Double Tap for This Post: Understanding the Communication of Data Visualization on Social MediaData visualizations are increasingly used by news outlets on social media to communicate insights to a broad audience. However, little is known about how readers interact with and respond to data visualizations in these quick-consumption environments. In this work, we introduce a conceptual model that categorizes visualization reading that leads to the communication effect of likes on Instagram. The model was developed through a grounded theory analysis of the statements explaining the reasoning behind the likes of visualization, which were recorded from a preliminary study. Informed by coding the statements from two dimensions including scopes and design patterns concerning visualization, our model consists of three levels: depicting the "look'' of a visualization (e.g., artistic style and color scheme); interpreting the "flesh and bones'' of a visualization (e.g., visualization and narrative); and elucidating the "heart and soul'' of a visualization (e.g., insights and conclusion). We also conducted an online crowdsourcing user study with 200 participants to demonstrate how our model can be applied to improve the communication of visualization by comparing the three levels.2025YSYang Shi et al.Data VisualizationCSCW
ViviClay: Designing and Fabricating Ceramics with Animation Effects on Physical SurfacesWe present ViviClay, a design and fabrication method that integrates thermochromic coatings with internal pipe structures to produce dynamic surface effects on ceramics. By channeling thermal fluid through embedded pathways, the surface exhibits reversible color changes, enabling animated patterns that are more programmable and varied than those of conventional thermochromic mugs. To address challenges in 3D printing clay—such as deformation and pipe clogging—we propose key design strategies, optimize fabrication parameters, and introduce a relief-style technique for curved surfaces. Building on this method, we develop a software tool and a set of structured design exemplars to support diverse form exploration while lowering design barriers. We demonstrate its potential through conceptual prototypes inspired by everyday everyday fluid interaction. This work represents the first exploration of 3D-printed ceramics that enable animated surface behavior in HCI, opening new directions for interactive and expressive ceramic practices.2025GLGuanhong Liu et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsTextile Art & Craft DigitizationUIST
Conversations With The Stressed Body: Facilitating Stress Self-Disclosure Among Adolescent Girls Through an Embodied Approach Adolescent girls face significant mental health challenges during their transition to adulthood, often experiencing heightened stress from various sources. While various interactive technologies for self-disclosure had been explored to support stress relief, little is known about how to encourage stress-related self-disclosure through an embodied approach. This study presents a co-design workshop centred on Embodied Probes—a series of artefacts and activities incorporating embodied methods and technologies. During the workshop, nine participants aged 15-18 engaged with their bodies, expressed bodily sensations through tangible means, and designed embodied prototypes tailored to their personal needs for stress perception and relief. The workshop revealed insights into somatic symptoms, sources, and coping strategies for stress among adolescent girls, as well as how embodied methods can support their stress self-disclosure. This paper contributes to the HCI community by offering design implications on leveraging embodied technologies to support self-disclosure for young women’s mental well-being.2025XSXinglin Sun et al.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesSleep & Stress MonitoringDIS
A Card-based Co-Design Toolkit for Exploring Smart Material Applications with Multiple Stakeholders: A Case Study on Automotive Interior DesignSmart materials have garnered significant attention in both academia and industry, yet identifying pragmatically impactful applications still requires contributions from multiple stakeholders, including researchers, designers, and industry professionals. Although previous research has explored novel technical approaches or user-centered applications of smart materials, this study focuses on how to stimulate effective dialogue among stakeholders to explore impactful smart material applications. To this end, we provided a card-based co-design toolkit, tailored to automotive interior design as a case study. We conducted a multi-stakeholder co-design workshop to examine the performance and reveal the benefits of employing the toolkit in the co-design process. The workshops resulted in 16 concept designs. Qualitative interviews further revealed that, using our toolkit, the co-design process effectively fostered mutual understanding among stakeholders, enhanced both creativity and depth throughout the design process, and provided practical insights for each stakeholder's future work.2025TYTianyu Yu et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDIS
Designing LLM-simulated Immersive Spaces to Enhance Autistic Children's Social Affordances Understanding in Traffic SettingsOne of the key challenges faced by autistic children is understanding social affordances in complex environments, which further impacts their ability to respond appropriately to social signals. In traffic scenarios, this impairment can even lead to safety concerns. In this paper, we introduce an LLM-simulated immersive projection environment designed to improve this ability in autistic children while ensuring their safety. We first propose 17 design considerations across four major categories, derived from a comprehensive review of previous research. Next, we developed a system called AIRoad, which leverages LLMs to simulate drivers with varying social intents, expressed through explicit multimodal social signals. AIRoad helps autistic children bridge the gap in recognizing the intentions behind behaviors and learning appropriate responses through various stimuli. A user study involving 14 participants demonstrated that this technology effectively engages autistic children and leads to significant improvements in their comprehension of social affordances in traffic scenarios. Additionally, parents reported high perceived usability of the system. These findings highlight the potential of combining LLM technology with immersive environments for the functional rehabilitation of autistic children in the future.2025YCYancheng Cao et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Human-LLM CollaborationCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)IUI
Exploring the Remapping Impact of Spatial Head-hand Relations in Immersive TelesurgeryThe action remapping between the user and the avatar creates significant perceptual and behavioral challenges. Recently, in addition to virtual environments, remapping has also given rise to new applications—immersive teleoperated robots. This paper selects immersive telesurgery, a representative scenario, as an opportunity for research, exploring the generalized effects of remapping. In such a scenario, the operator can observe through the robot's camera and use their hands to control the robotic arms, as if they were the robot. However, common remapping of spatial head-hand relations—due to camera adjustments and robotic arm switching—creates significant visual-proprioceptive conflicts and physical limitations. To explore this, we simulated a telesurgery system with 6 head-camera and 12 hand-robotic-arm remapping conditions, assessing non-surgeon participants across four surgical tasks: navigation, location, cutting, and bimanual coordination. The study examines spatial perception bias, interaction deviation, workload, and task completion time. Our findings reveal how different remapping targets, attributes, intensities, and situations affect performance, contributing to the understanding of perception mechanisms and offering insights for optimizing operations or systems.2025TLTianren Luo et al.Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences; College of Computer Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of SciencesTeleoperated DrivingHuman-Robot Collaboration (HRC)CHI
GenComUI: Exploring Generative Visual Aids as Medium to Support Task-Oriented Human-Robot CommunicationThis work investigates the integration of generative visual aids in human-robot task communication. We developed GenComUI, a system powered by large language models (LLMs) that dynamically generates contextual visual aids—such as map annotations, path indicators, and animations—to support verbal task communication and facilitate the generation of customized task programs for the robot. This system was informed by a formative study that examined how humans use external visual tools to assist verbal communication in spatial tasks. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conducted a user experiment (n = 20) comparing GenComUI with a voice-only baseline. The results demonstrate that generative visual aids, through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, enhance verbal task communication by providing continuous visual feedback, thus promoting natural and effective human-robot communication. Additionally, the study offers a set of design implications, emphasizing how dynamically generated visual aids can serve as an effective communication medium in human-robot interaction. These findings underscore the potential of generative visual aids to inform the design of more intuitive and effective human-robot communication, particularly for complex communication scenarios in human-robot interaction and LLM-based end-user development.2025YGYate Ge et al.Tongji University, College of Design and InnovationGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Human-LLM CollaborationAI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationCHI
WritingRing: Enabling Natural Handwriting Input with a Single IMU RingTracking continuous 2D sequential handwriting trajectories accurately using a single IMU ring is extremely challenging due to the significant displacement between the IMU's wearing position and the location of the tracked fingertip. We propose WritingRing, a system that uses a single IMU ring worn at the base of the finger to support natural handwriting input and provide real-time 2D trajectories. To achieve this, we first built a handwriting dataset using a touchpad and an IMU ring (N=20). Next, we improved the LSTM model by incorporating streaming input and a TCN network, significantly enhancing accuracy and computational efficiency, and achieving an average trajectory accuracy of 1.63mm. Real-time usability studies demonstrated that the system achieved 88.7% letter recognition accuracy and 68.2% word recognition accuracy, which reached 84.36% when restricting the output to words within a vocabulary of size 3000. WritingRing can also be embedded into existing ring systems, providing a natural and real-time solution for various applications.2025ZHZhe He et al.Tsinghua University, Department of Computer Science and TechnologyElectrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)Hand Gesture RecognitionFoot & Wrist InteractionCHI
Slip-Grip: An Electrotactile Method to Simulate WeightWeight perception is crucial for immersive virtual reality (VR) interactions, yet providing weight feedback remains a significant research challenge. We introduce a novel weight simulation technique that leverages electrotactile stimulation to induce slip illusions. These slip illusions occur when users grip an object with less force than a predefined threshold, allowing the device to modulate the grip force and encourage a tighter grip. In our approach, heavier virtual weights correspond to higher required grip forces. We conducted a series of user experiments to validate our technique, confirming that it effectively induces slip illusions. We also investigated the relationship between electrotactile sensations and grip force, and changes in force, demonstrating that this association enhances the weight perception experience. Lastly, we explored the mapping between grip force and perceived weight, observing strong linearity within participants but notable variability between individuals.2025HLHongnan Lin et al.Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of SciencesForce Feedback & Pseudo-Haptic WeightElectrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)CHI
GistVis: Automatic Generation of Word-scale Visualizations from Data-rich DocumentsData-rich documents are ubiquitous in various applications, yet they often rely solely on textual descriptions to convey data insights. Prior research primarily focused on providing visualization-centric augmentation to data-rich documents. However, few have explored using automatically generated word-scale visualizations to enhance the document-centric reading process. As an exploratory step, we propose GistVis, an automatic pipeline that extracts and visualizes data insight from text descriptions. GistVis decomposes the generation process into four modules: Discoverer, Annotator, Extractor, and Visualizer, with the first three modules utilizing the capabilities of large language models and the fourth using visualization design knowledge. Technical evaluation including a comparative study on Discoverer and an ablation study on Annotator reveals decent performance of GistVis. Meanwhile, the user study (N=12) showed that GistVis could generate satisfactory word-scale visualizations, indicating its effectiveness in facilitating users' understanding of data-rich documents (+5.6% accuracy) while significantly reducing their mental demand (p=0.016) and perceived effort (p=0.033).2025RZRuishi Zou et al.Tongji UniversityExplainable AI (XAI)Interactive Data VisualizationData StorytellingCHI
Walk in Their Shoes to Navigate Your Own Path: Learning About Procrastination Through A Serious GameProcrastination, the voluntary delay of tasks despite potential negative consequences, has prompted numerous time and task management interventions in the HCI community. While these interventions have shown promise in addressing specific behaviors, psychological theories suggest that learning about procrastination itself may help individuals develop their own coping strategies and build mental resilience. However, little research has explored how to support this learning process through HCI approaches. We present ProcrastiMate, a text adventure game where players learn about procrastination's causes and experiment with coping strategies by guiding in-game characters in managing relatable scenarios. Our field study with 27 participants revealed that ProcrastiMate facilitated learning and self-reflection while maintaining psychological distance, motivating players to integrate newly acquired knowledge in daily life. This paper contributes empirical insights on leveraging serious games to facilitate learning about procrastination and offers design implications for addressing psychological challenges through HCI approaches.2025RZRunhua ZHANG et al.Tongji University, College of Design and Innovation; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, IIP (Human-Computer Interaction)Serious & Functional GamesSTEM Education & Science CommunicationMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Lumina: A Software Tool for Fostering Creativity in Designing Chinese Shadow PuppetsShadow puppetry, a culturally rich storytelling art, faces challenges transitioning to the digital realm. Creators in the early design phase struggle with crafting intricate patterns, textures, and basic animations while adhering to stylistic conventions - hindering creativity, especially for novices. This paper presents Lumina, a tool to facilitate the early Chinese shadow puppet design stage. Lumina provides contour templates, animations, scene editing tools, and machine-generated traditional puppet patterns. These features liberate creators from tedious tasks, allowing focus on the creative process. Developed based on a formative study with puppet creators, the web-based Lumina enables wide dissemination. An evaluation with 18 participants demonstrated Lumina's effectiveness and ease of use, with participants successfully creating designs spanning traditional themes to contemporary and science-fiction concepts.2024ZYZhihao Yao et al.Museum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingUIST
SnapInflatables: Designing Inflatables with Snap-through Instability for Responsive InteractionSnap-through instability, like the rapid closure of the Venus flytrap, is gaining attention in robotics and HCI. It offers rapid shape reconfiguration, self-sensing, actuation, and enhanced haptic feedback. However, conventional snap-through structures face limitations in fabrication efficiency, scale, and tunability. We introduce SnapInflatables, enabling safe, multi-scale interaction with adjustable sensitivity and force reactions, utilizing the snap-through instability of inflatables. We designed six types of heat-sealing structures enabling versatile snap-through passive motion of inflatables with diverse reaction and trigger directions. A block structure enables ultra-sensitive states for rapid energy release and force amplification. The motion range is facilitated by geometry parameters, while force feedback properties are tunable through internal pressure settings. Based on experiments, we developed a design tool for creating desired inflatable snap-through shapes and motions, offering previews and inflation simulations. Example applications, including a self-locking medical stretcher, interactive animals, and a bounce button, demonstrate enhanced passive interaction with inflatables.2024YYYue Yang et al.Zhejiang UniversityShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsCHI
Learning from Hybrid Craft: Investigating and Reflecting on Innovating and Enlivening Traditional Craft through Literature ReviewThe key to preserving traditional crafts lies in living transmission, which is inseparable from sustaining artistic production, audience consumption, and progressive innovation with the physical media. As HCI researchers, we focus on the hybrid crafts field, which involves numerous cross-disciplinary integration cases between traditional craftsmanship and digital technology at the physical level, providing inspiration for innovating and enlivening traditional crafts. We conducted a multi-perspective review of 85 hybrid craft articles related to traditional crafts over the past decade, considering aspects such as craft categories, digital technology, target users, and research areas. Through reflection, we propose a design framework for fostering innovation and revitalizing traditional crafts. This paper aims to offer insight into the innovation and enlivenment of traditional crafts through a hybrid craft perspective while also serving as a first review of the hybrid craft field from the traditional craftsmanship perspective.2024GLGuanhong Liu et al.Tongji UniversityShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsTextile Art & Craft DigitizationCHI
Personalizing Products with Stylized Head Portraits for Self-ExpressionPersonalizing products aesthetically or functionally can help users increase personal relevance and support self-expression. However, using non-abstract personal data such as head portraits for product personalization has been understudied. While recent advances in Artificial Intelligence have enabled generating stylized head portraits, these images also raise concerns about lack of control, artificiality, and ethics, which potentially limit their broader use. In this work, we present PicMe, a design support tool that converts user face photos into stylized head portraits as vector graphics that can be used to personalize products. To enable style transfer, PicMe leverages a deep-learning-based algorithm trained on an extended open-source illustration dataset of characters in a cartoonish and minimalistic style. We evaluated PicMe through two experiments and a user study. The results of our evaluation showed that PicMe can help create personalized head portraits that support self-expression.2024YSYang Shi et al.College of Design and Innovation, Tongji UniversityGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Customizable & Personalized ObjectsCHI
InkBrush: A Sketching Tool for 3D Ink PaintingInkBrush is a new sketch-based 3D drawing tool for creating 3D ink paintings using free-form 3D ink strokes. It offers a digital calligraphy brush and various editing tools to generate realistic ink-like brush strokes with attributes like hairy edges, ink drips, and scattered dots. Users can adjust parameters such as moisture, color, darkness, dryness, and stroke style to customize the appearance of the brush strokes. The development of InkBrush was guided by a design study involving artists and designers. It was developed as a plugin for Blender, a popular 3D modeling tool, and its effectiveness and usability were evaluated through a user study involving 75 participants. Preliminary feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, indicating that InkBrush was intuitive and easy to use. Following this, we also sought in-depth assessments from experts in ink painting and 3D design. Their evaluations further demonstrated the effectiveness of InkBrush.2024ZYZhihao Yao et al.Tsinghua University3D Modeling & AnimationCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsCHI
TacTex: A Textile Interface with Seamlessly-Integrated Electrodes for High-Resolution electrotactile StimulationThis paper presents TacTex, a textile-based interface that provides high-resolution haptic feedback and touch-tracking capabilities. TacTex utilizes electrotactile stimulation, which has traditionally posed challenges due to limitations in textile electrode density and quantity. TacTex overcomes these challenges by employing a multi-layer woven structure that separates conductive weft and warp electrodes with non-conductive yarns. The driving system for TacTex includes a power supply, sensing board, and switch boards to enable spatial and temporal control of electrical stimuli on the textile, while simultaneously monitoring voltage changes. TacTex can stimulate a wide range of haptic effects, including static and dynamic patterns and different sensation qualities, with a resolution of $512 \times 512$ and \textcolor{black}{based on linear electrodes spaced as closely as 2mm}. We evaluate the performance of the interface with user studies and demonstrate the potential applications of TacTex interfaces in everyday textiles for adding haptic feedback.2024HLHongnan Lin et al.Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of SciencesVibrotactile Feedback & Skin StimulationShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsElectronic Textiles (E-textiles)CHI
