"Becoming My Own Audience": How Dancers React to Avatars Unlike Themselves in Motion Capture-Supported Live Improvisational Performance.The use of motion capture in live dance performances has created an emerging discipline enabling dancers to play different avatars on the digital stage. Unlike classical workflows, avatars enable performers to act as different characters in customized narratives, but research has yet to address how movement, improvisation, and perception change when dancers act as avatars. We created five avatars representing differing genders, shapes, and body limitations, and invited 15 dancers to improvise with each in practice and performance settings. Results show that dancers used avatars to distance themselves from their own habitual movements, exploring new ways of moving through differing physical constraints. Dancers explored using gender-stereotyped movements like powerful or feminine actions, experimenting with gender identity. However, focusing on avatars can coincide with a lack of continuity in improvisation. This work shows how emerging practices with performance technology enable dancers to improvise with new constraints, stepping outside the classical stage.2025FZFan Zhang et al.City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative MediaIdentity & Avatars in XRDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
Emotionally Challenging Games Can Satisfy Older Adults' Psychological Needs: From Empirical Study to Design GuidelinesOlder adults often struggle to meet their psychological needs due to retirement and living alone. Recent studies suggest that games featuring emotional challenge (EC) can help fulfill basic psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness by facilitating emotional exploration. However, it remains unclear whether older adults can benefit from EC games, whether they find this genre enjoyable, and how these games should be designed to better meet their needs. This work explores older adults’ experiences and perceptions of playing EC games through two studies. The first study involved playing Detroit: Become Human, revealing that older adults derived multifaceted psychological experiences from playing the game. The second study involved a custom-designed game scenario tailored to older adults, demonstrating that meaningful choices significantly influenced autonomy need satisfaction. Based on these findings, we offer five design guidelines for developing EC games that satisfy psychological needs of older adults.2025MZMin Zhou et al.Institute of Software, ChineseAging-Friendly Technology DesignSerious & Functional GamesCHI
A hunt for the Snark: Annotator Diversity in Data PracticesDiversity in datasets is a key component to building responsible AI/ML. Despite this recognition, we know little about the diversity among the annotators involved in data production. We investigated the approaches to annotator diversity through 16 semi-structured interviews and a survey with 44 AI/ML practitioners. While practitioners described nuanced understandings of annotator diversity, they rarely designed dataset production to account for diversity in the annotation process. The lack of action was explained through operational barriers: from the lack of visibility in the annotator hiring process, to the conceptual difficulty in incorporating worker diversity. We argue that such operational barriers and the widespread resistance to accommodating annotator diversity surface a prevailing logic in data practices---where neutrality, objectivity and 'representationalist thinking' dominate. By understanding this logic to be part of a regime of existence, we explore alternative ways of accounting for annotator subjectivity and diversity in data practices.2023SKShivani Kapania et al.Google ResearchExplainable AI (XAI)Algorithmic Fairness & BiasCHI
A study of UX Practitioners Roles in Designing Real-World, Enterprise ML SystemsOpportunities for AI and machine learning (ML) are vast in current interactive systems development. However, comparatively little is known about how functionality for the system behind the interface is designed and how design methodologies such as user-centered design have influence. This research focuses on how interdisciplinary teams that include UX practitioners design real-world enterprise ML systems outside of big technology companies. We conducted a survey with product managers, and interviews with interdisciplinary teams and individual UX practitioners. The findings show that nontechnical UX practitioners are highly capable in designing AI/ML systems. In addition to applying UX and interaction design expertise to make decisions regarding functionality, they employ skills that aid collaboration across interdisciplinary teams. However, our findings suggest existing HCI design techniques such as prototyping and simulating complexity of enterprise ML systems are insufficient. We propose adaptations to design practices and conclude that some existing research should be reconsidered.2022SZSabah Zdanowska et al.City, University of LondonHuman-LLM CollaborationAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityPrototyping & User TestingCHI
The Effects of a Soundtrack on Board Game Player ExperienceBoard gaming is a popular hobby that increasingly features the inclusion of technology, yet little research has sought to understand how board game player experience is impacted by digital augmentation or to inform the design of new technology-enhanced games. We present a mixed-methods study exploring how the presence of music and sound effects impacts the player experience of a board game. We found that the soundtrack increased the enjoyment and tension experienced by players during game play. We also found that a soundtrack provided atmosphere surrounding the gaming experience, though players did not necessarily experience this as enhancing the world-building capabilities of the game. We discuss how our findings can inform the design of new games and soundtracks as well as future research into board game player experience.2022TFTimea Farkas et al.Goldsmiths, University of LondonDigitalization of Board & Tabletop GamesCHI
Interdependence in Action: People with Visual Impairments and their Guides Co-constituting Common SpacesPrior work on AI-enabled assistive technology (AT) for people with visual impairments (VI) has treated navigation largely as an independent activity. Consequently, much effort has focused on providing individual users with wayfinding details about the environment, including information on distances, proximity, obstacles, and landmarks. However, independence is also achieved by people with VI through interacting with others, such as in collaboration with sighted guides. Drawing on the concept of interdependence, this research presents a systematic analysis of sighted guiding partnerships. Using interaction analysis as our primary mode of data analysis, we conducted an empirical, qualitative study with 4 couples, each made up of person with a vision impairment and their sighted guide. Our results show how pairs used interactional resources such as turn-taking and body movements to both co-constitute a common space for navigation, and repair moments of rupture to this space. This work is used to present an exemplary case of interdependence and draws out implications for designing AI-enabled AT that shifts the emphasis away from independent navigation, and towards the carefully coordinated actions between people navigating together.2021BVBeatrice Vincenzi et al.Accessibility and Assistive TechnologiesCSCW
Social Sense-making with AI: Designing an Open-ended AI experience with a Blind ChildAI technologies are often used to aid people in performing discrete tasks with well-defined goals (e.g., recognising faces in images). Emerging technologies that provide continuous, real-time information enable more open-ended AI experiences. In partnership with a blind child, we explore the challenges and opportunities of designing human-AI interaction for a system intended to support social sensemaking. Adopting a research-through-design perspective, we reflect upon working with the uncertain capabilities of AI systems in the design of this experience. We contribute: (i) a concrete example of an open-ended AI system that enabled a blind child to extend his own capabilities; (ii) an illustration of the delta between imagined and actual use, highlighting how capabilities derive from the human-AI interaction and not the AI system alone; and (iii) a discussion of design choices to craft an ongoing human-AI interaction that addresses the challenge of uncertain outputs of AI systems.2021CMCecily Morrison et al.Microsoft ResearchGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Visual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)CHI
"Whatever the Emotional Experience, It's Up to Them": Insights from Designers of Emotionally Impactful GamesEmotionally impactful game experiences have garnered increasing interest within HCI games research. Yet the perspectives of designers have, to date, remained largely overlooked. We interviewed 14 indie game designers regarding their values and practices in designing emotionally impactful games. Counter to the focus of recent player experience (PX) studies, we find that while designers typically have a clear vision for the intended emotional impact, they aim for their games to provide a space for players to have their own personal experiences and interpretations. Despite this player-centric orientation, players were rarely involved before and during the production to evaluate the emotional experience. Based on these findings, we identify gaps between design practice and PX research, raise open questions around the design and evaluation of emotionally impactful game experiences, and outline opportunities for HCI games research to more productively support game designers.2021ADAlena Denisova et al.City University of LondonGame UX & Player BehaviorRole-Playing & Narrative GamesCHI
Conformity of Eating Disorders through Content ModerationFor individuals with mental illness, social media platforms are considered spaces for sharing and connection. However, not all expressions of mental illness are treated equally on these platforms. Different aggregates of human and technical control are used to report and ban content, accounts, and communities. Through two years of digital ethnography, including online observation and interviews, with people with eating disorders, we examine the experience of content moderation. We use a constructivist grounded theory approach to analysis that shows how practices of moderation across different platforms have particular consequences for members of marginalized groups, who are pressured to conform and compelled to resist. Above all, we argue that platform moderation is enmeshed with wider processes of conformity to specific versions of mental illness. Practices of moderation reassert certain bodies and experiences as `normal' and valued, while rejecting others. At the same time, navigating and resisting these normative pressures further inscribes the marginal status of certain individuals. We discuss changes to the ways that platforms handle content related to eating disorders by drawing on the concept of multiplicity to inform design.2020JFJessica L Feuston et al.Understanding and Fighting Toxicity / ModerationCSCW
A Palette of Deepened Emotions: Exploring Emotional Challenge in Virtual Reality GamesRecent work introduced the notion of 'emotional challenge' promising for understanding more unique and diverse player experiences (PX). Although emotional challenge has immediately attracted HCI researchers' attention, the concept has not been experimentally explored, especially in virtual reality (VR), one of the latest gaming environments. We conducted two experiments to investigate how emotional challenge affects PX when separately from or jointly with conventional challenge in VR and PC conditions. We found that relatively exclusive emotional challenge induced a wider range of different emotions in both conditions, while the adding of emotional challenge broadened emotional responses only in VR. In both experiments, VR significantly enhanced the measured PX of emotional responses, appreciation, immersion and presence. Our findings indicate that VR may be an ideal medium to present emotional challenge and also extend the understanding of emotional (and conventional) challenge in video games.2020XPXiaolan Peng et al.Chinese Academy of Sciences & University of Chinese Academy of SciencesImmersion & Presence ResearchGame UX & Player BehaviorCHI
Empowering Expression for Users with Aphasia through Constrained CreativityCreative activities allow people to express themselves in rich, nuanced ways. However, being creative does not always come easily. For example, people with speech and language impairments, such as aphasia, face challenges in creative activities that involve language. In this paper, we explore the concept of constrained creativity as a way of addressing this challenge and enabling creative writing. We report an app, MakeWrite, that supports the constrained creation of digital texts through automated redaction. The app was co-designed with and for people with aphasia and was subsequently explored in a workshop with a group of people with aphasia. Participants were not only successful in crafting novel language, but, importantly, self-reported that the app was crucial in enabling them to do so. We refect on the potential of technology-supported constrained creativity as a means of empowering expression amongst users with diverse needs.2019TNTimothy Neate et al.City, University of LondonCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)AI-Assisted Creative WritingCHI
Making the News: Digital Creativity Support for JournalistsThis paper reports the design and first evaluations of new digital support for journalists to discover and examine crea-tive angles on news stories under development. The support integrated creative news search algorithms, interactive crea-tive sparks and reusable concept cards into one daily work tool of journalists. The first evaluations of INJECT by jour-nalists in their places of work to write published news sto-ries revealed that the journalists generated new angles on existing stories rather than new stories, changed their writ-ing behaviour, and reported evidence that INJECT use had the potential to increase the objectivity and the boldness of journalism methods used.2018NMNeil Maiden et al.City University LondonAI-Assisted Creative WritingPrototyping & User TestingCHI