"Kya family planning after marriage hoti hai?": Integrating Cultural Sensitivity in an LLM Chatbot for Reproductive HealthAccess to sexual and reproductive health information remains a challenge in many communities globally, due to cultural taboos and limited availability of healthcare providers. Public health organizations are increasingly turning to Large Language Models (LLMs) to improve access to timely and personalized information. However, recent HCI scholarship indicates that significant challenges remain in incorporating context awareness and mitigating bias in LLMs. In this paper, we study the development of a culturally-appropriate LLM-based chatbot for reproductive health with underserved women in urban India. Through user interactions, focus groups, and interviews with multiple stakeholders, we examine the chatbot’s response to sensitive and highly contextual queries on reproductive health. Our findings reveal strengths and limitations of the system in capturing local context, and complexities around what constitutes ``culture''. Finally, we discuss how local context might be better integrated, and present a framework to inform the design of culturally-sensitive chatbots for community health.2025RDRoshini Deva et al.Emory University, Biomedical InformaticsHuman-LLM CollaborationReproductive & Women's HealthCHI
ASHABot: An LLM-Powered Chatbot to Support the Informational Needs of Community Health WorkersCommunity health workers (CHWs) provide last-mile healthcare services but face challenges due to limited medical knowledge and training. This paper describes the design, deployment, and evaluation of ASHABot, an LLM-powered, experts-in-the-loop, WhatsApp-based chatbot to address the information needs of CHWs in India. Through interviews with CHWs and their supervisors and log analysis, we examine factors affecting their engagement with ASHABot, and ASHABot's role in addressing CHWs' informational needs. We found that ASHABot provided a private channel for CHWs to ask rudimentary and sensitive questions they hesitated to ask supervisors. CHWs trusted the information they received on ASHABot and treated it as an authoritative resource. CHWs' supervisors expanded their knowledge by contributing answers to questions ASHABot failed to answer, but were concerned about demands on their workload and increased accountability. We emphasize positioning LLMs as supplemental fallible resources within the community healthcare ecosystem, instead of as replacements for supervisor support.2025PRPragnya Ramjee et al.Microsoft ResearchHuman-LLM CollaborationMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Emergency Remote Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Design OpportunitiesThere are currently approximately 20.2 million children in Nigeria out of school, exacerbated by ongoing conflicts demonstrating an ongoing need for Emergency Remote Education (ERE). Despite this, Nigeria remains an under-explored context and the specific challenges of providing ERE there are not fully understood. This paper reports on a mixed methods study of teachers experiences of enacting ERE in Nigeria in April 2020 with a questionnaire (n=374), diary study and follow up interviews (n=20) carried out. The contributions of the paper are two-fold; firstly, an in-depth study of ERE in Nigeria, demonstrating that teachers used WhatsApp as a tool of practical necessity, configured it to create a continued sense of place, and continued to enact largely traditional pedagogies. Secondly, through reflection on these findings, we offer initial design considerations for technology use in ERE in low resource settings before outlining continuing design challenges for HCI researchers in this context.2024RNRebecca Nicholson et al.Northumbria UniversityOnline Learning & MOOC PlatformsDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)CHI
Rethinking Menstrual Trackers Towards Period-Positive EcologiesMenstrual tracking is a mechanism widely engaged towards preserving menstrual dignity, as natural birth control, for ensuring adequate preparation for an upcoming cycle, among other motivations. We investigate the design of digital menstrual trackers towards enabling period-positive ecologies in otherwise stigmatized contexts. We examine menstrual tracking practices across ages (12--65 yrs.) using a combination of methods---3 surveys (450+ responses), a cultural probe (10 adolescents), interviews (16 adults), and a review of (9) mobile applications. {Our analysis highlights the diversity across menstrual tracking practices and the role of relationships in influencing these practices throughout the menstrual journey. We also identify menstrual tracking as an avenue towards the emancipation of those who menstruate. Finally, we draw on Martha Nussbaum's central human capabilities to discuss sociotechnical implications for redesigning digital menstrual trackers towards crafting just and period-positive futures.2022ATAnupriya Tuli et al.IIIT-DelhiReproductive & Women's HealthCHI
"It Matches My Worldview": Examining Perceptions and Attitudes Around Fake VideosWe present a qualitative study with 36 diverse social media users in India to critically examine how low-resource communities engage with fake videos, including cheapfakes and AI-generated deepfakes. We find that most users are unaware of digitally manipulated fake videos and perceive videos to be fake only when they present inaccurate information. Few users who know about doctored videos expect them to be of poor quality and know nothing about sophisticated deepfakes. Moreover, most users lack the skills and willingness to spot fake videos and some were oblivious to the risks and harms of fake videos. Even when users know a video to be fake, they prefer to take no action and sometimes willingly share fake videos that favor their worldview. Drawing on our findings, we discuss design recommendations for social media platforms to curb the spread of fake videos.2022FSFarhana Shahid et al.Cornell UniversityDeepfake & Synthetic Media DetectionMisinformation & Fact-CheckingCHI
Radical Futures: Supporting Community-Led Design Engagements through an Afrofuturist Speculative Design ToolkitWhen considering the democratic intentions of co-design, designers and design researchers must evaluate the impact of power imbalances embedded in common design and research dynamics. This holds particularly true in work with and for marginalized communities, who are frequently excluded in design processes. To address this issue, we examine how existing design tools and methods are used to support communities in processes of community building or reimagining, considering the influence of race and identity. This paper describes our findings from 27 interviews with community design practitioners conducted to evaluate the Building Utopia toolkit, which employs an Afrofuturist lens for speculative design processes. Our research findings support the importance of design tools that prompt conversations on race in design, and tensions between the desire for imaginative design practice and the immediacy of social issues, particularly when designing with Black and brown communities.2022KBKirsten E Bray et al.Georgia TechInclusive DesignEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsParticipatory DesignCHI
Teachers' Perceptions around Digital Games for Children in Low-resource Schools for the BlindMost children who are blind live in low-resource settings and attend schools that have poor technical infrastructure, overburdened teachers, and outdated curriculum. Our work explores the role digital games can play to develop digital skills of such children in the early grades. Recognizing the critical role of teachers in introducing children to technology, we conducted a mixed-methods study to examine which attributes of digital games teachers find useful for children and what challenges they perceive in integrating digital games in schools for the blind. Our findings indicate that teachers prefer games that align well with curriculum objectives, promote learning, improve soft skills, and increase engagement with computers. Despite being overburdened and lacking technological support, teachers expressed strong enthusiasm to integrate these games in school curriculum and schedule. We conclude by discussing design implications for designers of accessible games in low-resource settings.2021GIGesu India et al.Microsoft ResearchGame AccessibilitySpecial Education TechnologyCHI
Multi-plié: A Linear Foldable and Flattenable Interactive Display to Support Efficiency, Safety and CollaborationWe present the design concept of an accordion-fold interactive display to address the limits of touch-based interaction in airliner cockpits. Based on an analysis of pilot activity, tangible design principles for this design concept are identified. Two resulting functional prototypes are explored during participatory workshops with pilots, using activity scenarios. This exploration validated the design concept by revealing its ability to match pilot responsibilities in terms of safety, efficiency and collaboration. It provides an efficient visual perception of the system for real-time collaborative operations and tangible interaction to strengthen the perception of action and to manage safety through anticipation and awareness. The design work and insights enabled to specify further our needs regarding flexible screens. They also helped to better characterize the design concept as based on continuity of a developed surface, predictability of aligned folds and pleat face roles, embodied interactive properties, and flexibility through affordable reconfigurations.2019SPSylvain Pauchet et al.University of Toulouse - ENAC & AstrolabShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsKnowledge Worker Tools & WorkflowsCHI
Hackathons as Participatory Design: Iterating Feminist UtopiasBreastfeeding is not only a public health issue, but also a matter of economic and social justice. This paper presents an iteration of a participatory design process to create spaces for re-imagining products, services, systems, and policies that support breastfeeding in the United States. Our work contributes to a growing literature around making hackathons more inclusive and accessible, designing participatory processes that center marginalized voices, and incorporating systems- and relationship-based approaches to problem solving. By presenting an honest assessment of the successes and shortcomings of the first iteration of a hackathon, we explain how we re-structured the second "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" hackathon in service of equity and systems design. Key to our re-imagining of conventional innovation structures is a focus on experience design, where joy and play serve as key strategies to help people and institutions build relationships across lines of difference. We conclude with a discussion of design principles applicable not only to designers of events, but to social movement researchers and HCI scholars trying to address oppression through the design of technologies and socio-technical systems.2019AHAlexis Hope et al.Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyInclusive DesignEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsParticipatory DesignCHI
CodeTalk: Improving Programming Environment Accessibility for Visually Impaired DevelopersIn recent times, programming environments like Visual Studio are widely used to enhance programmer productivity. However, inadequate accessibility prevents Visually Impaired (VI) developers from taking full advantage of these environments. In this paper, we focus on the accessibility challenges faced by the VI developers in using Graphical User Interface (GUI) based programming environments. Based on a survey of VI developers and based on two of the authors’ personal experiences, we categorize the accessibility difficulties into Discoverability, Glanceability, Navigability, and Alertability. We propose solutions to some of these challenges and implement these in CodeTalk, a plugin for Visual Studio. We show how CodeTalk improves developer experience and share promising early feedback from VI developers who used our plugin.2018VPVenkatesh Potluri et al.Microsoft ResearchVisual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Universal & Inclusive DesignCHI