Distance Matters in Citizen-Based Water Quality MonitoringWater pollution remains a critical global challenge, threatening public health and aquatic ecosystems. Governmental efforts to monitor and manage water resources often face limitations due to constrained resources and socio-political priorities that may not prioritize sustainable solutions. Citizen science has emerged as a promising approach, engaging communities in scientific research to expand data collection capabilities and foster environmental stewardship. This paper explores the role of distributed collaboration infrastructure, exemplified by the Water Data Collaborative (WDC), in connecting and enhancing citizen-based water quality monitoring groups across North America. Through participatory design sessions with WDC users, the study identifies essential design features needed to support collaboration and address common challenges such as data standardization and resource sharing. Our findings emphasize the complexity of relationships among citizen science groups, government entities, and higher-order organizations, emphasizing the need for scalable, integrated solutions that avoid creating new silos within the ecosystem. This research contributes insights into how CSCW and HCI can facilitate effective citizen science practices and infrastructure design to advance sustainable water management.2025SGSrishti Gupta et al.Community Engaged ResearchCSCW
Disability Meets Modality: A Sociotechnical Approach to Team MeetingsTeam meetings are a key part of professional life which are experienced as sociotechnical, interpersonal phenomena. This interview study examines the intersection of modality, disability, and technology in the team meeting setting. Persistent concerns emerged across meeting modalities: participation as a sociotechnical challenge; social/teamwork considerations; stigma, disclosure, and expectations regarding professionalism; a lack of information regarding meetings; productivity problems; and dueling accommodations between disabled individuals. These themes represent challenges about taskwork, teamwork and social perception, and sociotechnical aspects. Findings suggest that flexibility to choose the modality of attendance based on individual context, along with flexibility to choose in-meeting supports, can help with dynamic needs. The accessibility interventions most desired by participants are both readily available and benefit all workers regardless of disability status, but require simultaneous infrastructural, technological, and process interventions to address.2025CSConnie L Siebold et al.Making Work Meetings BetterCSCW
Beyond Self-diagnosis: How a Chatbot-based Symptom Checker Should RespondChatbot-based symptom checker (CSC) apps have become increasingly popular in healthcare. These apps engage users in human-like conversations and offer possible medical diagnoses. The conversational design of these apps can significantly impact user perceptions and experiences, and may influence medical decisions users make and the medical care they receive. However, the effects of the conversational design of CSCs remain understudied, and there is a need to investigate and enhance users’ interactions with CSCs. In this article, we conducted a two-stage exploratory study using a human-centered design methodology. We first conducted a qualitative interview study to identify key user needs in engaging with CSCs. We then performed an experimental study to investigate potential CSC conversational design solutions based on the results from the interview study. We identified that emotional support, explanations of medical information, and efficiency were important factors for users in their interactions with CSCs. We also demonstrated that emotional support and explanations could affect user perceptions and experiences, and they are context-dependent. Based on these findings, we offer design implications for CSC conversations to improve the user experience and health-related decision-making.2023YYYue You et al.Health and AICSCW
Understanding Social Interactions in Location-based Games as Hybrid Spaces: Coordination and Collaboration in Raiding in Pokémon GOThe overlaying of physical spaces with digital information produces hybrid spaces, redefining people’s experience of social interactions. Location-based games (LBGs) with social components are a good case. Yet, the impact LBGs have on sociability remains under-researched. In April 2020, the new in-person/remote raiding format in the LBG Pokémon GO provided a lens to explore people’s social interactions in hybrid spaces. We interviewed 41 Pokémon GO players to understand how players coordinate and collaborate for in-person/remote raids and other social patterns. Our findings demonstrate that new social dynamics occurred: participants’ social interactions highly rely on external social media groups bridging cyberspace and the physical world. In such external social media groups, spontaneously formed leadership roles and mentor-mentee relationships demonstrate autonomy among players in the hybrid space. However, we observed that the interoperability issue challenges people’s experience. Overall, this work sheds light on the social interactions in LBGs as hybrid spaces.2023JXJiangnan Xu et al.Rochester Institute of TechnologyMultiplayer & Social GamesInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Building Positively Affective Location-Based Advertising: A Study of Pokémon GO PlayersWith the expanding popularity of Location-Based Games and the rise of advertising therein, there exists a need to comprehend the impact of Location-Based Game Advertising (LGA). This paper seeks to identify what makes positively affective LGA, leveraging Pokémon GO as a probe. Researchers conducted twenty-seven (n=27) semi-structured interviews with Pokémon GO players to reveal lived experiences regarding LGA. Our findings highlight \revision{the following} direct implications for LGA: (1) LGA act as a digital billboard, conveying qualitative alongside locative information, and (2) well-received LGA enhances the player’s agency. We additionally identify findings that have auxiliary implications to LGA: (3) positive memorability occurs when points of interest match physical reality, and (4) ludic engagement is a mediating factor in the memorability of locations. This research demonstrates that LGA in Location-Based Games is surprisingly well-received. However, developers must provide extra consideration to the player’s agency for such techniques to be effective.2023JDJohn Dunham et al.Rochester Institute of TechnologyGamification DesignLive Streaming & Content CreatorsCHI
"I See You!": A Design Framework for Interface Cues about Agent Visual Perception from a Thematic Analysis of Video GamesAs artificial agents proliferate, there will be more and more situations in which they must communicate their capabilities to humans, including what they can ``see.'' Artificial agents have existed for decades in the form of computer-controlled agents in videogames. We analyze videogames in order to not only inspire the design of better agents, but to stop agent designers from replicating research that has already been theorized, designed, and tested in-depth. We present a qualitative thematic analysis of sight cues in videogames and develop a framework to support human-agent interaction design. The framework identifies the different locations and stimulus types -- both visualizations and sonifications -- available to designers and the types of information they can convey as sight cues. Insights from several other cue properties are also presented. We close with suggestions for implementing such cues with existing technologies to improve the safety, privacy, and efficiency of human-agent interactions.2022MRMatthew Rueben et al.New Mexico State UniversityAutomated Driving Interface & Takeover DesignSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
An Activity Theory Analysis of Search & Rescue Collective Sensemaking and Planning PracticesSearch and rescue (SAR), a disaster response activity performed to locate and save victims, primarily involves collective sensemaking and planning. SAR responders learn to search and navigate the environment, process information about buildings, and collaboratively plan with maps. We synthesize data from five sources, including field observations and interviews, to understand the informational components of SAR and how information is recorded and communicated. We apply activity theory, uncovering unforeseen factors that are relevant to the design of collaboration systems and training solutions. Through our analysis, we derive design implications to support collaborative information technology and training systems: mixing physical and digital mapping; mixing individual and collective mapping; building for different levels and sources of information; and building for different rules, roles, and activities.2021SASultan A. Alharthi et al.University of Jeddah, New Mexico State UniversitySmart Cities & Urban SensingField StudiesCHI
Paper to Pixels: A Chronicle of Map Interfaces in GamesGame map interfaces provide an alternative perspective on the worlds players inhabit. Compared to navigation applications popular in day-to-day life, game maps have different affordances to match players' situated goals. To contextualize and understand these differences and how they developed, we present a historical chronicle of game map interfaces. Starting from how games came to involve maps, we trace how maps are first separate from the game, becoming more and more integrated into play until converging in smartphone-style interfaces. We synthesize several game history texts with critical engagement with 123 key games to develop this map-focused chronicle, from which we highlight trends and opportunities for future map designs. Our work contributes a record of trends in game map interfaces that can serve as a source of reference and inspiration to game designers, digital physical-world map designers, and game scholars.2020ZTZ O. Toups et al.Geospatial & Map VisualizationGame UX & Player BehaviorDIS
GPkit: A Human-Centered Approach to Convex Optimization in Engineering DesignWe present GPkit, a Python toolkit for Geometric and Signomial Programming that prioritizes explainability and incremental complexity. GPkit was designed through an ethnographic approach in the firms, classrooms, and research labs where it became part of the fabric of daily engineering work. Organizations have approached GPkit both in ways which centralize and in ways which distribute design work, usecases which emerged from and inspired new toolkit features. This two-way flow between mathematical structure and practitioner knowledge resulted in several novel contributions to the formulation and interpretation of convex programs and to our understanding of early-stage engineering design. For example, dual solutions (often considered incidental) can be more valuable to a design process than the "optimal design" itself, and we present novel algorithms and design methods based on this insight.2020EBEdward Burnell et al.Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)Prototyping & User TestingComputational Methods in HCICHI
Eight Observations and 24 Research Questions About Open Source Projects: Illuminating New RealitiesThe rapid acceleration of corporate engagement with open source projects is drawing out new ways for CSCW researchers to consider the dynamics of these projects. Research must now consider the complex ecosystems within which open source projects are situated, including issues of for-profit motivations, brokering foundations, and corporate collaboration. Localized project considerations cannot reveal broader workings of an open source ecosystem, yet much empirical work is constrained to a local context. In response, we present eight observations from our eight-year engaged field study about the changing nature of open source projects. We ground these observations through 24 research questions that serve as primers to spark research ideas in this new reality of open source projects. This paper contributes to CSCW in social and crowd computing by delivering a rich and fresh look at corporately-engaged open source projects with a call for renewed focus and research into newly emergent areas of interest.2018MGMatt Germonprez et al.Collaborative Working and DesignCSCW