Show Me Your More-Than-HumanThis series of photographic vignettes shows multiple instances of more-than-human, mapping out the diversity of approaches in this emergent field. More-than-human means embracing entangled, relational agencies and emphasizing pluralistic, situated, and non-anthropocentric ways of being in the world. Using a method of walking interviews, I invited researchers from diverse contexts to show me their more-than-human. This pictorial contributes a deliberately diverse inventory of encountering frontiers and boundaries; entities that are hidden, forbidden, spark curiosity; noticing kinship and hybrids: For becoming together in relational entanglements, to spark reflection and debate on what »more-than-human design« may be.2025ABArne BergerEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsParticipatory DesignHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
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
Wheel of Plush: A Co-Design Toolkit for Exploring the Design Space of Smart Soft Toy MaterialitySoft toys foster strong and enduring early childhood attachments, with positive effects extending into adulthood. Smart toys are vulnerable to exploits and can harm users. Bridging this contrast, pairs of smart objects, equipped with only simple sensors and actuators, may support peripheral and emotional awareness. At the same time, how exactly such pairs should negotiate the soft/smart spectrum to yield positive long-term impacts for people connecting through them is a design challenge. We engage this with the Wheel of Plush co-design toolkit. It enables 8x8 different sensor-actuator combinations in plush for co-designers to explore multimodal interactions for smart soft toy pairs connected over distance. We detail our design process and offer insights on designing a toolkit that combines artisanal plush material with simple sensors and actuators. With the Wheel of Plush, we contribute a toolkit for exploring smart soft toy materiality, data-frugal multimodal interaction, and opportunities for smart soft toy pair co-design.2024NSNatalie Sontopski et al.Haptic WearablesShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDIS
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
Accidentally Evil: On Questionable Values in Smart Home Co-DesignAn ongoing mystery of HCI is how do well-intentioned designers consistently enable products with unintentionally evil consequences. Using “questionable values” as a lens, we retell and analyze four design scenarios for smart homes that were created by participants with an IoT toolkit we designed. The selected design scenarios reveal practices that violate principles of responsible smart home design. Through our analysis we show (1) how participants explore sensor-driven objectification of the home then leverage data for surveillance, nudging, and control over others; (2) how the dominant technosolutionist narratives of efficiency and productivity ground such questionable values; (3) and how the materiality of mass-produced sensors pre-mediates questionable design scenarios. We discuss how to attend to and utilize questionable values in design: Making space for questionable values will empower design researchers to better “look around corners”, anticipating tomorrow’s concerns and forestalling the worst of their harms.2023ABArne Berger et al.Anhalt University of Applied SciencesSmart Home Interaction DesignSmart Home Privacy & SecurityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
The Entoptic Field Camera as Metaphor-Driven Research-through-Design with AI TechnologiesArtificial intelligence (AI) technologies are widely deployed in smartphone photography; and prompt-based image synthesis models have rapidly become commonplace. In this paper, we describe a Research-through-Design (RtD) project which explores this shift in the means and modes of image production via the creation and use of the Entoptic Field Camera. Entoptic phenomena usually refer to perceptions of floaters or bright blue dots stemming from the physiological interplay of the eye and brain. We use the term entoptic as a metaphor to investigate how the material interplay of data and models in AI technologies shapes human experiences of reality. Through our case study using first-person design and a field study, we offer implications for critical, reflective, more-than-human and ludic design to engage AI technologies; the conceptualisation of an RtD research space which contributes to AI literacy discourses; and outline a research trajectory concerning materiality and design affordances of AI technologies.2023JBJesse Josua Benjamin et al.University of Twente, Lancaster UniversityGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Digital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceCHI
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
Machine Learning Uncertainty as a Design Material: A Post-Phenomenological InquiryDesign research is important for understanding and interrogating how emerging technologies shape human experience. However, design research with Machine Learning (ML) is relatively underdeveloped. Crucially, designers have not found a grasp on ML uncertainty as a design opportunity rather than an obstacle. The technical literature points to data and model uncertainties as two main properties of ML. Through post-phenomenology, we position uncertainty as one defining material attribute of ML processes which mediate human experience. To understand ML uncertainty as a design material, we investigate four design research case studies involving ML. We derive three provocative concepts: thingly uncertainty: ML-driven artefacts have uncertain, variable relations to their environments; pattern leakage: ML uncertainty can lead to patterns shaping the world they are meant to represent; and futures creep: ML technologies texture human relations to time with uncertainty. Finally, we outline design research trajectories and sketch a post-phenomenological approach to human-ML relations.2021JBJesse Josua Benjamin et al.University of TwenteExplainable AI (XAI)Uncertainty VisualizationCHI
Useful Uselessness? Teaching Robots to Knit with HumansThis pictorial uses imagery of human-robot collaboration, or cobots, as a site to examine the potential of queer use within design research. Through close documentation of our process, we reflect on acts of teaching a commercially available robot to knit with us—a messy and seemingly unproductive process. However, this uselessness of the chosen task allows us to re-consider the idealization of robotic collaboration. We question the optimization of a largely human labor force and the associated drive to increase efficiency within a range of sectors, from the service industry to industrial production. Building on non-use literatures examining technological limits, and drawing on performative explorations and critique, we show how knitting enlarges our capacity to visualize what might be a suitable use case for cobots.2020PTPat Treusch et al.Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC)Shape-Changing Materials & 4D PrintingDesign FictionDIS
Guess the Data: Data Work to Understand How People Make Sense of and Use Simple Sensor Data from HomesSimple smart home sensors, e.g. for temperature or light, increasingly collect seemingly inconspicuous data. Prior work has shown that human sensemaking of such sensor data can reveal domestic activities. Such sensemaking presents an opportunity to empower people to understand the implications of simple smart home sensors. To investigate, we developed and field-tested the Guess the Data method, which enabled people to use and make sense of live data from their homes and to collectively interpret and reflect on anonymized data from the homes in our study. Our findings show how participants reconstruct behavior, both individually and collectively, expose the sensitive personal data of others, and use sensor data as evidence and for lateral surveillance within the household. We discuss the potential of our method as a participatory HCI method for investigating design of the IoT and implications created by doing data work on home sensors.2020AKAlbrecht Kurze et al.Chemnitz University of TechnologyIoT Device PrivacySmart Home Privacy & SecurityCHI