Rethinking Misinformation: A Holistic Community Model for Youth Resilience through Socioemotional Learning and Sociocultural DesignWith the growing prevalence of online mis/disinformation encountered by children, digital media literacy has become an urgent concern. Existing research emphasizes cognitive models, focusing on individual reasoning and specific quantitative criteria to classify people’s information literacy. However, critics argue that focusing solely on cognitive approach neglects the social, emotional, and cultural contexts that shape how mis/disinformation is created and spread. In this study, we expand beyond the cognitive model by examining socioemotional learning (SEL) and sociocultural (SC) perspectives. To explore how children conceptualize mis/disinformation through these lenses, we conducted 26 co-design workshops with children ages 6–11 over a 2.5-year period. Our findings highlight children’s awareness of emotional responses, peer pressure, financial incentives, and the importance of community support. These insights contribute to HCI by foregrounding the need for design approaches that integrate cognitive, SEL, and SC dimensions. We present an integrated framework to inform how community groups can support children and design recommendations that address the growing sophistication of mis/disinformation.2026JYJason Yip et al.University of WashingtonMisinformation & Fact-CheckingYouth Online Safety & PrivacyDigital Parenting & Screen Time ManagementCHI
Becoming a Healthy Player: Exploring Teen Esports Players’ Perspectives on Mental Well-Being through Participatory DesignTeen participation in esports is rapidly expanding, raising concerns about how competitive gaming shapes adolescent mental well-being. Existing mental well-being initiatives often adopt adult-centered approaches that overlook teenagers’ lived realities. This study explores mental well-being from the perspective of teen esports players. Through nine participatory design sessions with 34 participants, including adolescent players, coaches, and program coordinators, we examined how teens conceptualize a “healthy player” and sustain mental well-being in gaming. Findings emphasize three key insights: (1) for teens, being “healthy” means winning together, where well-being is tied to collective outcomes and social responsibility; (2) most stressors stem from esports environments beyond their control, underscoring the need for emotional resilience; and (3) teens favor simple, everyday coping strategies, such as taking breaks, reframing losses, adjusting play environments, and drawing on peer encouragement, over formal programs. These patterns resonate with Cognitive Behavioral Theory, suggesting that cycles of thought, emotion, and behavior underpin resilience. We argue for youth-centered, culturally relevant mental well-being strategies and micro-interventions embedded in the daily practices of adolescent esports.2026YCYeonhee Cho et al.University of WashingtonGame UX & Player BehaviorMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesMental Health Technology for YouthCHI
Pringles, Prangles, or Prongles? Negotiating Creative Authorship in Children's Remix PracticesRemix has emerged as a significant form of creativity, enabled by digital tools that allow the reinterpretation of existing cultural artifacts. However, the implications of remix on concepts of authorship remain largely unexamined. Therefore, this study examines children's remix experiences to understand how they develop their understanding of authorship and creativity. We conducted six participatory design sessions with 16 children aged 5–11 using the Cooperative Inquiry method to explore how their remix practices shape our understanding of creativity and authorship. Our findings reveal that children perceive remixing as a negotiated, interpretive process that influences their views on ownership within collaborative, digital spaces. Consequently, we introduce the Creative Agency Framework to help designers recognize ingrained beliefs about creative ownership and reuse in software. We conclude by discussing the significance of these beliefs for developing creativity support systems that empower children and users to identify as both creators and cultural producers.2026MNMichele Newman et al.University of WashingtonParticipatory DesignChild-Computer Interaction DesignCreative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsCHI
Exploring the Collaborative Co-Creation Process with AI: A Case Study in Novice Music ProductionArtificial intelligence is reshaping creative domains, yet its co-creative processes, especially in group settings with novice users, remain underexplored. To bridge this gap, we conducted a case study in a college-level course where nine undergraduate students were tasked with creating three original music tracks using AI tools over 10 weeks. The study spanned the entire creative journey from ideation to releasing these songs on Spotify. Participants leveraged AI for music and lyric production, cover art, and distribution. Our findings highlight how AI transforms creative workflows: accelerating ideation but compressing the traditional preparation stage, and requiring novices to navigate a challenging idea selection and validation phase. We also identified a new “collaging and refinement” stage, where participants creatively combined diverse AI-generated outputs into cohesive works. Furthermore, AI influenced group social dynamics and role division among human creators. Based on these insights, we propose the Human-AI Co-creation Stage Model and the Human-AI Agency Model, offering new perspectives on collaborative co-creation with AI.2025YFYue Fu et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)AI-Assisted Creative WritingCreative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsDIS
Does the Story Matter? Applying Narrative Theory to an Educational Misinformation Escape Room GameRapid spread of harmful misinformation has led to a dire need for effective media literacy interventions, to which educational games have been suggested as a possible solution. Researchers and educators have created several games that increase media literacy and resilience to misinformation. However, the existing body of misinformation education games rarely focus upon the socio-emotional influences that factor into misinformation belief. Misinformation correction and serious games have both explored narrative as a method to engage with people on an emotional basis. To this end, we investigated how 123 young adults (mean age = 22.98) experienced narrative transportation and identification in two narrative-centered misinformation escape room games developed for library settings. We found that propensity for certain misinformation contexts, such as engagement with fan culture and likelihood to share on social media platforms, significantly affected how participants experienced specific measures of narrative immersion within the games. We discuss design implications for tailoring educational interventions to specific misinformation contexts.2025NDNisha Devasia et al.University of Washington, Human Centered Design and Engineering; University of Washington, The Information SchoolSerious & Functional GamesRole-Playing & Narrative GamesMisinformation & Fact-CheckingCHI
"I want it to talk like Darth Vader": Helping Children Construct Creative Self-Efficacy with Generative AIThe emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has ignited discussions surrounding its potential to enhance creative pursuits. However, distinctions between children's and adult's creative needs exist, which is important when considering the possibility of GenAI for children's creative usage. Building upon work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), fostering children's computational thinking skills, this study explores interactions between children (aged 7-13) and GenAI tools through methods of participatory design. We seek to answer two questions: (1) How do children in co-design workshops perceive GenAI tools and their usage for creative works? and (2) How do children navigate the creative process while using GenAI tools? How might these interactions support their confidence in their ability to create? Our findings contribute a model that describes the potential contexts underpinning child-GenAI creative interactions and explores implications of this model for theories of creativity, design, and use of GenAI as a constructionist tool for creative self-efficacy.2024MNMichele Newman et al.University of WashingtonGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Programming Education & Computational ThinkingEarly Childhood Education TechnologyCHI
Understanding Social Interactions in Location-based Games as Hybrid Spaces: Coordination and Collaboration in Raiding in Pokémon GOThe overlaying of physical spaces with digital information produces hybrid spaces, redefining people’s experience of social interactions. Location-based games (LBGs) with social components are a good case. Yet, the impact LBGs have on sociability remains under-researched. In April 2020, the new in-person/remote raiding format in the LBG Pokémon GO provided a lens to explore people’s social interactions in hybrid spaces. We interviewed 41 Pokémon GO players to understand how players coordinate and collaborate for in-person/remote raids and other social patterns. Our findings demonstrate that new social dynamics occurred: participants’ social interactions highly rely on external social media groups bridging cyberspace and the physical world. In such external social media groups, spontaneously formed leadership roles and mentor-mentee relationships demonstrate autonomy among players in the hybrid space. However, we observed that the interoperability issue challenges people’s experience. Overall, this work sheds light on the social interactions in LBGs as hybrid spaces.2023JXJiangnan Xu et al.Rochester Institute of TechnologyMultiplayer & Social GamesInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Cross-Cultural Exploration of Music SharingMusic sharing is a common social activity that people have long engaged in, from gifting mixtapes to sharing music links. Our practices around sharing music have shifted markedly with the advent of streaming music platforms and social media, and it has remained an important part of our social fabric. Yet there is a dearth of research on how people share music today, and our understanding of attitudes and practices of sharing music across cultures is even more lacking. To understand how people across cultures engage in music sharing, we have conducted interviews with 32 participants from two cultures: South Korea and United States. Through qualitative analysis, we found largely three reasons why people share music, types of music shared, strategy factors considered when sharing music, outcomes achieved, and challenges people experience when sharing music. We present a framework of music sharing that visualizes these components of the music sharing process. From these results, we identify similarities and differences that emerged. We derive design implications for music sharing platforms including providing varied avenues for feedback on shared music, motivating users to share more, and helping users to better manage shared music.2022SPSo Yeon Park et al.Games and Music; Games and MusicCSCW
Joint Media Engagement in Families Playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the COVID-19 PandemicThe video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (AC:NH) launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and families turned to it as a game to play together during isolation. This interview study of 27 families considered how families used AC:NH for Joint Media Engagement (JME), where family members engage with media content together, interacting with each other and bringing additional meaning to the experience. We find that the design of AC:NH well facilitates Takeuchi and Stevens’s six conditions for productive JME. Furthermore, we identify and discuss additional conditions that contribute to productive JME: variety and flexibility in play styles that amplify mutual engagement, support for disentrained play that enables new forms of “joint” engagement, and scaffolding for affective interactions. This is followed by an exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected JME. We conclude with design implications for building games to support productive JME for families through design for persistent shared spaces, flexible in-game progress, and social life simulation.2022JMJesse J Martinez et al.Parenting and Families; Parenting and FamiliesCSCW
Armed in ARMY: A Case Study of How BTS Fans Successfully Collaborated to #MatchAMillion for Black Lives MatterMusic fans strategically support their artists. Their collective efforts can extend to social causes as well: In 2020 for example, ARMY—the fandom of the music group BTS—successfully organized the #MatchAMillion campaign to raise over one million USD to support Black Lives Matter. To better understand factors of fandoms' collaborative success for arguably unrelated social goals, we conducted a survey focusing on ARMYs' perceptions of their fandom and their social effort. Most ARMYs viewed the fandom as a community, loosely structured with pillar accounts. They reported trust in each other as well as high team composition, which mediated the relationship between their neutral psychological safety and high efficacy. Respondents attributed their success in #MatchAMillion to shared values, good teamwork, and established infrastructure. Our findings elucidate contextual factors that contribute to ARMY's collaborative success and highlight themes that may be applied to studying other fandoms and their collaborative efforts.2021SPSo Yeon Park et al.Stanford UniversityCommunity Collaboration & WikipediaCommunity Engagement & Civic TechnologyCHI
The Show Must Go On: A conceptual model of conducting synchronous participatory design with children onlineCo-designing with children in an online environment is increasingly important due to external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversification and inclusion of youth participants. Many prior studies about co-design with youth focus on co-located or asynchronous online sessions. However, conducting synchronous online co-design sessions adds layers of complexity and uncertainty to collaboration. This paper introduces a model explicating factors to consider when co-designing with children synchronously in an online space. We examined ten consecutive intergenerational participatory design sessions online where children (ages 7-11) and adults designed new technologies. Along with highlighting unexpected moments and interactions, we use theories of improvisation to guide our understanding of dynamic situations that are out of the control of researchers. This work contributes to improving theoretical understanding of improvisation as a method of inquiry for co-designing with youth, and offers practical suggestions for suitable online co-design techniques and implementation.2021KLKung Jin Lee et al.University of WashingtonParticipatory DesignCHI
"It Should Be a Game for Fun, Not Exercise": Tensions in Designing Health-Related Features for Pokémon GOLeveraging existing popular games such as Pokémon GO to promote health can engage people in healthy activities without sacrificing gaming appeal. However, little is known about what potential tensions arise from incorporating new health-related features to already existing and popular games and how to resolve those tensions from players' perspectives. In this paper, we identify design tensions surrounding the appeals of Pokémon GO, perspectives on different health needs, and mobile health technologies. By conducting surveys and design workshops with 20 avid Pokémon GO players, we demonstrate four design tensions: (1) diverse goals and rewards vs. data accuracy, (2) strong bonds between players and characters vs. gaming obsession, (3) collaborative play vs. social anxiety, and (4) connection of in-real-life experiences with the game vs. different individual contexts. We provide design implications to resolve these tensions in Pokémon GO and discuss how to extend our findings to the broader context of health promotion in location-based games.2020YKYoojung Kim et al.Seoul National UniversitySerious & Functional GamesGamification DesignFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringCHI
Group Interactions in Location-Based Gaming: A Case Study of Raiding in Pokémon GORaiding is a format in digital gaming that requires groups of people to collaborate and/or compete for a common goal. In 2017, the raiding format was introduced in the location-based mobile game Pokémon GO, which offers a mixed reality experience to friends and strangers coordinating for in-person raids. To understand this technology-mediated social phenomenon, we conducted over a year of participant observations, surveys with 510 players, and interviews with 25 players who raid in Pokémon GO. Using the analytical lens of Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl's theory of small groups as complex systems, we identify global, local, and contextual dynamics in location-based raiding that support and challenge ad-hoc group formation in real life. Based on this empirical and theoretical understanding, we discuss implications to design for transparency, social affordances, and bridging gaps between global and contextual dynamics for increased positive and inclusive community interactions.2019ABArpita Bhattacharya et al.University of WashingtonGame UX & Player BehaviorMultiplayer & Social GamesCHI