Toxic Speculations: A Crip Posthuman Fabulation of Living in a Permanently Polluted WorldWe share a speculative fabulation that imagines alternative relations to an increasingly polluted landscape, drawing from environmental illness narratives. The fabulation is brought to life through Ray-Flats, shoes that glow in proximity to toxic sites listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s publicly available database, and an accompanying navigational guide. The storied designs seek to make the extent of chemical pollution in our everyday landscapes perceptible while foregrounding environmental illness experiences as a resource for living in and navigating a toxic world. Bringing together crip and posthuman perspectives, we contribute: 1) an example of designing to stay with environmental precarity, 2) the concept of “felt space" for making diffuse and ongoing environmental problems affectively perceptible through embodied interaction design, and 3) critical reflections on using fabulations with material speculations to foreground marginal perspectives in design.2026SJSylvia Janicki et al.Georgia Institute of TechnologySustainable HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)Design FictionCHI
Reconfiguring through Ruptures: Material Reconfigurations and Un/Making as Tangible Tactics for Queering AI-Generated HistoriesTo critically examine the role of AI in historical representation and resist anti-LGBTQIA+ biases and erasures, we leverage un/making and propose a tactic we name material reconfigurations. We share an autoethnographic account of un/making and materially reconfiguring AI-generated images of queer histories: the lead author's memories of queer places and events. Through hand annotating, scratching, burying, submerging, and walking with physical images, they un/make and reconfigure, highlighting embodied aspects of archival records unparsable by generative AI. We propose that un/making and materially reconfiguring synthetic archival images can resist generative AI's increasingly hegemonic role in misrepresenting historical data and erasing queer identities. We contribute reflections on un/making and material reconfigurations as tangible tactics for queering AI, attuning to queer temporalities to unsettle AI-generated histories, using embodied, autoethnographic practices as critical strategies, and working through tensions of use and refusal in Queer AI research.2026ARAlexandra Teixeira Riggs et al.Georgia Institute of TechnologyGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)AI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityGender & Race Issues in HCICHI
Informal Embodied Auditing: Exploring Facial Emotion AI (FEAI) through Community WorkshopsEmotion AI (EAI) is increasingly deployed and ethically controversial-motivating a need for greater public understanding, critique, and ethical discussions. Facial Emotion AI (FEAI) is a common type of EAI that infers emotions from facial expressions. We developed Explore-FEAI, an FEAI model and accompanying interactive website that offers open-ended exploration with FEAI firsthand. We designed a workshop wherein participants learn about FEAI using Explore-FEAI and discuss societal implications, partnering with local organizations to host community workshops (N=30). Our findings analyze participants’ growing critical AI literacy through exploring inputs/outputs, mechanistic reasoning, data critiques, sociocultural critiques, ethical concerns, and embodied and material exploration of FEAI. Our discussion offers informal embodied auditing as an approach for critical engagement with AI through embodied and material exploration, as well as reflections on informal auditing for supporting AI literacy, informal auditing for questioning EAI ethics, and expanding participation roles for more holistic EAI training.2026XLXingyu Li et al.Georgia Institute of Technology,Emotion Recognition & DetectionAffective Feedback & Emotion Regulation InterfacesAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityCHI
From Regulation to Support: Centering Humans in Technology-Mediated Emotion Intervention in Care ContextsEnhancing emotional well-being has become an important focus in HCI and CSCW, with technologies increasingly designed to track, visualize, and manage emotions. However, these approaches have faced criticism for potentially suppressing certain emotional experiences. Through a scoping review of 53 empirical studies from ACM proceedings implementing Technology-Mediated Emotion Intervention (TMEI), we critically examine current practices through lenses drawn from HCI critical theories. Our analysis reveals emotion intervention mechanisms that extend beyond traditional "emotion regulation" paradigms, identifying care-centered goals that prioritize non-judgmental emotional support and preserve users' identities. The findings demonstrate how researchers design technologies to generate artificial care, intervene in power dynamics, and nudge behavioral changes. We contribute the concept of "emotion support" as an alternative approach to "emotion regulation," emphasizing human-centered approaches to emotional well-being. This work advances the understanding of diverse human emotional needs beyond individual and cognitive perspectives, offering design implications that critically reimagine how technologies can honor emotional complexity, preserve human agency, and transform power dynamics in care contexts.2025JLJiaying "Lizzy" Liu et al.Care WorkCSCW
Queer Archival Un/Making as Tangible Information ActivismWe introduce queer archival un/making, i.e. both making and unmaking with historical materials, which invites reflection on queer identities and community archives, toward information activist engagements (or, how LGBTQIA+ people strategically use communication technologies to access knowledge and further social movements). We hosted workshops where participants created buttons by drawing and collaging with materials from the Queer Zine Archive Project, then embedded buttons with their own personal oral histories. From our workshops, we provide the following design reflections on queer archival un/making: (1) un/making from queer perspectives encourages questioning, trying on, and exploring identities both personally and collectively; (2) queer archival un/making can encompass sharing artifacts outside of research institutions to engage community archives and information activist practices; (3) queer archival un/making invites reflections on what is missing from community archives and how un/making with historical materials can configure alternatives. Our design reflections expand the practices of unmaking in HCI by looking to queer archives, paralleling the messiness through which queer identities and histories are made and interpreted.2025ARAlexandra Teixeira Riggs et al.LGBTQ+ Community Technology DesignMuseum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationDIS
Queer/Crip Body Mapping: Expressing Dynamic Bodily Experiences with DataDrawing on queer and disability theories alongside tangible body mapping techniques, we explore alternative ways of mapping embodied experiences and expressing affective sensations. Our collaborative autoethnographic approach incorporates sensors to trace our somatic experiences over time, pairing visualizations of contextual biodata with personal reflections in written or spoken form. We unpack how these alternative approaches to body mapping support reflecting on, communicating, and deepening understanding of embodied experiences by foregrounding temporal and situated aspects. We offer expanded body mapping methods by sharing a plurality of experiences that embrace queer and crip ways of knowing, foregrounding alternate temporal and spatial representations.2025ARAlexandra Teixeira Riggs et al.Visual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Chronic Disease Self-Management (Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.)Technology Ethics & Critical HCIDIS
Hydroptical Thermal Feedback: Spatial Thermal Feedback Using Visible Lights and WaterWe control the temperature of materials in everyday interactions, recognizing temperature's important influence on our bodies, minds, and experiences. However, thermal feedback is an under-explored modality in human-computer interaction partly due to its limited temporal (slow) and spatial (small-area and non-moving) capabilities. We introduce hydroptical thermal feedback, a spatial thermal feedback method that works by applying visible lights on body parts in water. Through physical measurements and psychophysical experiments, our results show: (1) Humans perceive thermal sensations when visible lights are cast on the skin under water, and perceived warmth is greater for lights with shorter wavelengths, (2) temporal capabilities, (3) apparent motion (spatial) of warmth and coolness sensations, and (4) hydroptical thermal feedback can support the perceptual illusion that the water itself is warmer. We propose applications, including virtual reality (VR), shared water experiences, and therapies. Overall, this paper contributes hydroptical thermal feedback as a novel method, empirical results demonstrating its unique capabilities, proposed applications, and design recommendations for using hydroptical thermal feedback. Our method introduces controlled, spatial thermal perceptions to water experiences.2024SISosuke Ichihashi et al.Vibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationMixed Reality WorkspacesImmersion & Presence ResearchUIST
Crip Reflections on Designing with Plants: Intersecting Disability Theory, Chronic Illness, and More-than-Human DesignThrough an autoethnographic account of designing, exhibiting, and maintaining an interactive bioart installation with plants, we trace intersections between more-than-human design, disability theory, and lived experiences of chronic illness. Specifically, we deconstruct three "polished" exhibits of our installation through stories of breakdowns and failures, organized in three main themes: maintenance and care, buggy biodata, and collective resistance to purification and control. Our reflections show how plants, technologies, and a chronically ill body became entangled with each other conceptually and materially, surfacing new sites for more-than-human relationalities. In our discussion, we unpack how disability perspectives can expand more-than-human design practices, highlight opportunities for re-imagining exhibition spaces, and offer adaptation as a strategy for design in HCI.2024SJSylvia Janicki et al.Technology Ethics & Critical HCISustainable HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Red [Redacted] Theatre: Queering Puzzle-Based Tangible Interaction Design“Red [Redacted] Theatre” is a tangible puzzle-based experience exploring queer history. We used queer methods to design puzzles with archival materials, guiding participants from a more normative “surface” understanding of history into exploring queer histories, breaking familiar language and constructs through play and tangible interaction. Our reflections contribute design considerations for queering tangible interaction through puzzles: (1) designing and deconstructing layers of queer understanding, (2) attending to situatedness in designing tangible puzzle artifacts, and (3) designing puzzles that solve to complexity. We also offer insights on how facilitation and debrief of the experience can prompt reflection on queer history and ways of understanding. Overall, this pictorial contributes to Queer HCI by deepening queer tangible interaction, particularly for exploring queer history.2024ARAlexandra Teixeira Riggs et al.Inclusive DesignGender & Race Issues in HCIDIS
"Tuning in and listening to the current": Understanding Remote Ritual Practice in Sufi CommunitiesDesign research and HCI increasingly explore techno-spirituality. We investigated Sufi practices of group zikr, a ritual practice of remembrance of God. We focus on zikr groups that offer online or hybrid participation. We conducted a qualitative study using interviews with practitioners and collaborative autoethnography as researchers/practitioners. Our findings surface themes of (i) shared spiritual energy, (ii) sensory experiences' role in spiritual energy, (iii) impact of technological mediation on sensory and spiritual experiences, and the (iv) importance of community. Our discussion contributes design considerations for techno-spirituality around (1) attunement, (2) practical audiovisual suggestions, and (3) `sensational forms'. Overall, we offer detailed experiential accounts of entanglements of sensory perception, spirituality, and attunement, and present generative design reflections suggesting avenues of further design research in supporting religious, faith-based, and/or spiritual practices in HCI.2024SKSandjar Kozubaev et al.Technology Ethics & Critical HCIUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)DIS
Designing an Archive of Feelings: Queering Tangible Interaction with Button PortraitsHow can tangible, wearable design encourage affective, embodied reflections on queer history? We expand Queer HCI scholarship, using queer theory to inform the design of wearable experiences that explore archives of gender and sexuality. Our project, “Button Portraits,” invites individuals to listen to oral histories from prominent queer activists by pinning archival buttons to a wearable audio player, eliciting moving personal impressions. We observed 17 participants’ experiences with “Button Portraits,” and with semi-structured interviews, surfaced reflections on how our design evoked personal connections to history, queer self-identification, and relatability to archival materials. We offer the following design directions: (1) designing tangible archives of feeling; (2) queering tangible, wearable interactions in design; (3) designing for personal, archival experiences; and (4) designing within difference. Through this work, we foreground queer stories to affect emotional reflections on marginalized histories, entangling the complex connections between bodies, feelings, histories, and shared queer experiences.2024ARAlexandra Teixeira Riggs et al.Georgia Institute of TechnologyLGBTQ+ Community Technology DesignEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
Fabulation as an Approach for Design FuturingEnvisioning alternative futures and desirable worlds is a core element of design that must be cultivated, especially when a deep transition of practices, values, and power is necessary for vibrant and just future lifeworlds. In this paper, we contribute towards fabulation as an approach for design futuring that foregrounds feminist commitments and more-than-human concerns. Analyzing two fabulation case studies around biodata and bodily fluids, we offer three themes based on our process of developing these fabulations: how they engage materials, how they work to trouble temporalities, and how they cultivate imagination. We argue for the emerging potential of fabulation as an approach for open-ended, joyful design futuring, mobilizing speculative storytelling to foreground absent or neglected relations when imagining alternative lifeworlds.2023MSMarie Louise Juul Søndergaard et al.Design FictionHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Diffraction-in-action: Designerly Explorations of Agential Realism Through Lived DataRecent design research has shown an interest in diffraction and agential realism, which promise to offer generative alternatives when designing with data that resist treating data as objective or neutral. We explore engaging diffractively with `lived data' to surface felt and prospective aspects of data as it is entangled in everyday lives of designers. This paper presents five biodata-based case studies demonstrating how design researchers can create knowledge about human bodies and behaviors via strategies that allow them to engage data diffractively. These studies suggest that designers can find insights for designing with data as it is lived by working with it in a slow, open-ended fashion that leaves room for messiness and time for discovering difference. Finally, we discuss the role of ambiguous, open-ended data interpretations to help surface different meaning and entanglements of data in everyday lives.2022PSPedro Sanches et al.ITI/Larsys, Umeå UniversityUniversal & Inclusive DesignMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI