Framing Water: Exploring Tensions between Social Norms and Environmental Sustainability through a Data Physicalization GameMountain areas are especially vulnerable to climate change. In recent years, intermittent droughts have forced many Alpine huts to close early or rely on cable cars or helicopters to import water. To raise awareness of water scarcity among hut visitors, we developed Framing Water, a reflective game based on the data physicalization of each visitor's water consumption during an overnight stay. The game requires players to select their most essential water-using activities without exceeding a fixed limit. Yet, it is designed not to provide a univocal answer about the right choices to make but to spark reflection and dialogue around trade-offs in daily practices. We evaluated it with 56 participants and found that water-use decisions are influenced by individual needs, values, and social norms. This work contributes to Sustainable HCI by showing how playful, data-driven artifacts can foster reflection and negotiation of resource use in response to climate challenges.2026EMEleonora Mencarini et al.Fondazione Bruno KesslerData PhysicalizationSustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingCHI
Talking About Brainrot: Youth Engagement with AI-Generated Content and the Dynamics of Intergenerational CommunicationGenerative AI is increasingly shaping social media dynamics and the production of viral content, particularly among younger audiences. One recent example is Italian Brainrot, a meme phenomenon characterized by AI-generated, surreal visuals and absurd narratives, which has rapidly gained popularity among adolescents. Despite its widespread presence online, little is known about how such AI-generated content is perceived by young users and communicated across generational lines. This study investigates the attitudes and perceptions of 89 adolescents aged 12-14 regarding Italian Brainrot and related content. Specifically, it addresses two research questions: (1) How do young adolescents perceive and engage with the Italian Brainrot phenomenon? and (2) How do they communicate about this content with peers and adults? Our findings contribute to broader discussions on generative AI, internet language, and intergenerational communication. In particular, we highlight both the barriers and opportunities for fostering critical awareness and responsible engagement with AI-driven media among youth.2026GSGianluca Schiavo et al.Fondazione Bruno KesslerGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Activism & Political ParticipationYouth Online Safety & PrivacyCHI
Filling the Hive: A Reflective Toolkit for Community-led Rural DevelopmentDesigning socio-technical systems for rural areas requires empowering local actors to actively engage in a creative process that thoroughly considers the unique characteristics of these territories. Methods intended for urban contexts often fail to account for rural communities’ specific values, cultures, and needs. Furthermore, the focus is usually on the design of the digital part of the innovation, its requirements, and technological constraints, leaving out other essential enablers. To address this, we present a toolkit designed to boost reflection on the key ‘'ingredients'’ — social, economic, technological, political, and infrastructural — essential for addressing rural challenges through socio-technical interventions. The toolkit offers tangible, user-friendly resources that encourage dialogue, self-reflection, and the creative envisioning of rural transformations. It includes inspirational cards as well as reflection and "how to?" questions to support communities in evaluating their needs, resources, and aspirations, fostering greater self-awareness, learning, and meaningful action.2025CLChiara Leonardi et al.Community Engagement & Civic TechnologyDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)Participatory DesignDIS
Facing the Limits: Designing Data Physicalizations to Reduce Water Consumption in Mountain HutsMountain huts are buildings in remote mountain areas that depend on local water sources, such as snow, rain, and springs, as they are not connected to centralized water systems. In this pictorial, we report the design process undertaken to explore how data physicalization can communicate the problem of water scarcity in mountain huts with the ultimate goal of encouraging visitors to reduce water usage. The process led to two concepts: one that materializes the impact of each visitor on the water reserve of the hut through a participatory installation, and the other that invites visitors to explore the concept of limit, encouraging reflection on what they are willing to renounce and helping them to make informed choices within tight water constraints. With our work, we aim to contribute to the ongoing efforts in Sustainable HCI to shift the purpose of behavior change from personal gain to the common good.2025EMEleonora Mencarini et al.Data PhysicalizationSustainable HCIEnergy Conservation Behavior & InterfacesDIS
“React”, “Command”, or “Instruct”? Teachers’ Mental Models on End-User DevelopmentThis paper presents findings from a thinking-aloud protocol exploring mental models in 28 elementary school math teachers during their initial attempt at composing and testing trigger-action rules for a smart tangible educational device. In the study, two sets of event-driven primitives were implemented in an End-User Development platform for guiding teachers with no programming experience in defining new functions of the device: "concrete", based on actual actions performed on the device, and "abstract", based on general definitions of events/actions. With a thematic analysis, we identified three different metaphors that drive participants' interaction with the device. We discuss how the metaphors influenced performance and how the order of exposition to the two primitive sets impacted their grasping of the trigger-action logic. Our findings suggest the importance of guiding teachers in assuming effective metaphors for performing End-User Development tasks, to empower them to adopt an active role toward digital devices in education.2025MAMargherita Andrao et al.University of Trento, Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science; Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK)Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)Programming Education & Computational ThinkingIntelligent Tutoring Systems & Learning AnalyticsCHI
Becoming a Speleologist: Design Implications for Coordination in Wild Outdoor EnvironmentsLearning outdoor sports entails acquiring physical skills, managing gear, and coordinating with others. We investigated how speleologists are trained to explore underground caves. We interviewed 15 instructors and 10 trainees to understand the main problems that may occur during training cave trips. Our findings show that stressful situations are linked to beginners’ difficulties applying new gestures and procedures - on which their progression and safety depend - and coordinating with others when they are out of sight. It emerged that group awareness and communication are pivotal for their tranquility. Yet, the underground environment makes communicating very hard. This study led to the elaboration of design implications for technology supporting awareness, communication, and coordination in speleology training, which draw from and enrich previous literature on coordination in the wild, as it may happen while performing outdoor sports or during search-and-rescue operations.2023EMEleonora Mencarini et al.Fondazione Bruno KesslerContext-Aware ComputingField StudiesCHI
Automated vs. Human Health Coaching: Exploring Participant and Practitioner ExperiencesHealth coaching can be an effective intervention to support self-management of chronic conditions like diabetes, but there are not enough coaching practitioners to scalably reach the growing population in need of support. Conversational technology, like chatbots, presents an opportunity to extend health coaching support to broader and more diverse populations. However, some have suggested that the human element is essential to health coaching and cannot be replicated with technology. In this research, we examine automated health coaching using a theory-grounded, wizard-of-oz chatbot, in comparison with text-based virtual coaching from human practitioners who start with the same protocol as the chatbot but have the freedom to embellish and adjust as needed. We found that even a scripted chatbot can create a coach-like experience for participants. While human coaches displayed advantages expressing empathy and using probing questions to tailor their support, they also encountered tremendous barriers and frustrations adapting to text-based virtual coaching. The chatbot coach had advantages in being persistent, as well as more consistently giving choices and options to foster client autonomy. We discuss implications for the design of virtual health coaching interventions.2021EMElliot G Mitchell et al.Care and CaregivingCSCW
A Walk on the Child Side: Investigating Parents' and Children's Experience and Perspective on Mobile Technology for Outdoor Child Independent MobilityTechnology increasingly offers parents more and more opportunities to monitor children, reshaping the way control and autonomy are negotiated within families. This paper investigates the views of parents and primary school children on mobile technology designed to support child independent mobility in the context of the local walking school buses. Based on a school-year long field study, we report findings on children's and parents' experience with proximity detection devices. The results provide insights into how the parents and children accepted and socially appropriated the technology into the walking school bus activity, shedding light on the way they understand and conceptualize a technology that collects data on children's proximity to the volunteers' smartphone. We discuss parents' needs and concerns toward monitoring technologies and the related challenges in terms of trust-control balance. These insights are elaborated to inform the future design of technology for child independent mobility.2019MFMichela Ferron et al.Fondazione Bruno KesslerContext-Aware ComputingChildren & Family IoTCHI