"Can the rest of the world have flush toilets? No. Composting toilets? Yes!": Mediating the Human-Nature Relations by Composting ToiletsFlush toilets pose challenges such as resource waste, public health, and social justice. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of clean water and sanitation for all, it is essential to address the complex issues around toilets and design alternative systems that effectively manage human waste. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this paper presents findings from a design ethnography in eco-villages about composting toilets and sustainable living. We describe three archetypal composting toilet systems and examine how they operate as creative, community-driven infrastructures that mediate human–nature relationships. We reflect on how ANT provides a useful lens for HCI to understand the socio-technical dynamics of alternative sanitation systems. We analyse how composting toilets mediate human-nature relations three interconnected processes: tinkering, linking, and becoming. We discuss the implications of fostering DIY infrastructure practices as a form of transformational creativity in the pursuit of more sustainable futures.2025HTHongyi Tao et al.Sustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)C&C
“I can’t swing a cat in here”: Towards Smart, Accessible Homes for People with ParaplegiaDesigning smart and accessible homes for persons with paraplegia (PwP) requires a holistic approach that goes beyond technological innovations. In this paper, we aim to examine how future smart, AI-enabled tools can co-exist with physical and structural constraints of homes that PwP currently live in. Using an in-situ, semi-structured interview process, aided by a set of concept arts that show futuristic household technologies, we engaged with 14 PwP and four carers to understand how accessibility can be supported. Our findings show that 1) built environments, 2) self-care tools, and 3) social elements play an important role in supporting accessible living experiences. Based on the findings, we argue that a more holistic view on accessibility is required, as it is impossible to think about domestic accessible technologies without considering the physical and structural aspects of housing. We present implications to provide home accessibility through technological support and develop the notion of situated accessibility in the context of smart, accessible housing.2025DVDhaval Vyas et al.Intelligent Tutoring Systems & Learning AnalyticsSmart Home Interaction DesignAging-in-Place Assistance SystemsDIS
Serious Games: Charting Refugee Entrepreneurial Journeys Through Novel Analytic Mapping“More than 90% of global new settlement needs are unmet” according to UNHCR [20]. Among those displaced are refugees and asylum seekers—seeking new life and opportunities in Australia. Despite challenges in reassimilating into foreign society, some strive to become successful entrepreneurs. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 such -refugee and asylum seeker-entrepreneurs in Australia; documenting and mapping their journeys. This pictorial presents a novel annotative mapping tool to present (1) the supporting role of organizations, community, and family in facilitating entrepreneurial success; and (2) the role of digital platforms in self-learning, professional skill development and, achieving business goals. The main contributions of this pictorial highlight emergent strategies that demonstrate the resilience of refugee and asylum seeker entrepreneurs overcoming and navigating extraordinary circumstances. We present a novel analytic mapping tool for researchers and designers to reformat, visualize, and analyse complex participant journeys.2025CLChuike Lee et al.Serious & Functional GamesCrowdsourcing Task Design & Quality ControlDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)DIS
Plan-Then-Execute: An Empirical Study of User Trust and Team Performance When Using LLM Agents As A Daily AssistantSince the explosion in popularity of ChatGPT, large language models (LLMs) have continued to impact our everyday lives. Equipped with external tools that are designed for a specific purpose (e.g., for flight booking or an alarm clock), LLM agents exercise an increasing capability to assist humans in their daily work. Although LLM agents have shown a promising blueprint as daily assistants, there is a limited understanding of how they can provide daily assistance based on planning and sequential decision making capabilities. We draw inspiration from recent work that has highlighted the value of `\textit{LLM-modulo}' setups in conjunction with humans-in-the-loop for planning tasks. We conducted an empirical study ($N$ = 248) of LLM agents as daily assistants in six commonly occurring tasks with different levels of risk typically associated with them (e.g., flight ticket booking and credit card payments). To ensure user agency and control over the LLM agent, we adopted LLM agents in a plan-then-execute manner, wherein the agents conducted step-wise planning and step-by-step execution in a simulation environment. We analyzed how user involvement at each stage affects their trust and collaborative team performance. Our findings demonstrate that LLM agents can be a double-edged sword --- (1) they can work well when a high-quality plan and necessary user involvement in execution are available, and (2) users can easily mistrust the LLM agents with plans that seem plausible. We synthesized key insights for using LLM agents as daily assistants to calibrate user trust and achieve better overall task outcomes. Our work has important implications for the future design of daily assistants and human-AI collaboration with LLM agents.2025GHGaole He et al.Delft University of TechnologyHuman-LLM CollaborationAI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationCHI
How your Physical Environment Affects Spatial Presence in Virtual RealityVirtual reality (VR) is often used in small physical environments, requiring users to remain aware of their environment to avoid injury or damage. However, this can reduce their spatial presence in VR. Previous work and theory lack an account of how the physical environment (PE) affects spatial presence. To address this gap, we investigated the effect on spatial presence of (1) the degree of spatial knowledge of the PE and (2) knowledge of and (3) collisions with obstacles in the PE. Estimates from Bayesian regression models suggest that limiting spatial knowledge of the PE increases spatial presence initially but amplifies the detrimental effect of obstacle collisions. Repeatedly avoiding obstacles further decreases spatial presence, but removing them from the user's path yields a partial recovery. Our work contributes empirical evidence to theories of spatial presence formation and highlights the need to consider the physical environment when designing for presence in VR.2025TGThomas van Gemert et al.University of Copenhagen, Department of Computer ScienceMixed Reality WorkspacesImmersion & Presence ResearchContext-Aware ComputingCHI
Illusion Spaces in VR: The Interplay Between Size and Taper Angle Perception in GraspingLeveraging the integration of visual and proprioceptive cues, research has uncovered various perception thresholds in VR that can be exploited to support haptic feedback for grasping. While previous studies have explored individual dimensions, such as size, the combined effect of multiple geometric properties on perceptual illusions remains poorly understood. We present a two-alternative forced choice study investigating the perceptual interplay between object size and taper angle. We introduce an illusion space model, providing detailed insights into how physical and virtual object configurations affect human perception. Our insights reveal how, for example, as virtual sizes increase, users perceive that taper angles increase, and as virtual angles decrease, users overestimate sizes. We provide a mathematical model of the illusion space, and an associated tool, which can be used as a guide for the design of future VR haptic devices and for proxy object selections.2025JZJian Zhang et al.University of Melbourne, School of Computing and Information SystemsForce Feedback & Pseudo-Haptic WeightHaptic WearablesImmersion & Presence ResearchCHI
Patient Handover in the Emergency Department Is Not Just a Point Event: Insights for Designing Information Support ToolsEffective information support tools are challenging to design for fast-paced, information rich, and difficult to predict circumstances, particularly when information is fragmented and sources are dispersed. To explore, we conducted a field study on handover and the associated information work, which included 40 visits and 75 hours of observation and interviews with doctors in a metropolitan emergency department (ED). Beyond information exchange, we found that handovers highlight doctors' proactive approach by anticipating information needs, managing uncertainties arising from dynamic information, and developing patient care plans through multiple contingencies. Expanding on the idea of handover as a multifaceted process rather than a single event, we reinforce existing calls for greater flexibility emphasising that the ascertainment of pertinent information is an ongoing, adaptive process. This work demonstrates that deciding what constitutes relevant information is a priori indeterminate when designing information systems and support tools in environments such as EDs. We propose the preservation of specific ‘relativities’ of information—such as uncertainty, particularity, incompleteness, and temporality—in designing information support tools for dynamic, critical and multi-disciplinary work environments.2025AAAloha Hufana Ambe et al.The University of Queensland, Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceEV Charging & Eco-Driving InterfacesMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesTelemedicine & Remote Patient MonitoringCHI
Raising Awareness of Location Information Vulnerabilities in Social Media Photos using LLMsLocation privacy leaks can lead to unauthorised tracking, identity theft, and targeted attacks, compromising personal security and privacy. This study explores LLM-powered location privacy leaks associated with photo sharing on social media, focusing on user awareness, attitudes, and opinions. We developed and introduced an LLM-powered location privacy intervention app to 19 participants, who used it over a two-week period. The app prompted users to reflect on potential privacy leaks that a widely available LLM could easily detect, such as visual landmarks & cues that could reveal their location, and provided ways to conceal this information. Through in-depth interviews, we found that our intervention effectively increased users’ awareness of location privacy and the risks posed by LLMs. It also encouraged users to consider the importance of maintaining control over their privacy data and sparked discussions about the future of location privacy-preserving technologies. Based on these insights, we offer design implications to support the development of future user-centred, location privacy-preserving technologies for social media photos.2025YMYing Ma et al.The University of Melbourne, School of Computing and Information SystemsHuman-LLM CollaborationPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingCHI
Can you pass that tool?: Implications of Indirect Speech in Physical Human-Robot CollaborationIndirect speech acts (ISAs) are a natural pragmatic feature of human communication, allowing requests to be conveyed implicitly while maintaining subtlety and flexibility. Although advancements in speech recognition have enabled natural language interactions with robots through direct, explicit commands—providing clarity in communication—the rise of large language models presents the potential for robots to interpret ISAs. However, empirical evidence on the effects of ISAs on human-robot collaboration (HRC) remains limited. To address this, we conducted a Wizard-of-Oz study (N=36), engaging a participant and a robot in collaborative physical tasks. Our findings indicate that robots capable of understanding ISAs significantly improve human's perceived robot anthropomorphism, team performance, and trust. However, the effectiveness of ISAs is task- and context-dependent, thus requiring careful use. These results highlight the importance of appropriately integrating direct and indirect requests in HRC to enhance collaborative experiences and task performance.2025YZZheng Zhang et al.University of Melbourne, School of Computing and Information SystemsAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismHuman-LLM CollaborationHuman-Robot Collaboration (HRC)CHI
“Housing Diversity Means Diverse Housing”: Blending Generative AI into Speculative Design in Rural Co-Housing CommunitiesIn response to various environmental and societal challenges, co-housing has emerged to support social cohesion, grassroots innovation and ecological regeneration. Co-housing communities typically have smaller personal spaces, closer neighbourly relationships, and engage in more mutually supportive sustainable practices. To understand such communities’ motivations and visions, we developed a speculative design tool that harnesses Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to facilitate the envisioning of alternative future scenarios that challenge prevailing values, beliefs, lifestyles, and ways of knowing in contemporary society. Within the context of co-housing communities, we conducted a participatory design study with participants in co-creating their future communities. This paper unpacks implications and also reflects on the co-design approach employing GenAI. Our main findings highlight that GenAI, as a catalyst for imagination, empowers individuals to create visualisations that pose questions through a plural and situated speculative discourse.2025HTHongyi Tao et al.The University of Queensland, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Design FictionSustainable HCICHI
Exploring Place-Belongingness through Magic Machine Workshops in Refugee CommunitiesUpon displacement, it becomes challenging for refugees to build a sense of home in a new environment due to the traumatic experiences they have endured. To unpack factors that are important in developing a sense of home and belonging in refugee communities, we lean on the theoretical concept of 'place-belongingness' - we did this by conducting 6 co-design workshops involving 15 refugee participants, via the 'Magic Machine' workshop approach. From the workshops, we uncovered how cultural identity and memory, life stability and normalcy, security and privacy, resilience and ingenuity, and social connections are central to their sense of home. This research contributes to HCI by building on the theoretical concept of place-belongingness in the context of forced displacement, proposing design implications that address refugees’ needs for home from cultural and social dimensions, and design considerations for refugees’ domestic settings.2025PSPinyao Song et al.The University of Queensland, School of Information Technology and Electrical EngineeringEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)Participatory DesignCHI
Understanding Users' Perspectives on Location Privacy Management on SmartphonesAs the number of applications installed on smartphones continues to grow, the task of effectively managing location privacy has become increasingly complex. In this paper, we explore the factors that influence users' privacy-preserving intentions and contrast them with their actual behaviours. In addition, we compare location privacy concerns across different apps investigating the impact of app-specific features on the willingness to disclose location information. Our findings highlight significant challenges in privacy management due to privacy fatigue and perceived usability. Furthermore, participants raised the importance of more uniform standards regarding location privacy settings across various applications, calling for more detailed and interactive well-informed consent processes that highlight the risks instead of the benefits of disclosing location information. This research contributes important insights towards the development of more effective privacy settings that can foster increased user engagement in managing location privacy on smartphones.2024YMYing Ma et al.Privacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingMobileHCI
Shared Bodily Fusion: Leveraging Inter-Body Electrical Muscle Stimulation for Social PlayTraditional games like "Tag" rely on shared control via inter-body interactions (IBIs) – touching, pushing, and pulling – that foster emotional and social connection. Digital games largely limit IBIs, with players using their bodies as input to control virtual avatars instead. Our “Shared Bodily Fusion” approach addresses this by fusing players' bodies through a mediating computer, creating a shared input and output system. We demonstrate this approach with "Hidden Touch", a game where a novel social electrical muscle stimulation system transforms touch (input) into muscle actuations (output), facilitating IBIs. Through a study (n=27), we identified three player experience themes. Informed by these findings and our design process, we mapped their trajectories across our three experiential spaces – threshold, tolerance, and precision – which collectively form our design framework. This framework facilitates the creation of future digital games where IBIs are intrinsic, ultimately promoting the many benefits of social play.2024RPRakesh Patibanda et al.Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)Serious & Functional GamesMultiplayer & Social GamesDIS
Stacked Retargeting: Combining Redirected Walking and Hand Redirection to Expand Haptic Retargeting's CoverageWe present Stacked Retargeting—combining haptic retargeting and redirected walking—to maximise the use of passive proxy objects for VR haptics. Haptic retargeting work to date has considered stationary reaching and grasping interactions, and this inherently limits a proxy object’s scope. We consider exactly where this reaching and grasping occurs from, to increase the potential of each proxy. We present (a) a staged approach to implementing Stacked Retargeting, (b) five redirected walking approaches that enable users to arrive anywhere at the site of interaction, and (c) a usability magnitude estimation evaluation of these techniques. We demonstrate how Stacked Retargeting can meaningfully increase the practical use of proxy objects for VR haptics without degrading the user experience.2024ACAldrich Clarence et al.Monash UniversityIn-Vehicle Haptic, Audio & Multimodal FeedbackFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputSocial & Collaborative VRCHI
Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for Women at the Intersectional MarginsIn this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings present barriers and opportunities around access of under-resourced women of colour into makerspaces that encode or decode their exclusion. We present these findings through four themes: first impressions and visual representations; dimensions of the enabling environment; role of community partnerships; and intersectional identities of women. We conclude by discussing three contributions this paper makes to the HCI and CSCW literature, with supporting lessons and recommendations so that makerspaces no longer encode the involvement of only certain types of users (predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of women at the intersectional margins. If makerspaces can facilitate an enabling environment appropriate to be inclusive of women who face intersecting oppressions, the benefits of the maker movement can expand substantially.2023SHSonali Hedditch et al.InclusionCSCW
Refugee Entrepreneurial TrajectoriesThe global population of refugees as recorded by UNHCR is at an all-time high of over 90 million people forced to find new homes in a foreign land. Starting a new life can be unsettling for refugees and asylum seekers during the resettling process in their host countries, particularly when it comes to gaining financial independence. This paper used an interview-based study to engage with fifteen refugees and asylum seekers to learn how they achieve entrepreneurial success as they navigate refugee specific barriers in a new economy. The insights showed refugee entrepreneur specific barriers that align with resettlement challenges and the technical and social resourcefulness of this under-resourced community. Our contributions to the CSCW research community are an understanding of how low-socioeconomic entrepreneurs such as refugees, function in their ecosystem and design implications for developing technology to further the efforts of refugee entrepreneurs.2023CLChuike Lee et al.Vulnerable Populations and Marginalized GroupsCSCW
