Teenagers and the Data Economy: Understanding Their Dreams, Desires and Anxieties with Metaphor WorkbooksTeenagers are in a unique position, having known no other reality than the current exploitative model of the data economy, and are particularly at risk of harm from it. Using a classroom intervention with 31 Grade 9 students, we deployed co-created Metaphor Workbooks as a tool to foster critical and reflexive thinking about their phones and data. Our research advances the HCI community’s understanding of teenagers’ entanglements with the data economy, by highlighting how they experience it through their critical, reflective, and creative responses. This alludes to ways in which future initiatives could better support teenagers in developing a critical relationship with data. We identify key gaps in their understanding of the data economy and emphasize the need for critical data literacy interventions to address their limited understanding, complex emotional relationships with their phones, and the pervasive influence of technology addiction narratives.2025SBSamuel Barnett et al.Universal & Inclusive DesignAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasInclusive DesignDIS
Translating HCI Research to Broader Audiences: Motivation, Inspiration, and Critical Factors on Alternative Research OutcomesAlternative Research Outcomes (AROs) go beyond traditional academic publications, taking diverse forms such as documentaries, DIY tutorials, or exhibitions. With growing recognition of the need for more inclusive and contextually appropriate research dissemination, AROs are particularly relevant in HCI and design research. Yet, little has been discussed on why it is important to work on AROs. What are key qualities of AROs? How can the HCI community benefit from learning more about creating AROs? By analyzing six case studies, we propose four qualities of AROs and demonstrate how they emerge in the timeline of a research project. We argue AROs can be adapted to diverse audience needs and share research insights that may extend beyond the original research goals. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of how AROs can support inclusive research dissemination practices, enabling HCI researchers to engage broader audiences and extend the relevance of their work.2025MYMinYoung Yoo et al.Simon Fraser University, School of Interactive Arts and TechnologyParticipatory DesignInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Negotiating Conceptual and Practical Frictions in Making the Capra Short Film: Extending a Research through Design Artifact with Video As the practice of hiking becomes captured through personal data, it is timely to consider how technology might support noticing and connecting to nature as well as one’s self over time. Capra is a system we designed that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term use. In this pictorial, we unpack our process of making a short film that aims to communicate the workings and experience of Capra to a broader audience. We encountered frictions in mobilizing key theoretical concepts framing Capra as a Research through Design (RtD) artifact in the making of our film. We reflect on tactics for working through such frictions, how they can support future work, and how the filmmaking process can offer a valuable approach for distributing RtD artifacts to broader audiences.2024WOWilliam Odom et al.Climate Change Communication ToolsInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Capra: Making Use of Multiple Perspectives for Capturing, Noticing and Revisiting Hiking Experiences Over TimeAs the practice of hiking becomes increasingly captured through personal data, it is timely to consider what kinds of alternative data encounters might support forms of noticing and connecting to nature as well as one’s self and life history over time. To investigate this emerging design space, we designed Capra — a system that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over four years, our team adopted a designer-researcher approach where we progressively designed, built, refined, and tested Capra. This process produced frictions in terms of balancing unobtrusiveness, transforming hiking data into evolving interconnected elements in the archive, and managing the sheer quantity and diversity of information with our goal of supporting open-ended and ongoing engagements. It is these insights that emerged through the practice-based design research approach involved in creating Capra that we reflect on in this paper.2024WOWilliam Odom et al.Simon Fraser UniversityContext-Aware ComputingHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI
Remembering through Sound: Co-creating Sound-based Mementos together with People with BlindnessSound is a preferred and dominant medium that people with blindness use to capture, share and reflect on meaningful moments in their lives. Within the timeframe of 12 months, we worked with seven people with blindness and two of their sighted loved ones to engage in a multi-stage co-creative design process involving multiple steps building toward the final co-design workshop. We report three types of sonic mementos, designed together with the participants, that Encapsulate, Augment and Re-imagine personal audio recordings into more interesting and meaningful sonic memories. Building on these sonic mementos, we critically reflect and describe insights into designing sound that supports personal and social experiences of reminiscence for people with blindness through sound. We propose design opportunities to promote collective remembering between people with blindness and their sighted loved ones and design recommendations for remembering through sound.2024MYMinYoung Yoo et al.Simon Fraser UniversityVisual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Universal & Inclusive DesignInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
PhotoClock Design: Reliving Digital Photo Memories as Clock Ticks in the Present MomentAs digital photos grow exponentially, people need new approaches to engage with their photos over time. We describe our study of PhotoClock, a mobile application that leverages the temporal metadata embedded in digital photos to encourage contemplation of memories bound up in one’s photo archive. PhotoClock uses the clock-time of the present moment to re-present one’s photos taken around that same time of the day in the past. As time ticks away relentlessly, PhotoClock highlights the ephemeral and ongoing quality of time. We conducted the field study with 12 participants over 8 weeks. Our goals are: (i) to investigate the reflective potential of clock-time as an alternative design approach for supporting memory-oriented photo interaction, and (ii) to explore conceptual propositions related to slowness and temporality. Findings revealed that PhotoClock generated diverse and reflective experiences on participants’ life stories. We conclude with implications and opportunities for future HCI and design research.2023ACAmy Yo Sue Chen et al.Universal & Inclusive DesignInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Exploring Long-Term Mediated Relations with a Shape-Changing Thing: A Field Study of coMorphing StoolThis paper presents a long-term field study of the coMorphing stool: a computational thing that can change shape in response to the surrounding light. We deployed 5 coMorphing stools to 5 participants’ homes over 9 months. As co-speculators, the participants reflected on their mediated relations with the coMorphing stool. Findings suggest that they perceived the subtle transformations of the coMorphing stool in the early days of the deployment. After becoming familiar with these features, they interpreted their daily entanglements with the coMorphing stool in diverse personalized ways. Over time, the co-speculators accepted the coMorphing stool as part of their homes. These findings contribute new empirical insights to the shape-changing research field in HCI and enrich discussions on higher-level concepts in postphenomenology. Reflecting on these experiences promotes further HCI explorations on computational things.2023CZCe Zhong et al.Simon Fraser UniversityShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsCHI
Exploring Memory-Oriented Interactions with Digital Photos In and Across Time: A Field Study of ChronoscopeWe describe a field study of Chronoscope, a tangible photo viewer that lets people revisit and explore their digital photos with the support of temporal metadata. Chronoscope offers different temporal modalities for organizing one’s personal digital photo archive, and for exploring possible connections in and across time, and among photos and memories. We deployed four Chronoscopes in four households for three months to understand participants’ experiences over time. Our goals are to investigate the reflective potential of temporal modalities as an alternative design approach for supporting memory-oriented photo exploration, and empirically explore conceptual propositions related to slow technology. Findings revealed that Chronoscope catalyzed a range of reflective experiences on their respective life histories and life stories. It opened up alternative ways of considering time and the potential longevity of personal photo archives. We conclude with implications to present opportunities for future HCI research and practice.2023ACAmy Yo Sue Chen et al.Simon Fraser UniversityHead-Up Display (HUD) & Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)Data StorytellingCHI
Envisioning and Understanding Orientations to Introspective AI: Exploring a Design Space with Meta.AwareIntrospection is the practice of looking inward for ongoing self- examination. It involves considering one’s past experiences and asking questions about the present and future. Our work investigates how AI could open new possibilities for supporting introspective experiences. Adopting a design fiction approach, we created a fictional company called Meta.Aware to contextualize 4 different Introspective AI product concepts in the form of video sketches. We used the Meta.Aware platform to conduct interviews with 17 participants, using the 4 concept videos as prompts for discussion. Participants had a range of reactions related to perceived benefits and tensions in this emerging design space. We interpret these results to outline future design directions for mobilizing AI as a resource to support introspective experiences over time, as well as to reflect on issues and dilemmas bound to this emerging design space.2023NBNico Brand et al.Simon Fraser UniversityAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasDesign FictionCHI
Memory Tracer & Memory Compass: Investigating Personal Location Histories as a Design Material for Everyday Reminiscence With the massive adoption of smartphones, location trackers, and GPS-based applications, data is being generated that captures people’s geographic locations in more precise detail than ever before. Personal location history archives offer a potentially valuable and overlooked resource for supporting reminiscence and recollection of the past. Yet, little design research has explored how location histories can be used as a material in designing such experiences. To investigate this space, we engaged in a practice-based design research process that resulted in two design artifacts. Memory Tracer is a tangible device that occasionally, yet perpetually surfaces locations from the past bound to today’s date. Memory Compass is a smartwatch application that uses a ‘casting’ interaction enabling a user to retrieve and explore locations from their past, across space and time. We unpack and reflect on key decisions in our design process and conclude with opportunities for future HCI research and practice.2023JWJordan White et al.Simon Fraser UniversityContext-Aware ComputingUbiquitous ComputingCHI
Remote Wavelength: Design and Evaluation of a System for Social Connectedness Through Distributed Board Game PlayPlaying remote tabletop games is a fun way to connect with distant friends. Yet most systems for remote tabletop gaming lack support for tangible and social interaction, two important aspects of gameplay for most players. We are interested in how to better design systems for remote tangible gameplay that support social connection. We investigate this topic through the design and evaluation of a prototype system for playing the board game Wavelength across two locations. First, we describe the design goals that informed our prototype: “Remote Wavelength”. Then, we discuss the results of a qualitative user study in which ten friend groups played Remote Wavelength. Our findings indicate that a synchronized, tangible gameboard benefits player engagement, communication, and awareness. Our results also illustrate the value of integration across communication and gameplay systems. We conclude by offering considerations for the design of both digital and remote tangible gameplay systems.2023CMChelsea Mills et al.Simon Fraser UniversityMultiplayer & Social GamesDigitalization of Board & Tabletop GamesCrowdsourcing Task Design & Quality ControlCHI
transTexture Lamp: Composing a Deformable Device as a Computational WholeResearch into shape-changing and deformable artifacts that explore novel interactions has been growing in design and HCI. Yet, there is little discussion on the design processes behind these approaches and in particular, a theoretical understanding of materiality that is central to deformation. Informed by Wiberg’s compositional interaction design, we contribute an investigation into supporting long-term relations with deformation: the transTexture lamp. Specifically, we crafted a dynamic physical form with materials at hand. We instantiated the materiality of interaction being designed as a computational whole. Reflecting on our theory-informed RtD process enriched our understanding of compositional interaction design. These reflections on our design approach may benefit further explorations into the intersections between materiality, longevity, and actuality in the context of design-oriented HCI.2021CZCe Zhong et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDIS
A Design Inquiry into Introspective AI: Surfacing Opportunities, Issues, and ParadoxesIntrospection is the practice of looking inward and examining our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It involves considering past experiences and asking questions about the future. We report on a design research inquiry that explores Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with personal data, as a resource for introspection. We investigate how AI might offer possibilities for generating alternative perspectives on one’s life to support introspection and paradoxes that this might raise. We describe our design-led inquiry, motivate five approaches to introspective practice as opportunities for potential Introspective AI interventions, and explore them through 7 design proposals. Taken together, our proposals provoke questions around how introspective AI might be critiqued, imagined, and designed. We conclude with a reflection on our work and opportunities it suggests for future research and practice.2021NBNico Brand et al.AI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDIS
Understanding Everyday Experiences of Reminiscence for People with Blindness: Practices, Tensions and Probing New Design PossibilitiesThere is growing attention in the HCI community on how technology could be designed to support experiences of reminiscence on past life experiences. Yet, this research has largely overlooked people with blindness. We present a study that aims to understand everyday experiences of reminiscence for people with blindness. We conducted a qualitative study with 9 participants with blindness to understand their personal routines, wishes and desires, and challenges and tensions regarding the experience of reminiscence. Findings are interpreted to discuss new possibilities that offer starting points for future design initiatives and openings for collaboration aimed at creating technology to better support the practices of capturing, sharing, and reflecting on significant memories of the past.2021MYMinYoung Yoo et al.Simon Fraser UniversityVisual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Universal & Inclusive DesignCHI
A Dozen Stickers on a Mailbox: Physical Encounters and Digital Interactions in a Local Sharing CommunityMany non-profit peer-to-peer exchange arrangements and profit-driven, multi-sided online marketplaces leverage underutilized resources, such as tools, to optimize their use to capacity. They often rely on a digital platform in pursuit of their social aspirations and/or economic objectives. We report on a field study of a local sharing community that employs a set of stickers illustrating different household items, typically placed on community members' mailboxes, along with complementary digital tools. The stickers are used to communicate the availability of resources among neighbors to facilitate social encounters and to encourage sustainable use and re-use of shared resources. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with sixteen participants, we describe the opportunities and limitations of this approach to peer-to-peer exchange. We offer insights for designers of resource sharing communities into facilitating face-to-face encounters and the online interactions needed to support them.2020AFAnton Fedosov et al.Work: Companies, P2P, and FreelancingCSCW
Data Dashboard: Exploring Centralization and Customization in Personal Data CurationThe advent of cloud platforms and mobile devices has complicated personal data management and decisions about what data to keep or discard. To explore how to help people curate their data, we designed Data Dashboard, a prototype system that provides: 1) a centralized overview of data from across platforms and devices, 2) customizable filters for sorting through many types of data. We evaluated the prototype with 18 participants. Building on top of previous literature, we use the concept of data boundaries (the idea of invisible but important separations across data) to explain participants' reactions to the prototype. We show that centralizing data in a single management system blurs boundaries and requires safety guarantees. Customization options, instead, uphold boundaries and reinforce user control. We discuss how to use these results for integrating data boundaries in the design of new tools, rethinking the language of personal data, and envisioning a post-cloud future.2020FVFrancesco Vitale et al.Privacy by Design & User ControlSustainable HCIDIS
Exploring the Reflective Potentialities of Personal Data with Different Temporal Modalities: A Field Study of Olo RadioWe describe a long-term field study of Olo Radio, a music player that lets people re-experience digital music they have listened to previously. Olo Radio offers different ‘timeframe modes’ for organizing one’s personal listening history data, and for exploring possible connections among songs and across time. We deployed 5 Olo Radios in 5 households for 8 months to understand participants’ experiences over time. Our goals are to: (i) investigate the reflective potentialities of personal data for memory- oriented music listening and (ii) empirically explore conceptual propositions related to slow technology. Findings revealed Olo Radio became highly integrated in participants lives and triggered reflection on past life experiences. They also showed that Olo Radio was perceived to subtly change over time, and open up different ways of experiencing time. Findings are interpreted to present opportunities for future HCI research and practice.2020WOWilliam Odom et al.Data StorytellingVisualization Perception & CognitionDIS
FamilyStories: Asynchronous Audio Storytelling for Family Members Across Time ZonesFamily members who are separated across time zones can easily miss out on feeling connected. We designed and studied the usage of an asynchronous storytelling system, called FamilyStories, to explore the use of audio-based sharing. FamilyStories allows family members to share activities and experiences over distance in different time zones using three different devices that contain different contextual features. To evaluate the design, we conducted a five-week long field study with two family member pairs. Our results show the value of slow, flexible, and non-suggestive interfaces for asynchronous audio communication. We also found ephemerality helped in the sharing of 'instant' feelings, while large time zone differences could be 'synchronized' with time delayed messages. We raise these as design opportunities for asynchronous audio storytelling systems.2020YHYasamin Heshmat et al.Simon Fraser UniversityHome Voice Assistant ExperienceFood Culture & Food InteractionCHI
The Inflatable Cat: Idiosyncratic Ideation of Smart Objects for the HomeResearch on product experience has a history in investigating the sensory and emotional qualities of interacting with objects. However, this notion has not been fully expanded to the design space of co-designing smart objects. In this paper, we report on findings from a series of co-design workshops where we used the toolkit Loaded Dice in conjunction with a card set that aimed to support participants in reflecting the sensory qualities of domestic smart objects. We synthesize and interpret findings from our study to help illustrate how the workshops supported co-designers in creatively ideating concepts for emotionally valuable smart objects that better connect personal inputs with the output of smart objects. Our work contributes a case example of how a co-design approach that emphasizes situated sensory exploration can be effective in enabling co-designers to ideate concepts of idiosyncratic smart objects that closely relate to the characteristics of their domestic living situations.2019ABChristopher Frauenberger et al.Chemnitz University of TechnologySmart Home Interaction DesignParticipatory DesignCHI
"Collective Wisdom": Inquiring into Collective Homes as a Site for HCI DesignThe home has been a major focus of the HCI community for over two decades. Despite this body of research, nascent works have argued that HCI's characterization of 'the home' remains narrow and requires more diverse accounts of domestic configurations. Our work contributes to this area through a four-month ethnography of three collective homes in Vancouver, Canada. Collective homes represent an alternative housing model that offers agency to individual members and the collective group by sharing values, resources, labour, space and memory. Our paper offers two contributions. First, we offer an in-depth design ethnography of three collective homes, attending to the values, ownership models, practices, and everyday interactions observed in the ongoing making of these domestic settings. Second, we interpret and synthesize our findings to provide new opportunities for expanding the way we conceptualize and design for 'the home' in HCI.2019JSJo Shin et al.Simon Fraser UniversitySmart Home Interaction DesignParticipatory DesignCHI