Beyond Numbers: Creating Analogies to Enhance Data Comprehension and Communication with Generative AIUnfamiliar measurements usually hinder readers from grasping the scale of the numerical data, understanding the content, and feeling engaged with the context. To enhance data comprehension and communication, we leverage analogies to bridge the gap between abstract data and familiar measurements. In this work, we first conduct semi-structured interviews with design experts to identify design problems and summarize design considerations. Then, we collect an analogy dataset of 138 cases from various online sources. Based on the collected dataset, we characterize a design space for creating data analogies. Next, we build a prototype system, AnalogyMate, that automatically suggests data analogies, their corresponding design solutions, and generated visual representations powered by generative AI. The study results show the usefulness of AnalogyMate in aiding the creation process of data analogies and the effectiveness of data analogy in enhancing data comprehension and communication.2024QCQing Chen et al.Tongji UniversityGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Data StorytellingCHI
FARPLS: A Feature-Augmented Robot Trajectory Preference Labeling System to Assist Human Labelers’ Preference ElicitationPreference-based learning aims to align robot task objectives with human values. One of the most common methods to infer human preferences is by pairwise comparisons of robot task trajectories. Traditional comparison-based preference labeling systems seldom support labelers to digest and identify critical differences between complex trajectories recorded in videos. Our formative study (N = 12) suggests that individuals may overlook non-salient task features and establish biased preference criteria during their preference elicitation process because of partial observations. In addition, they may experience mental fatigue when given many pairs to compare, causing their label quality to deteriorate. To mitigate these issues, we propose FARPLS, a Feature-Augmented Robot trajectory Preference Labeling System. FARPLS highlights potential outliers in a wide variety of task features that matter to humans and extracts the corresponding video keyframes for easy review and comparison. It also dynamically adjusts the labeling order according to users’ familiarities, difficulties of the trajectory pair, and level of disagreements. At the same time, the system monitors labelers’ consistency and provides feedback on labeling progress to keep labelers engaged. . A between-subjects study (N = 42, 105 pairs of robot pick-and-place trajectories per person) shows that FARPLS can help users establish preference criteria more easily and notice more relevant details in the presented trajectories than the conventional interface. FARPLS also improves labeling consistency and engagement, mitigating challenges in preference elicitation without raising cognitive loads significantly.2024HLHanfang Lyu et al.Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC)Prototyping & User TestingIUI
EmTex: Prototyping Textile-Based Interfaces through An Embroidered Construction KitAs electronic textiles have become more advanced in sensing, ac- tuating, and manufacturing, incorporating smartness into fabrics has become of special interest to ubiquitous computing and interac- tion researchers and designers. However, innovating smart textile interfaces for numerous input and output modalities usually re- quires expert-level knowledge of specific materials, fabrication, and protocols. This paper presents EmTex, a construction kit based on embroidered textiles, patterned with dedicated sensing, actuating, and connecting components to facilitate the design and prototyp- ing of smart textile interfaces. With machine embroidery, EmTex is compatible with a wide range of threads and underlay fabrics, proficient in various stitches to control the electric parameters, and capable of integrating versatile and reliable interaction functionali- ties with aesthetic patterns and precise designs. EmTex consists of 28 textile-based sensors, actuators, connectors, and displays, pre- sented with standardized visual and tactile effects. Along with a visual programming tool, EmTex enables the prototyping of every- day textile interfaces for diverse life-living scenarios, that embody their touch input, and visual and haptic output properties. With EmTex, we conducted a workshop and invited 25 designers and makers to create freeform textile interfaces. Our findings revealed that EmTex helped the participants explore novel interaction oppor- tunities with various smart textile prototypes. We also identified challenges EmTex shall face for practical use in promoting the design innovation of smart textiles.2023QWQi Wang et al.Electronic Textiles (E-textiles)Desktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationUIST