliberately calling for personal investment and labor in the assembling of DIY kits.2018CSCorina Sas et al.Lancaster UniversityDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationEnergy Conservation Behavior & InterfacesCHI