Infrastructuring Critical Data Literacy through Role-playing: a Retrospective Study of the Game "Silicon Roundabout"Organisations require diverse technological infrastructures to create value from data. Because these infrastructures are often haphazardly developed, they cause frictions between the socio-technical agencies of the involved stakeholders. Silicon Roundabout is a role-playing game consisting of cards, tiles and tokens that was specifically designed to support such stakeholders to experience, understand and reflect on how data infrastructures should be developed and maintained. Although the game has reached more than 20 organisations in 8 different countries since its original release 8 years ago, little is known about how its resources and rules actually elicit critical reflection among its players. By conducting a retrospective qualitative study consisting of 27 interviews with stakeholders, we uncovered that the prototypical role-playing narrative drives critical reflection through 3 facilitation approaches and 3 play strategies that are anchored in organisational contexts shared among players. We are thus able to present three contributions: 1) a retrospective study grounded in interviews with actual stakeholders being affected by the game; 2) an overview of play strategies and facilitation approaches that enacted the infrastructuring processes through role-play; and 3) critical considerations to operationalise how role-play supports learning, situated in real-world contexts and shaped by facilitation. This study calls for a critical examination of the role of interpretation during learning activities to empower stakeholders in reclaiming control over organisational practices.2025SCSilvia Cazacu et al.Digital Divides, Digital LiteracyCSCW
Speculative Design for the Metaverse: Anti-Experiences in Virtual RetailRetail experiences in the Metaverse are becoming increasingly popular, driven by a business model that relies on brand engagement and user-generated virtual worlds (UGVWs). While much attention has been given to ideal design patterns for enhancing user engagement, there is a need for a critical examination of pain points that negatively impact their virtual product experiences. This study introduces anti-experiences as a methodological contribution, using speculative design to deliberately explore undesirable design elements and highlight engagement barriers in these virtual product experiences. Through group co-design and storyboarding, we conducted workshops with 30 participants using the Roblox platform as a case study, including XR designers, physical-world designers, and non-users of the Metaverse. Through this process, participants identified three key pain points: (1) missing diegetic elements, (2) fragmented social interactions, and (3) navigational ambiguity. By developing anti-design storyboards, participants critically examined how these pain points affect user engagement and satisfaction, uncovering potential risks and limitations of current Metaverse retail experiences. From these findings, we propose three key design insights to enhance virtual shopping environments: \textit{(1) Introducing play and balancing risk, (2) Shopping together between realities, (3) Orchestrating sensory richness and subtlety.}2025SCSerra Cılızoğlu et al.Online Identity & Self-PresentationDesign FictionInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingC&C
To Cuddle, Mingle, Venture, or Guide: How Architectural Affordances Influence the Experience of Social VR PlacesSocial virtual reality (VR) encompasses a growing network of three-dimensional virtual worlds where users interact in a shared, embodied way. While research has focused on the social interactions between the users themselves, less is known about how the design of virtual spaces influences these interactions. Our study combines interviews with 15 social VR users logging over 1,000 hours and a 20-hour spatial protocol of a purposeful sampling of VR worlds. We analysed how spatial characteristics (including proportion, sightlines, materiality, atmosphere, and navigation) influence meaningful user interaction to turn space into place. We synthesised four place types for a new social VR typology: Cuddle worlds that encourage cosy conversations; Mingle worlds that facilitate new encounters; Venture worlds that promote exploration; and Guided worlds that elicit a sense of belonging with the online community. By relating architectural affordances to social patterns, we contribute insights towards the purposeful design of social VR places.2025JHJihae Han et al.Social & Collaborative VRImmersion & Presence ResearchVisualization Perception & CognitionDIS
The Image of the Metaverse: A Plurality of Narratives for Immersive RealitiesThis pictorial explores the challenges and opportunities of creating meaningful virtual spaces in the metaverse. Drawing inspiration from Kevin Lynch’s principles of urban imageability, the authors present a series of narrative explorations and associated graphics that reimagine how space, time, and social interaction might function in virtual environments. The work identifies key differences between physical and virtual architectures, including perceptual fungibility, non-linear spatial relationships, and collective emergence. Through detailed narratives organized around themes of arrival, boundary, navigation, connection, and memory, the pictorial proposes new organizing principles for metaverse design that embrace discontinuity, fluid boundaries, and social physics rather than attempting to replicate physical space. The work contributes theoretical frameworks and methodological insights for developing more imageable, engaging, and coherent virtual worlds.2025JHJihae Han et al.AR Navigation & Context AwarenessImmersion & Presence ResearchInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Will Health Experts Adopt a Clinical Decision Support System for Game-Based Digital Biomarkers? Investigating the Impact of Different Explanations on Perceived Ease-of-Use, Perceived Usefulness, and TrustThis paper explores the adoption of a clinical decision support system (cDSS) utilizing game-based digital biomarkers for diagnosing mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Specifically, it investigates how different explanation methods, with a focus on data-centric explanations, impact perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, and trust among healthcare professionals (HCPs). Through a qualitative study with 12 HCPs, we assess their interactions with an explainable AI (XAI)-enriched cDSS. The findings indicate that HCPs are open to adopting XAI-enriched cDSS to communicate the outcomes of game-based digital biomarkers. HCPs preferred to receive key diagnostic information in an easily digestible format. Both local explanations of intra-personal evolutionary data and global overview of normative data were found to be valuable for interpreting digital biomarkers. HCPs tended to trust the machine learning algorithms as a black box, but they considered the dataset used for training the model and the outcome prediction to be crucial. Therefore, presenting the uncertainty alongside the prediction was deemed important. These insights underscore the importance of designing cDSS tools that foster trust through clear, actionable explanations, paving the way for improved decision-making in clinical contexts.2025CYChen Yu et al.Explainable AI (XAI)Mental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesIUI
Squeeze Away the Worries: Exploring the Potential of Squeezable Interactions for Emotion Regulation for Desk WorkersDesk workers may often experience more negative than positive emotions in office settings, making emotion regulation (ER) crucial for their mental health. Squeezable interfaces have shown the potential to reduce anxiety and stress in digital and non-digital ER. However, few studies have explored how they can be leveraged to provide tangible and embodied support for workplace ER. We interviewed five mental health experts and 16 desk workers and conducted five co-design workshops with 17 desk workers, aiming to understand how validated practices can be integrated into squeezable interfaces and how they should be designed to support ER and accommodate diverse needs in the context of the workplace. This study contributes to digital ER by identifying design opportunities for squeezable interfaces and by outlining design considerations and challenges for tangible and embodied interactions in ER support within the workplace.2025NZNianmei Zhou et al.KU Leuven, e-Media Research LabHaptic WearablesMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Disentangling the Power Dynamics in Participatory Data PhysicalisationParticipatory data physicalisation (PDP) is recognised for its potential to support data-driven decisions among stakeholders who collaboratively construct physical elements into commonly insightful visualisations. Like all participatory processes, PDP is however influenced by underlying power dynamics that might lead to issues regarding extractive participation, marginalisation, or exclusion, among others. We first identified the decisions behind these power dynamics by developing an ontology that synthesises critical theoretical insights from both visualisation and participatory design research, which were then systematically applied unto a representative corpus of 23 PDP artefacts. By revealing how shared decisions are guided by different agendas, this paper presents three contributions: 1) a cross-disciplinary ontology that facilitates the systematic analysis of existing and novel PDP artefacts and processes; which leads to 2) six PDP agendas that reflect the key power dynamics in current PDP practice, revealing the diversity of orientations towards stakeholder participation in PDP practice; and 3) a set of critical considerations that should guide how power dynamics can be balanced, such as by reflecting on how issues are represented, data is contextualised, participants express their meanings, and how participants can dissent with flexible artefact construction. Consequently, this study advances a feminist research agenda by guiding researchers and practitioners in openly reflecting on and sharing responsibilities in data physicalisation and participatory data visualisation.2025SCSilvia Cazacu et al.KU LeuvenData PhysicalizationParticipatory DesignCHI
Manifesting Architectural Subspaces with Two Mobile Robotic Partitions to Facilitate Spontaneous Office MeetingsAlthough intended to foster spontaneous interactions among workers, a typical open-plan office layout cannot mitigate visual, acoustic, or privacy-related distractions that originate from unplanned meetings. As office workers often refrain from tackling these issues by manually demarcating or physically relocating to a more suitable subspace that is enclosed by movable partitions, we hypothesise that these subspaces could instead be robotically manifested. This study therefore evaluated the perceived impact of two mobile robotic partitions that were wizarded to jointly manifest an enclosed subspace, to: 1) either `mitigate' or `intervene' in the distractions caused by spontaneous face-to-face or remote meetings; or 2) either `gesturally' or `spatially' nudge a distraction-causing worker to relocate. Our findings suggest how robotic furniture should interact with office workers with and through transient space, and autonomously balance the distractions not only for each individual worker but also for multiple workers sharing the same workspace.2025OBOzan Balcı et al.KU Leuven, Research[x]Design - Department of ArchitectureDomestic RobotsKnowledge Worker Tools & WorkflowsNotification & Interruption ManagementCHI
Explanatory Debiasing: Involving Domain Experts in the Data Generation Process to Mitigate Representation Bias in AI SystemsRepresentation bias is one of the most common types of biases in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, causing AI models to perform poorly on underrepresented data segments. Although AI practitioners use various methods to reduce representation bias, their effectiveness is often constrained by insufficient domain knowledge in the debiasing process. To address this gap, this paper introduces a set of generic design guidelines for effectively involving domain experts in representation debiasing. We instantiated our proposed guidelines in a healthcare-focused application and evaluated them through a comprehensive mixed-methods user study with 35 healthcare experts. Our findings show that involving domain experts can reduce representation bias without compromising model accuracy. Based on our findings, we also offer recommendations for developers to build robust debiasing systems guided by our generic design guidelines, ensuring more effective inclusion of domain experts in the debiasing process.2025ABAditya Bhattacharya et al.KU Leuven, Computer ScienceAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasCHI
Superarchitectural: Challenging the Architectural Design of the MetaverseThe metaverse is an immersive virtual realm that allows millions of users to interact with each other, both described by the social intricacies of the everyday and unrestrained by the physical limitations of reality. Yet despite the creative potential to disrupt how the built environment is represented, the metaverse tends to simulate the architectural conventions of physical reality. By visiting the virtual reality sites of 30 interiors, buildings, and plazas within popular metaverse platforms, we identified outliers in convention to curate a `Metaverse Design Catalogue' of architectural features that were uncommon or unrealistic in physical reality. We thus challenged 21 architectural experts to use the catalogue as a catalyst to design an architecture that goes beyond convention to become `superarchitectural'. Based on their redesigned and reimagined floor plans and perspective drawings, we inform the design language of a superarchitectural metaverse through the dimensions of architectural diegesis, mutability, and asymmetry.2024JHJihae Han et al.Mixed Reality WorkspacesInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Tangible Affect: A Literature Review of Tangible Interactive Systems Addressing Human Core Affect, Emotions and MoodsTangible user interfaces (TUIs) have been applied to assess, communicate, or regulate human core affect, emotions, or moods. Previous studies identified TUIs as an innovative way to serve people's affective needs. This review examines the design and evaluation of tangible interactive systems that focus on human core affect, emotions, and moods. We provide an overview of current studies. We summarize how tangibility can be leveraged to support affective interaction, and we propose the dimensions of tangible affective interaction, deriving guidelines for design. We highlight three main challenges: understanding tangible affective interaction within real-life scenarios, utilizing embodied interaction to express or influence affective states, and establishing benchmarks for evaluating tangible affective interfaces.2024NZNianmei Zhou et al.Digital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Mouse2Vec: Learning Reusable Semantic Representations of Mouse BehaviourThe mouse is a pervasive input device used for a wide range of interactive applications. However, computational modelling of mouse behaviour typically requires time-consuming design and extraction of handcrafted features, or approaches that are application-specific. We instead propose Mouse2Vec – a novel self-supervised method designed to learn semantic representations of mouse behaviour that are reusable across users and applications. Mouse2Vec uses a Transformer-based encoder-decoder architecture, which is specifically geared for mouse data: During pretraining, the encoder learns an embedding of input mouse trajectories while the decoder reconstructs the input and simultaneously detects mouse click events. We show that the representations learned by our method can identify interpretable mouse behaviour clusters and retrieve similar mouse trajectories. We also demonstrate on three sample downstream tasks that the representations can be practically used to augment mouse data for training supervised methods and serve as an effective feature extractor.2024GZGuanhua Zhang et al.University of StuttgartVisualization Perception & CognitionComputational Methods in HCICHI
Meaning Follows Purpose: Unravelling the Architectural Design Conventions in the Contemporary MetaverseThousands of people regularly meet, work and play in the architectural spaces that the metaverse offers today. Yet despite the creative potential to disrupt how the built environment is represented, there exists a prevalent belief that the architectural design of the metaverse is rather conventional and reliant on simulating physical reality. We investigated this claim by conducting a design critique study of the most apparent architectural design conventions within the current most popular metaverse platforms, as determined by a scoping review and Google Trends analysis. Based on the opinions of 21 architectural experts on the design of interiors, buildings, and plazas within these platforms, we elicited three overarching design conventions that capture the representation, engagement, and purpose of metaverse architecture. By discussing the impact of these conventions on architectural quality, we inform the future design of metaverse spaces to more purposefully, and perhaps less frequently, use realism to convey meaning.2024JHJihae Han et al.KU LeuvenImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
EXMOS: Explanatory Model Steering through Multifaceted Explanations and Data ConfigurationsExplanations in interactive machine-learning systems facilitate debugging and improving prediction models. However, the effectiveness of various global model-centric and data-centric explanations in aiding domain experts to detect and resolve potential data issues for model improvement remains unexplored. This research investigates the influence of data-centric and model-centric global explanations in systems that support healthcare experts in optimising models through automated and manual data configurations. We conducted quantitative (n=70) and qualitative (n=30) studies with healthcare experts to explore the impact of different explanations on trust, understandability and model improvement. Our results reveal the insufficiency of global model-centric explanations for guiding users during data configuration. Although data-centric explanations enhanced understanding of post-configuration system changes, a hybrid fusion of both explanation types demonstrated the highest effectiveness. Based on our study results, we also present design implications for effective explanation-driven interactive machine-learning systems.2024ABAditya Bhattacharya et al.KU LeuvenExplainable AI (XAI)AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationCHI
The Adaptive Architectural Layout: How the Control of a Semi-Autonomous Mobile Robotic Partition was Shared to Mediate the Environmental Demands and Resources of an Open-Plan OfficeA typical open-plan office layout is unable to optimally host multiple collocated work activities, personal needs, and situational events, as its space exerts a range of environmental demands on workers in terms of maintaining their acoustic, visual or privacy comfort. As we hypothesise that these demands could be coped by optimising the environmental resources of the architectural layout, we deployed a mobile robotic partition that autonomously manoeuvres between predetermined locations. During a five-weeks in-the-wild study within a real-world open-plan office, we studied how 13 workers adopted four distinct adaptation strategies when sharing the spatiotemporal control of the robotic partition. Based on their logged and self-reported reasoning, we present six initiation regulating factors that determine the appropriateness of each adaptation strategy. This study thus contributes to how future human-building interaction could autonomously improve the experience, comfort, performance, and even the health and wellbeing of multiple workers that share the same workplace.2024ANAlex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen et al.KU LeuvenInclusive DesignParticipatory DesignCHI
The effect of personalizing a psychotherapy conversational agent on therapeutic bond and usage intentionsWhile 33.6% of college students suffer from mental health problems, only 24.6% of these students with symptoms would seek professional help due to their personal attitudes or costs associated with therapy. Psychotherapy chatbots may offer a solution as they are always available, anonymous, and cost-effective. Research has shown that these chatbots can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, there is a lack of understanding about the personalization preferences of users and the effects of personalization on health outcomes. To investigate this, we developed a personalizable psychotherapy chatbot designed to provide personalized help. In a randomized controlled trial (n=54), participants were either assigned to a personalizable condition or a non-personalizable control condition. After 1 week of usage, participants had a significantly higher therapeutic bond with the personalized version compared to the baseline. In fact, the therapeutic bond was similar to that between a psychologist and his client. This is a promising result, as a high therapeutic bond has been linked to therapeutic success in psychotherapy. Participants reported that the therapy style, personality, and avatar were the most important personalizable aspects of the chatbot. Participants also liked the chatbot's usage of their name and the transparency about what the chatbot had learned about them. These features are likely important for establishing a strong therapeutic bond with users. However, the ability to personalize the chatbot had no impact on the usage intentions of the participants. This can be explained by the fact that users from both conditions equally reported that the chatbot was able to help them with their mental health. 53 participants also indicated that they would be willing to use a psychotherapy chatbot when integrated with a human therapist. These findings indicate the potential of psychotherapy chatbots and the need for further research on their integration with traditional psychotherapy.2024WVWout Vossen et al.Conversational ChatbotsMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesIUI
ARcoustic: A Mobile Augmented Reality System for Seeing Out-of-View TrafficLocating out-of-view vehicles can help pedestrians to avoid critical traffic encounters. Some previous approaches focused solely on visualising out-of-view objects, neglecting their localisation and limitations. Other methods rely on continuous camera-based localisation, raising privacy concerns. Hence, we propose the ARcoustic system, which utilises a microphone array for nearby moving vehicle localisation and visualises nearby out-of-view vehicles to support pedestrians. First, we present the implementation of our sonic-based localisation and discuss the current technical limitations. Next, we present a user study (n=18) in which we compared two state-of-the-art visualisation techniques (Radar3D, CompassbAR) to a baseline without any visualisation. Results show that both techniques present too much information, resulting in below-average user experience and longer response times. Therefore, we introduce a novel visualisation technique that aligns with the technical localisation limitations and meets pedestrians' preferences for effective visualisation, as demonstrated in the second user study (n=16). Lastly, we conduct a small field study (n=8) testing our ARcoustic system under realistic conditions. Our work shows that out-of-view object visualisations must align with the underlying localisation technology and fit the concrete application scenario.2023XZXuesong Zhang et al.External HMI (eHMI) — Communication with Pedestrians & CyclistsAR Navigation & Context AwarenessAutoUI
PosterTalk: Expanding Participatory Agency in Public Survey Platforms via Middle-Out GatekeepingPublic surveys intend to integrate civic values into official decision-making. Because such surveys are typically infrastructured from the top-down, citizens' participatory agency is often reduced to reacting to concerns that may not align with their bottom-up needs. This paper presents PosterTalk, a physically situated and digitally facilitated middle-out survey platform that explicitly involved bottom-up citizens in its gatekeeping activities. Over a four months in-the-wild deployment, PosterTalk accumulated 41 inquiries and 420 responses spanning over 13 civic themes. Its emerging survey content directly influenced the local policy agenda of the facilitating neighbourhood committee, and nudged them to reassess their civic representativeness. By critically analysing the different survey content and stakeholder engagements, this paper contributes an encompassing middle-out framework to guide and benchmark participatory agency in future public survey deployments and offers four guidelines for diversifying bottom-up civic agendas, readjusting top-down representation, avoiding bottom-up misperceptions of power, and promoting top-down introspection.2023PBPaul Biedermann et al.Community Engagement & Civic TechnologyParticipatory DesignDIS
Architectural Narrative VR: Towards Generatively Designing Natural Walkable SpacesThe current state of Virtual Reality (VR) presents a limited and underwhelming user experience. Users are restricted from naturally walking beyond the physical boundaries of the real world, unable to fully explore large virtual environments. The virtual manifestation also often mirrors the physical features of the real world, neglecting the limitless possibilities of the virtual universe. In response to this limitation, this pictorial introduces Architectural Narrative VR, a generative environment that dynamically designs spaces on-the-fly. This approach enables users to roam freely within the constraints of their physical space, while the architectural proportions and rhythm of virtual spaces are designed to relate to external factors such as the sequential presentation of content and user behaviour. This work contributes to VR research by exploring new ways of generating virtual spaces that prioritise user-dependent rather than predefined manifestations of the architectural narrative, offering greater potential for immersive and multidimensional user experiences.2023JHJihae Han et al.Immersion & Presence ResearchInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
Engaging Passers-by with Rhythm: Applying Feedforward Learning to a Xylophonic Media Architecture FacadeMedia architecture exploits interactive technology to encourage passers-by to engage with an architectural environment. Whereas most media architecture installations focus on visual stimulation, we developed a permanent media facade that rhythmically knocks xylophone blocks embedded beneath 11 window sills, according to the human actions constantly traced via an overhead camera. In an attempt to overcome its apparent limitations in engaging passers-by more enduringly and purposefully, our study investigates the impact of feedforward learning, a constructive interaction method that instructs passers-by about the results of their actions. Based on a comparative (n=25) and a one-month in-the-wild (n=1877) study, we propose how feedforward learning could empower passers-by to understand the interaction of more abstract types of media architecture, and how particular quantitative indicators capturing this learning could predict how enduringly and purposefully a passer-might engage. We believe these contributions could inspire more creative integrations of non-visual modalities in future public interactive interventions.2023ANAlex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen et al.KU LeuvenHaptic WearablesDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceCHI