Navigating Postpartum: Exploring Lived and Professional Perspectives to Inform Supportive Technology DesignChildbirth is a significant life transition involving physical recovery, emotional adjustment, and caring for a newborn. This period exposes parents to postpartum challenges, including emotional difficulties, social isolation, and overwhelming adjustments that can lead to depression or anxiety. Despite the prevalence of postpartum challenges, research and support systems remain insufficient. To explore how technology could address these challenges, we combined professional and lived perspectives. Through a mixed-methods approach with midwives, social workers, and affected parents, we conducted interviews (N=8), collected experience reports (N=52), and used these insights to inform four participatory workshops (N=15). By using zines, self-curated booklets - for expression and reflection, participants articulated challenges, ideal circumstances, and imagined support tools. We identified five challenge areas that technology should address through a Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). Our work contributes empirically grounded perspectives on postpartum challenges, design recommendations for supportive technologies, and considerations for designing technologies during challenging life transitions.2026SGSophie Grimme et al.OFFIS - Institute for Information TechnologyMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesBehavior Change & Reflection TechnologyInclusive DesignCHI
VidTune: Creating Video Soundtracks with Generative Music and Video-Based ThumbnailsMusic shapes the tone of videos, yet creators find it hard to find soundtracks that match their video's mood and narrative. Recent text-to-music models let creators generate music from text prompts, but our formative study (N=8) shows creators struggle to construct diverse prompts, quickly review and compare tracks, and understand their impact on the video. We present VidTune, a system that supports soundtrack creation by generating diverse music options from a creator’s prompt and producing contextual thumbnails for rapid review. VidTune extracts representative video subjects to ground thumbnails in context, maps each track’s valence and energy onto visual cues like color and brightness, and depicts prominent genres and instruments. Creators can refine tracks with natural language edits, which VidTune expands into new generations. In a controlled user study (N=12) and an exploratory case study (N=6), participants found VidTune helpful for efficiently reviewing and comparing music options and described the process as playful and enriching.2026MHMina Huh et al.University of Texas, AustinGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Music Composition & Sound Design ToolsVideo Production & EditingCHI
Balancing Automation and Discretion: How Decision Stakes and Human-AI Collaboration Affect Citizen Perceptions in Public AdministrationThe growing use of AI in public administration improves efficiency, yet its use in discretionary decisions raises concerns about fairness and legitimacy. While prior research examined decision stakes and Human–AI decision-making configurations separately, their combined effect on citizens’ perceptions of fairness and adoption remains underexplored. We conducted a mixed-method Wizard-of-Oz study (n=43) using an Intelligent-Self-Service-Kiosk. Participants completed a low-stakes (ID renewal) and a high-stakes (social housing) task under one of three decision-making configurations: AI alone, AI with human supervision, and human with AI advice or recommendation. Quantitative analysis found no significant effects, highlighting the limits of standard metrics. However, qualitative interviews revealed that citizens valued human involvement, requiring meaningful over symbolic oversight. They emphasized interactive dialogue before decisions to capture their circumstances and after, to facilitate appeals. We contribute evidence of tensions between citizens’ desire for efficiency and need for human-control and fairness. We provide guidance for designing citizen-centered AI systems that align with democratic values.2026SASaja Aljuneidi et al.OFFIS - Institute for Information TechnologyAI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityPrivacy by Design & User ControlCHI
Grand Challenges around Designing Computers’ Control Over Our BodiesAdvances in emerging technologies, such as on-body mechanical actuators and electrical muscle stimulation, have allowed computers to take control over our bodies. This presents opportunities as well as challenges, raising fundamental questions about agency and the role of our body when interacting with technology. To advance this research field as a whole, we brought together expert perspectives in a week-long seminar to articulate the grand challenges that should be tackled when it comes to the design of computers’ control over our bodies. These grand challenges span technical, design, user, and ethical aspects. By articulating these grand challenges, we aim to begin initiating a research agenda that positions bodily control not only as a technical feature but as a central, experiential, and ethical concern for future human–computer interaction endeavors.2026FMFlorian 'Floyd' Mueller et al.Monash UniversityElectrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackEmpathy & Emotional DesignCHI
Inside the Mirror, Wearing My own Body: Why UX Should Engage Monstrous ExperiencesWhile engaging with four different wearable systems, we unexpectedly encountered felt experiences that resisted articulation and defied conventional classification. They were neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and yet both; neither comforting nor frightening, and yet both; neither recognizably human-like nor machinic, and yet both. Such ambiguous experiences might have gone unnoticed had we not attended to their somatic, felt dimensions. Existing user experience frameworks offered little guidance in making sense of these phenomena. However, through the lens of monster theory, these paradoxical experiences began to reveal their structure and significance. Drawing on concepts such as fusion, fission, massification, and incompleteness, we analyze and interpret the unexpected monstrous experiences arising from interacting with wearable systems. We argue that such experiences deserve a place in interaction design: not only for the enduring fascination of the monster, but also for its power to disrupt simplistic schemas, enrich design possibilities, and illuminate cultural shifts.2026PKPavel Karpashevich et al.Carl von Ossietzky University of OldenburgHaptic WearablesEmotion-Sensing WearablesAffective Feedback & Emotion Regulation InterfacesCHI
SPAT: Situational Prosocial and Aggressive Behavior Perception in Traffic ScaleAutomated vehicles (AVs) reached technological maturity and will soon arrive on streets as traffic participants. Human traffic participants such as drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists will be increasingly confronted with the presence of AVs within their environment, not necessarily knowing or understanding what to expect and how to interact with them. Although AVs are designed to act safely, effective interaction in mixed traffic scenarios will depend on successful communication, interaction, or even negotiation beyond static rules and regulations. Prosocial behavior, such as yielding one's right of way, will be needed to resolve unclear traffic situations or foster traffic flow. However, what are the characteristics of such prosocial behavior, and how to measure this not only for automated vehicles but for all road users? Here, we describe a new scale to measure perceived social behavior in urban traffic scenarios. Through an online survey on \textit{N} = 318 individuals and a validation study, we developed the Situational Prosocial and Aggressive Behavior in Traffic Scale and assessed it psychometrically.2025HİHatice Şahin İppoliti et al.Teleoperated DrivingV2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) Communication DesignAI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationAutoUI
Enhancing Smart Home User Experience: A Study of Everyday Objects for Smart Home ControlCurrent smart home technologies rely on touchscreens and voice assistants for interaction. These interfaces lack tactile engagement and fail to support users' daily routines and preferences, leading to poor user experiences (UX). Designing tangible user interfaces (TUIs) that align with user preferences can improve the status quo. This paper explores the potential of TUIs using everyday objects for smart home control. Four prototypes — a vase, pillow, coaster, and flower — were evaluated for UX and metaphor alignment through a within-subjects study with 25 participants. Using meCUE questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, we examined how physical and contextual attributes influence UX. Our findings indicate that everyday objects are effective TUI and produce positive UX, provided careful consideration is given to their physical and contextual attributes. This research expands our understanding of TUIs' role in bridging the digital-physical divide and offers practical guidelines for embedding intuitive smart home controls into everyday objects.2025MCMichael Chamunorwa et al.Smart Home Interaction DesignCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsMobileHCI
The Dual Model for Everyday Stress Technology: Understanding the Lived Experience of Data-Driven StressTechnology plays a dual role in our daily lives, both contributing to heightened stress levels and offering potential solutions for stress management. However, the lived experience of stress in everyday contexts remains underexplored, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of how stress manifests and how technology can effectively support stress management. To address this, we conducted user interviews and expert interviews with specialists in psychology, health, and stress research, complemented by an autoethnographic study. Our findings show the complexity of stress as both a subjective experience and a response shaped by socio-technical environments, leading to the construction of the Dual Model for Everyday Stress Technology. This model highlights the paradoxical nature of stress and its management in technology-mediated settings. We identify key directions for future stress-management technology design and research, with implications for creating meaningful, human-centred technologies for managing stress in everyday life.2025SBSigrid Hoddø Bakås et al.University of OsloMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesSleep & Stress MonitoringCHI
My Data, My Choice, My Insights: Women's Requirements when Collecting, Interpreting and Sharing their Personal Health DataHCI research has been instrumental in enabling self-directed health tracking. Despite a plethora of devices and data, however, users' views of their own health are often fragmented. This is a problem for women's health, where physical and mental observations and symptoms are strongly intertwined. An integrated view throughout different life stages could help to better understand these connections, facilitate symptom alleviation through life-style changes, and support timely diagnosis: currently, women's health issues often go under-researched and under-diagnosed. To capture the needs and worries of self-directed tracking, interpreting and sharing women's health data, we held workshops with 28 women. Drawing upon feminist methods, we conducted a Reflexive Thematic Analysis to identify six central themes that ground opportunities and challenges for life-long, self-directed tracking of intimate data. These themes inform the design of tools for data collection, analysis and sharing that empower women to better understand their bodies and demand adequate health services.2024SGSophie Grimme et al.OFFIS - Institute for Information TechnologyCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Universal & Inclusive DesignReproductive & Women's HealthCHI
Why the Fine, AI? The Effect of Explanation Level on Citizens' Fairness Perception of AI-based Discretion in Public AdministrationsThe integration of Artificial Intelligence into decision-making processes within public administration extends to AI-systems that exercise administrative discretion. This raises fairness concerns among citizens, possibly leading to AI-systems abandonment. Uncertainty persists regarding explanation elements impacting citizens' perception of fairness and technology adoption level. In a video-vignette online-survey (N=847), we investigated the impact of explanation levels on citizens' perceptions of informational fairness, distributive fairness, and system adoption level. We enhanced explanations in three stages: none, factor explanations, culminating in factor importance explanations. We found that more detailed explanations improved informational and distributive fairness perceptions, but did not affect citizens' willingness to reuse the system. Interestingly, citizens with higher AI-literacy expressed greater willingness to adopt the system, regardless of the explanation levels. Qualitative findings revealed that greater human involvement and appeal mechanisms could positively influence citizens' perceptions. Our findings highlight the importance of citizen-centered design of AI-based decision-making in public administration.2024SASaja Aljuneidi et al.OFFIS - Institute for Information TechnologyAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityAlgorithmic Transparency & AuditabilityPrivacy by Design & User ControlCHI
Controlling the Rooms: How People Prefer Using Gestures to Control Their Smart HomesGesture interactions have become ubiquitous, and with increasingly reliable sensing technology we can anticipate their use in everyday environments such as smart homes. Gestures must meet users' needs and constraints in diverse scenarios to gain widespread acceptance. Although mid-air gestures have been proposed in various user contexts, it is still unclear to what extent users want to integrate them into different scenarios in their smart homes, along with the motivations driving this desire. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether users will remain consistent in their suggestions when transitioning to alternative scenarios within a smart home. This study contributes methodologically by adapting a bottom-up frame-based design process. We offer insights into preferred devices and commands in different smart home scenarios. Using our results, we can assist in designing gestures in the smart home that are consistent with individual needs across devices and scenarios, while maximizing the reuse and transferability of gestural knowledge.2024MHMasoumehsadat Hosseini et al.University of OldenburgHand Gesture RecognitionSmart Home Interaction DesignCHI
Exploring Recognition Accuracy of Vibrotactile Stimuli in Sternoclavicular AreaGrowing popularity of wearable haptic devices encouraged researchers to implement on-body interfaces that appropriate different form factors and interaction techniques. Among vibrotactile wearable interfaces, neck-worn devices gathered limited attention in HCI. While the ``necklace area'' offers wide opportunities for subtle haptic interaction, we lack knowledge of its tactile acuity to design interactive systems effectively. In this work, we present a prototype of HaptiNecklace - a vibrotactile necklace designed to study tactile acuity of sternoclavicular area. In the experimental study with N=19 participants, we compared recognition accuracy and cognitive load between different numbers of vibrotactile motors attached to the prototype in two scenarios -- static and mobile. The results show that directional patterns ensure better recognition than single-point vibrations in both mobile and static context. Moreover, introducing mobile scenario does not influence recognition accuracy but highly increases cognitive load. In this work, we provide practical hints to designing vibrotactile necklaces.2023MWMikołaj P. Woźniak et al.Vibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationHaptic WearablesUbiComp
An empirical comparison of Moderated and Unmoderated Gesture Elicitation Studies on soft surfaces and objects for smart home control.Conducting gesture elicitation studies (GES) in personal spaces such as smart homes is crucial to achieving high ecological validity of elicited gestures. However, supervising such studies is considered intrusive and negatively affects the results' quality. The alternative is to conduct unsupervised GES under similar conditions, but more side-by-side comparisons documenting the similarities and differences between both approaches are necessary. Consequently, we need more data describing the preferred approach and whether the differences or similarities in the results are so significant to cause concern. This research distributed a DIY observation kit, which 30 participants assembled and used to propose gestures for controlling elements in a smart living room using a pillow’s surface, with and without supervision. Our results show that gestures from supervised and unsupervised studies differ in quantity and max-consensus but not in gesture Agreement Scores. Our results also show that participants preferred conducting unsupervised studies but proposed fewer gesture sets in this condition.2023MCMichael Chamunorwa et al.Hand Gesture RecognitionSmart Home Interaction DesignMobileHCI
Please, Go Ahead! Fostering Prosocial Driving with Sympathy-Eliciting Automated Vehicle External DisplaysRoad traffic is strongly regulated, however informal communication is essential whenever formal rules are flexibly treated. Consequently, conflict-avoidant automated vehicles (AVs) can be disadvantaged when humans do not behave prosocially towards them. This can lead to disruptions of mixed traffic, where human and automated driving co-exists. Equipping AVs with sympathy-eliciting external Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMI) mimicking informal communication cues could mitigate this challenge by fostering the prosocial behavior of drivers. This work contributes video vignettes that are experimentally validated in an online survey (N=90). While we found participants to not behave differently towards human-controlled and baseline automated vehicles, eHMIs were potent in eliciting sympathy and encouraged yielding behavior. This effect was more pronounced when the interface signaled an urgent situation or indicated prolonged waiting times. Non-yielding behavior was rationalized based on priority rules. These results emphasize how fostering prosocial behavior in traffic can be achieved via sympathy-eliciting external displays.2023HİHatice Şahin İppoliti et al.External HMI (eHMI) — Communication with Pedestrians & CyclistsMobileHCI
A Real Bottleneck Scenario with a Wizard of Oz Automated Vehicle - Role of eHMIsAutomated vehicles (AVs) are expected to encounter various ambiguous space-sharing conflicts in urban traffic. Bottleneck scenarios, where one of the parts needs to resolve the conflict by yielding priority to the other, could be utilized as a representative ambiguous scenario to understand human behavior in experimental settings. We conducted a controlled field experiment with a Wizard of Oz automated car in a bottleneck scenario. 24 participants attended the study by driving their own cars. They made yielding, or priority-taking decisions based on implicit and explicit locomotion cues on AV realized with an external display. Results indicate that acceleration and deceleration cues affected participants' driving choices and their perception regarding the social behavior of AV, which further serve as ecological validation of related simulation studies.2023HİHatice Şahin İppoliti et al.External HMI (eHMI) — Communication with Pedestrians & CyclistsAutoUI
Co-Speculating on Dark Scenarios and Unintended Consequences of a Ubiquitous(ly) Augmented RealityThe vision of a `metaverse' may soon bring a ubiquitous(ly) Augmented Reality (UAR) delivering context-aware, geo-located, and continuous blends of real and virtual elements into reach. This paper draws on speculative design to explore, question, and problematize consequences of AR becoming pervasive. Elaborating on Desjardin et al.'s bespoke booklets, we co-speculate together with 12 globally dispersed participants. Each participant received a custom-made design workbook containing pictures of their immediate surroundings, which they elaborated on in situated brainstorming activities. We present an integration of their speculative ideas and lived experiences in 3 overarching themes from which 7 `dark' scenarios caused by UAR were formed. The Scenarios are indicative of deceptive design patterns that can (and likely will be) devised to misuse UAR, and anti-patterns that could cause unintended consequences. These contributions enable the timely discussion of potential antidotes and to which extent they can mitigate imminent harms of UAR.2023CEChloe Eghtebas et al.AR Navigation & Context AwarenessTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDesign FictionDIS
Inhabiting Interconnected Spaces: How Users Shape and Appropriate their Smart Home EcosystemsOver the last decade, smart home technology (SHT) has become an integral part of modern households. As a result, smart home ecosystems blend with daily social life, appropriated and integrated into personalised domestic environments. The lived experience of inhabiting smart home ecosystems, however, is not yet understood, resulting in a mismatch between ecosystem design and inhabitants' needs. Drawing on contextual inquiry methods, we conducted an explorative interview study (N=20) with SHT users in their homes. Our thematic analysis reveals how users shape their smart home ecosystems (SHEs), considering social relationships at home, perceived ownership of SHTs, and expected key benefits. Notably, our analysis shows that household members consciously choose `their' level of SHT interconnectedness, reflecting social, spatial and functional affinities between systems. Following our findings, we formulate five implications for designing future SHTs. Our work contributes insights on the dynamics and appropriation of smart home ecosystems by their inhabitants.2023MWMikołaj P. Woźniak et al.University of OldenburgContext-Aware ComputingSmart Home Interaction DesignCHI
Let's Face It: Influence of Facial Expressions on Social Presence in Collaborative Virtual RealityAs the world becomes more interconnected, physical separation between people increases. Existing collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) applications, designed to bridge this distance, are not yet sufficient in providing a sense of social connection comparable to face-to-face interactions. Possible reasons are the limited multimodality of VR systems and the lack of non-verbal cues in VR avatars. We systematically investigated how facial expressions influence Social Presence in two collaborative VR tasks. We explored four types of facial expressions: eyes and mouth movements, their combination, and no expressions, for two types of explanations: verbal and graphical. To examine how these expressions influence Social Presence, we conducted a controlled VR experiment (N = 48), in which participants had to explain a specific term to their counterpart. Our results demonstrate that eye and mouth movements positively influence Social Presence in VR. Particularly, combining verbal explanations and eye movements induces the highest feeling of co-presence.2023SKSimon Kimmel et al.OFFIS - Institute for Information TechnologySocial & Collaborative VRImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRCHI
Towards a Consensus Gesture Set: A Survey of Mid-Air Gestures in HCI for Maximized Agreement Across DomainsMid-air gesture-based systems are becoming ubiquitous. Many mid-air gestures control different kinds of interactive devices, applications, and systems. They are, however, still targeted at specific devices in specific domains and are not necessarily consistent across domain boundaries. A comprehensive evaluation of the transferability of gesture vocabulary between domains is also lacking. Consequently, interaction designers cannot decide which gestures to use for which domain. In this systematic literature review, we contribute to the future research agenda in this area, based on an analysis of 172 papers. As part of our analysis, we clustered gestures according to the dimensions of an existing taxonomy to identify their common characteristics in different domains, and we investigated the extent to which existing mid-air gesture sets are consistent across different domains. We derived a consensus gesture set containing 22 gestures based on agreement rates calculation and considered their transferability across different domains.2023MHMasoumehsadat Hosseini et al.University of OldenburgHand Gesture RecognitionFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputCHI
Literature Reviews in HCI: A Review of ReviewsThis paper analyses Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature reviews to provide a clear conceptual basis for authors, reviewers, and readers. HCI is multidisciplinary and various types of literature reviews exist, from systematic to critical reviews in the style of essays. Yet, there is insufficient consensus of what to expect of literature reviews in HCI. Thus, a shared understanding of literature reviews and clear terminology is needed to plan, evaluate, and use literature reviews, and to further improve review methodology. We analysed 189 literature reviews published at all SIGCHI conferences and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) up until August 2022. We report on the main dimensions of variation: (i) contribution types and topics; and (ii) structure and methodologies applied. We identify gaps and trends to inform future meta work in HCI and provide a starting point on how to move towards a more comprehensive terminology system of literature reviews in HCI.2023ESEvropi Stefanidi et al.University of BremenUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)Research Ethics & Open ScienceCHI