The Pragmatics of Sustainable Unmaking: Informing Technology Design through e-Waste Folk StrategiesTechnology is becoming increasingly embedded within our material worlds, resulting in an exponential rise in the production and consumption of consumer electronics. Rapid innovations in technological systems reduce technology lifecycles, deprecating digital systems, rendering devices obsolete or incompatible with supporting infrastructure, resulting in the generation of electronic waste (e-waste). Sustainable unmaking practices are a promising avenue for harnessing and repurposing resources used in technology production, enabling us to move closer towards sustainable technology design. This paper presents an applied study investigating the pragmatics of sustainable unmaking, reporting on 12 semi-structured interviews conducted with domain experts engaged in unmaking with e-waste across diverse contexts in the consumer technology lifecycle. We present folk strategies — from rich first-hand accounts, revealing real, vivid, and current perspectives, as well as motivations, passions, and frustrations, of engaging with unmaking e-waste. These strategies inform five declarations as actionable provocations for unmaking in the HCI and design communities.2023AKAwais Hameed Khan et al.Circuit Making & Hardware PrototypingSustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingDIS
Participatory Design Tools: Leveraging Materiality and Familiarity to Adapt Unconventional Materials into Design ToolsAs participatory design approaches proliferate into mainstream industry practice, it becomes important for designers to consider how design tools, methods and practices can be made more accessible for non-designers—fostering participatory mindsets. We explore how materiality and familiarity of design tools impact participation, by investigating an off-the-shelf, familiar material—the Rubik’s cube, for application possibilities as an unconventional design material. We report on a series of workshops with design practitioners and educators, that find disassociating design methods with tradition materials, opens new possibilities for methodological innovations while revealing promising avenues to improve participation. We categorise lessons into three themes: material properties, staging considerations and emergent practices. This is supplemented by two Illustrative examples of emergent applications of using Rubik’s cubes to augment (1) de Bono’s random input method; and (2) creating dynamic persona states. The emergent applications present new material possibilities enabling design methods to innovate and evolve.2023AKAwais Hameed Khan et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsParticipatory DesignC&C
Democratizing Making: Scaffolding Participation Using e-Waste to Engage Under-resourced Communities in Technology DesignMaker culture and DIY practices are central to democratizing the design of technology; enabling non-designers (future end-users) to actively participate in the design process. However, little is known about how individuals from under-resourced communities and low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, can practically leverage maker practices to design technology, creating value for themselves or their communities. To investigate this, we collaborated with an e-waste recycling centre, involving 24 participants (staff and low-SES volunteers) in two participatory maker workshop activities. Participants were provided with a generative e-waste toolkit, through which they repurposed e-waste materials and developed novel technology prototypes that created value from their perspectives and agendas. Our findings unpack three factors that influenced their making: balancing personal and community needs; incorporating convenience and productivity; and re-thinking sustainability and connection; and discuss strategies for scaffolding participation and engagement of under-resourced communities in making using an e-waste generative toolkit to democratize technology design.2023DVDhaval Vyas et al.University of QueenslandMakerspace CultureDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)User Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
Working with Forensic Practitioners to Understand the Opportunities and Challenges for Mixed-Reality Digital AutopsyForensic practitioners analyse intrinsic 3D data daily on 2D screens. We explore novel immersive visualisation techniques that enable digital autopsy through analysis of 3D imagery. We employ a user-centred design process involving four rounds of user feedback: (1) formative interviews eliciting opportunities and requirements for mixed-reality digital autopsies; (2) a larger workshop identifying our prototype's limitations and further use-cases and interaction ideas; (3+4) two rounds of qualitative user validation of successive prototypes of novel interaction techniques for pathologist sensemaking. Overall, we find MR holds great potential to enable digital autopsy, initially to supplement physical autopsy, but ultimately to replace it. We found that experts were able to use our tool to perform basic virtual autopsy tasks, MR setup promotes exploration and sense making of cause of death, and subject to limitations of current MR technology, the proposed system is a valid option for digital autopsies, according to experts' feedback.2023VPVahid Pooryousef et al.Monash UniversityMixed Reality WorkspacesVR Medical Training & RehabilitationMedical & Scientific Data VisualizationCHI