The Cruel Optimism of Tech Work: Tech Workers' Affective Attachments in the Aftermath of 2022-23 Tech LayoffsThe aftermath of industry-wide mass layoffs has led to an increasingly discontent and disillusioned tech workforce. Our empirical study with 29 laid off tech workers presents critical reflections on tech work and the tech industry in the aftermath of mass layoffs. Through weekly creative reflection activities over 5 weeks as well as focus groups, we find that tech workers experience alienation and unfulfillment with their work. Tech workers expressed conflicted emotions in assessing their attachment to tech work as a site of labor, oscillating between discomfort with the current status of the tech industry and lack of agency in choosing alternatives. We argue that tech workers are embroiled in cruelly optimistic relationships with tech work, and trace the implications of this on conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries shaping tech work, affective attachments in the tech industry, and tech worker resistance and organizing.2025SSSamuel So et al.University of Washington, Human Centered Design and EngineeringAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring with Critical Flicker FrequencyChronic liver disease can lead to neurological conditions that result in coma or death. Although early detection can allow for intervention, testing is infrequent and unstandardized. Beacon is a device for at-home patient self-measurement of cognitive function via critical flicker frequency, which is the frequency at which a flickering light appears steady to an observer. This paper presents our efforts in iterating on Beacon’s hardware and software to enable at-home use, then reports on an at-home deployment with 21 patients taking measurements over 6 weeks. We found that measurements were stable despite being taken at different times and in different environments. Finally, through interviews with 15 patients and 5 hepatologists, we report on participant experiences with Beacon, preferences around how CFF data should be presented, and the role of caregivers in helping patients manage their condition. Informed by our experiences with Beacon, we further discuss design implications for home health devices.2025RLRichard Li et al.University of Washington, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & EngineeringChronic Disease Self-Management (Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.)Telemedicine & Remote Patient MonitoringBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringCHI
Micro-narratives: A Scalable Method for Eliciting Stories of People’s Lived ExperienceEngaging with people's lived experiences is foundational for HCI research and design. This paper introduces a novel narrative elicitation method to empower people to easily articulate ‘micro-narratives’ emerging from their lived experiences, irrespective of their writing ability or background. Our approach aims to enable at-scale collection of rich, co-created datasets that highlight target populations' voices with minimal participant burden, while precisely addressing specific research questions. To pilot this idea, and test its feasibility, we: (i) developed an AI-powered prototype, which leverages LLM-chaining to scaffold the cognitive steps necessary for users’ narrative articulation; (ii) deployed it in three mixed-methods studies involving over 380 users; and (iii) consulted with established academics as well as C-level staff at (inter)national non-profits to map out potential applications. Both qualitative and quantitative findings show the acceptability and promise of the micro-narrative method, while also identifying the ethical and safeguarding considerations necessary for any at-scale deployments.2025ASAmira Skeggs et al.University of Cambridge, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences UnitHuman-LLM CollaborationParticipatory DesignUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
What’s In Your Kit? Mental Health Technology Kits for Depression Self-ManagementThis paper characterizes the mental health technology “kits” of individuals managing depression: the specific technologies on their digital devices and physical items in their environments that people turn to as part of their mental health management. We interviewed 28 individuals living across the United States who use bundles of connected tools for both individual and collaborative mental health activities. We contribute to the HCI community by conceptualizing these tool assemblages that people managing depression have constructed over time. We detail categories of tools, describe kit characteristics (intentional, adaptable, available), and present participant ideas for future mental health support technologies. We then discuss what a mental health technology kit perspective means for researchers and designers and describe design principles (building within current toolkits; creating new tools from current self-management strategies; and identifying gaps in people’s current kits) to support depression self-management across an evolving set of tools.2025EBEleanor R. Burgess et al.Northwestern UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Understanding the Role of Technology in Older Adults’ Changing Social Support NetworksTechnologies that facilitate communication between older adults and those around them have the potential to strengthen older adults’ connections with their support network. In this paper, we present findings from interviews with 16 older adult participants in the United States about their social network composition and related technology use during a challenging life event, the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a decrease of in-person meetings and increase in communication technology adoption. Using the convoy model of social relations, we sought to better understand the roles different technologies play in older adults’ social connections. Participants chose what communication tools to use depending on social and situational contexts and overcame accessibility issues to adopt new technologies that supported continued engagement with their support networks. However, when others positioned technologies as ways for the older adults to receive social support, they resisted. A more comprehensive view of older adults’ evolving social convoys can help designers and researchers better create technologies that help expand and maintain older adults’ social support networks. Further, to facilitate older adults’ social connectivity, the design of technology should encourage older adults’ support networks to see those older adults as support providers, not just potential support recipients.2024SWShengzhi Wang et al.Session 4a: Intergenerational ConnectionsCSCW
MigraineTracker: Examining Patient Experiences with Goal-Directed Self-Tracking for a Chronic Health ConditionSelf-tracking and personal informatics offer important potential in chronic condition management, but such potential is often undermined by difficulty in aligning self-tracking tools to an individual's goals. Informed by prior proposals of goal-directed tracking, we designed and developed MigraineTracker, a prototype app that emphasizes explicit expression of goals for migraine-related self-tracking. We then examined migraine patient experiences in a deployment study for an average of 12+ months, including a total of 50 interview sessions with 10 patients working with 3 different clinicians. Patients were able to express multiple types of goals, evolve their goals over time, align tracking to their goals, personalize their tracking, reflect in the context of their goals, and gain insights that enabled understanding, communication, and action. We discuss how these results highlight the importance of accounting for distinct and concurrent goals in personal informatics together with implications for the design of future goal-directed personal informatics tools.2024YSYasaman S. Sefidgar et al.University of WashingtonChronic Disease Self-Management (Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.)Fitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringCHI
A Longitudinal Goal Setting Model for Addressing Complex Personal Problems in Mental HealthGoal setting is critical to achieving desired changes in life. Many technologies support defining and tracking progress toward goals, but these are just some parts of the process of setting and achieving goals. People desire to set goals that are more complex than the ones supported through technology. People use goal-setting technologies longitudinally, yet the understanding of how people’s goals evolve is still limited. We draw understanding from the collaborative practices of mental health therapists and clients in how they set goals longitudinally. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 clients and 7 therapists who practiced goal setting in their therapy sessions. Based on the results, we create the Longitudinal Goal Setting Model in mental health, a three-stage model. The model describes how clients and therapists select among multiple complex problems, simplify complex problems to specific goals, and adjust goals to help people address complex issues. The findings show collaboration between clients and therapists can support transformative reflection practices that are difficult to achieve without the therapist, such as seeing problems through new perspectives, questioning and changing practices, or addressing avoided issues.2022EAElena Agapie et al.Mental HealthCSCW
Monitoring Pets, Deterring Intruders, and Casually Spying on Neighbors: Everyday Uses of Smart Home CamerasThe increased adoption of smart home cameras (SHCs) foregrounds issues of surveillance, power, and privacy in homes and neighborhoods. However, questions remain about how people are currently using these devices to monitor and surveil, what the benefits and limitations are for users, and what privacy and security tensions arise between primary users and other stakeholders. We present an empirical study with 14 SHC users to understand how these devices are used and integrated within everyday life. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews, we investigate users’ motivations, practices, privacy concerns, and social negotiations. Our findings highlight the SHC as a perceptually powerful and spatially sensitive device that enables a variety of surveillant uses outside of basic home security—from formally surveilling domestic workers, to casually spying on neighbors, to capturing memories. We categorize surveillant SHC uses, clarify distinctions between primary and non-primary users, and highlight under-considered design directions for addressing power imbalances among primary and non-primary users.2022NTNeilly H. Tan et al.University of WashingtonPrivacy by Design & User ControlSmart Home Interaction DesignSmart Home Privacy & SecurityCHI
Critical-Playful Speculations with Cameras in the HomeSmart home cameras present new challenges for understanding behaviors and relationships surrounding always-on, domestic recording systems. We designed a series of discursive activities involving 16 individuals from ten households for six weeks in their everyday settings. These activities functioned as speculative probes—prompting participants to reflect on themes of privacy and power through filming with cameras in their households. Our research design foregrounded critical-playful enactments that allowed participants to speculate potentials for relationships with cameras in the home beyond everyday use. We present four key dynamics with participants and home cameras by examining their relationships to: the camera's eye, filming, their data, and camera’s societal contexts. We contribute discussions about the mundane, information privacy, and post-hoc reflection with one’s camera footage. Overall, our findings reveal the camera as a strange, yet banal entity in the home—interrogating how participants compose and handle their own and others’ video data.2022NTNeilly H. Tan et al.University of WashingtonPrivacy by Design & User ControlSmart Home Interaction DesignSmart Home Privacy & SecurityCHI
How the Design of YouTube Influences User Sense of AgencyIn the attention economy, video apps employ design mechanisms like autoplay that exploit psychological vulnerabilities to maximize watch time. Consequently, many people feel a lack of agency over their app use, which is linked to negative life effects such as loss of sleep. Prior design research has innovated external mechanisms that police multiple apps, such as lockout timers. In this work, we shift the focus to how the internal mechanisms of an app can support user agency, taking the popular YouTube mobile app as a test case. From a survey of 120 U.S. users, we find that autoplay and recommendations primarily undermine sense of agency, while playlists and search support it. From 13 co-design sessions, we find that when users have a specific intention for how they want to use YouTube they prefer interfaces that support greater agency. We discuss implications for how designers can help users reclaim a sense of agency over their media use.2021KLKai Lukoff et al.University of WashingtonDark Patterns RecognitionSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
“They don’t always think about that”: Translational Needs in the Design of Personal Health Informatics ApplicationsPersonal health informatics continues to grow in both research and practice, revealing many challenges of designing applications that address people's needs in their health, everyday lives, and collaborations with clinicians. Research suggests strategies to address such challenges, but has struggled to translate these strategies into design practice. This study examines translation of insights from personal health informatics research into resources to support designers. Informed by a review of relevant literature, we present our development of a prototype set of design cards intended to support designers in re-thinking potential assumptions about personal health informatics. We examined our design cards in semi-structured interviews, first with 12 student designers and then with 12 health-focused professional designers and researchers. Our results and discussion reveal tensions and barriers designers encounter, the potential for translational resources to inform the design of health-related technologies, and a need to support designers in addressing challenges of knowledge, advocacy, and evidence in designing for health.2021SKSusanne Kirchner et al.University of WashingtonMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesPrototyping & User TestingCHI
Values, Identity, and Social Translucence: Neurodiverse Student Teams in Higher EducationTo successfully function within a team, students must develop a range of skills for communication, organization, and conflict resolution. For students on the autism spectrum, these skills mirror the social, communicative, and cognitive experiences that can often be challenging for these learners. Since instructors and students collaborate using a mix of technology, we investigated the technology needs of neurodiverse teams comprised of autistic and non-autistic students. We interviewed seven autistic students and five employees of disability services in higher education. Our analysis focused on technology stakeholder values, stages of small-group development, and Social Translucence – a model for online collaboration highlighting principles of visibility, awareness, and accountability. Despite motivation to succeed, neurodiverse students have difficulty expressing individual differences and addressing team conflict. To support future design of technology for neurodiverse teams, we propose: (1) a design space and design concepts including collaborative and affective computing tools, and (2) extending Social Translucence to account for student and group identities.2018AZAnnuska --- Zolyomi et al.University of WashingtonCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)CHI
Uncertainty Displays Using Quantile Dotplots or CDFs Improve Transit Decision-MakingEveryday predictive systems typically present point predictions, making it hard for people to account for uncertainty when making decisions. Evaluations of uncertainty displays for transit prediction have assessed people’s ability to extract probabilities, but not the quality of their decisions. In a controlled, incentivized experiment, we had subjects decide when to catch a bus using displays with textual uncertainty, uncertainty visualizations, or no-uncertainty (control). Frequency-based visualizations previously shown to allow people to better extract probabilities (quantile dotplots) yielded better decisions. Decisions with quantile dotplots with 50 outcomes were(1) better on average, having expected payoffs 97% of optimal(95% CI: [95%,98%]), 5 percentage points more than control (95% CI: [2,8]); and (2) more consistent, having within-subject standard deviation of 3 percentage points (95% CI:[2,4]), 4 percentage points less than control (95% CI: [2,6]).Cumulative distribution function plots performed nearly as well, and both outperformed textual uncertainty, which was sensitive to the probability interval communicated. We discuss implications for real time transit predictions and possible generalization to other domains.2018MFMichael Fernandes et al.University of WashingtonUncertainty VisualizationCHI
Friends Don’t Need Receipts: The Curious Case of Social Awareness Streams in the Mobile Payment App VenmoWe study the inclusion of a social awareness stream (SAS) in the peer-to-peer payment app Venmo. While SASs are prominent in many social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, Venmo’s use offers an illustrative example of how SASs can be used in task-oriented apps, particularly in a domain, finance, which people often view as sensitive. Through interviews with 14 Venmo users and surveys of 164 peer-to-peer payment app users and 80 Venmo users, we find uses consistent with other SASs and uncover novel uses that reflect the unusual inclusion of an SAS within a utilitarian app for personal finance. For many users, the SAS is a flexible feature that creates an experience that blends their task-driven use with social benefits. People write purely functional transaction descriptions with strangers, while in transactions with friends, they sometimes craft playful descriptions that enhance their experience or perform their social relationships. The SAS provides opportunities for learning about how to use the application and for keeping up with friends. The results of this study extend the CSCW community’s knowledge of SASs and offer guidance to designers considering use of SAS in a variety of applications.2018MCMonica Caraway et al.Transactions and CurrenciesCSCW
Crowdsourcing Exercise Plans Aligned with Expert Guidelines and Everyday ConstraintsExercise plans help people implement behavior change. Crowd workers can help create exercise plans for clients, but their work may result in lower quality plans than produced by experts. We built CrowdFit, a tool that provides feedback about compliance with exercise guidelines and leverages strengths of crowdsourcing to create plans made by non-experts. We evaluated CrowdFit in a comparative study with 46 clients using exercise plans for two weeks. Clients received plans from crowd planners using CrowdFit, crowd planners without CrowdFit, or from expert planners. Compared to crowd planners not using CrowdFit, crowd planners using CrowdFit created plans that are more actionable and more aligned with exercise guidelines. Compared to experts, crowd planners created more actionable plans, and plans that are not significantly different with respect to tailoring, strength and aerobic principles. They struggled, however, to satisfy exercise requirements of amount of exercise. We discuss opportunities for designing technology supporting physical activity planning by non-experts.2018EAElena Agapie et al.University of WashingtonMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringCHI