The Ethics of Psychological Manipulation in Adversarial Conversational AI: Confronting the Recognition-Behaviour GapConversational AI systems, powered by advanced Large Language Models, have rapidly developed human-like persuasion capabilities that raise concerns about psychological manipulation. This provocation examines the ethical problems that arise when these systems exploit cognitive biases and social compliance mechanisms during interactions with users. Building on established theoretical work and recent empirical research, we identify a particularly concerning pattern: the recognition-behaviour gap, where users consciously identify manipulative strategies yet fail to protect themselves accordingly. Current ethical frameworks fall short in addressing these sophisticated risks in conversational contexts. Rather than proposing yet another comprehensive framework, we identify five essential dimensions that extend existing approaches to address this recognition-behaviour gap: preserving user autonomy through structural design, implementing safeguards beyond awareness, developing context-sensitive ethics, ensuring persona consistency and transparency, and establishing continuous vulnerability monitoring. This paper confronts these ethical challenges directly and calls for practical protective measures to safeguard user autonomy as conversational AI becomes increasingly prevalent in everyday life.2025SAStephen Aboshi et al.AI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityCUI
System and User Strategies to Repair Conversational Breakdowns of Spoken Dialogue Systems: A Scoping ReviewSpoken Dialogue Systems (SDSs) are critical in facilitating natural and efficient human-machine interaction through speech. SDSs frequently encounter challenges in managing complex dialogues, resulting in communication breakdowns, which include misunderstandings— where the system misunderstands user input— and non-understandings— where the system fails to interpret the input at all. Strategies to repair these breakdowns have been investigated across multiple disciplines; despite this interest, the findings from these studies are inconsistent and hinder comparative analysis due to the use of diverse methodologies and terminologies. To address this gap, this scoping review systematically examines SDS and user repair strategies within a broad spectrum of literature. Based on 36 papers out of 818 found, we provide two comprehensive frameworks: one categorising SDS system-repair strategies into six distinct categories and the other user-repair strategies into five categories. Our analysis reveals a disparity in the literature's focus on repair strategies, highlighting, in particular, the lack of research on less explored strategies, such as Information and Disclosure repair strategies, providing potential avenues for future research directions in this area.2024EAEssam Alghamdi et al.Intelligent Voice Assistants (Alexa, Siri, etc.)Conversational ChatbotsCUI
Revealing Cumulative Risks in Online Personal Information: A Data Narrative StudyWhen pieces from an individual’s personal information available online are connected over time and across multiple platforms, this more complete digital trace can give unintended insights into their life and opinions. In a data narrative interview study with 26 currently employed participants, we examined risks and harms to individuals and employers when others joined the dots between their online information. We discuss the themes of visibility and self-disclosure, unintentional information leakage and digital privacy literacies constructed from our analysis. We contribute insights not only into people's difficulties in recalling and conceptualising their digital traces but of subsequently envisioning how their online information may be combined, or (re)identified across their traces and address a current gap in research by showing that awareness is lacking around the potential for personal information to be correlated by and made coherent to/by others, posing risks to individuals, employers, and even the state. We touch on inequalities of privacy, freedom and legitimacy that exist for different groups with regard to what they make (or feel compelled to make) available online and we contribute to current methodological work on the use of sketching to support visual sense making in data narrative interviews. We conclude by discussing the need for interventions that support personal reflection on the potential visibility of combined digital traces to spotlight hidden vulnerabilities, and promote more proactive action about what is shared and not shared online.2022ENEmma Nicol et al.Privacy at Various Life Stages; Privacy at Various Life StagesCSCW
Embodied Negotiations, Practices and Experiences Interacting with Pregnancy Care Infrastructures in South IndiaBehavior change and improving health literacy based on normative ideals of motherhood is a dominant paradigm to address maternal health challenges. However, these ideals often remove women’s control over their bodies overlooking how the bodily experiences of pregnancy are socially and culturally constructed. We report on 27 interviews with pregnant women and nursing mothers in rural and semi-urban areas of South India, and six focus groups with 23 frontline health workers as secondary data. We explore how the embodied pregnancy experiences are influenced and negotiated by the socio-cultural context and existing care infrastructures. Our findings highlight how the ways of seeing, knowing, and caring for a body of a pregnant woman through often conflicting norms, beliefs and practices of medicine, nourishment and care actively shape the experiences of pregnancy. We open up a space for novel opportunities for digital health technologies to enhance women’s embodied experiences and pregnancy care infrastructures in the Global South.2022NBNaveen Bagalkot et al.Srishti Institute of Art, Design, & TechnologyMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesReproductive & Women's HealthInclusive DesignCHI
The Invisible Work of Maintenance in Community Health: Challenges and Opportunities for Digital Health to Support Frontline Health Workers in Karnataka, South IndiaFrontline health workers are the first and often the only access point to basic health care services in low-and-middle income countries. However, the work and the issues frontline health workers face in community health are often invisible, with limited resources to assist them. This study explores the work practices, challenges and roles of frontline health workers in community health with particular focus on pregnancy care in South India. Drawing on the notion of maintenance and articulation work, we describe the maintenance work of frontline health workers maintaining, anticipating, navigating, reconciling, and supporting care infrastructures beyond data collection practices. Our findings also highlight how socio-cultural practices, perceptions, status, and existing systems influence maintenance work practices. Based on our findings, we suggest moving beyond the focus on training and performance to design CSCW tools to support the maintenance work that frontline health workers do to make healthcare infrastructures work in community health.2021NVNervo Verdezoto et al.Workplace Challenges and Digital WellbeingCSCW
Fighting Fires and Powering Steam Locomotives: Distribution of Control and Its Role in Social Interaction at Tangible Interactive Museum ExhibitsWe present a video-analysis study of museum visitors' interactions at two tangible interactive exhibits in a transport museum. Our focus is on groups’ social and shared interactions, in particular how exhibit setup and structure influence collaboration patterns. Behaviors at the exhibits included individuals focusing beyond their personal activity towards companions’ interaction, adults participating via physical interaction, and visitors taking opportunities to interact when companions moved between sections of the exhibit or stepped back from interaction. We demonstrate how exhibits’ physical configuration and interactive control engendered behavioral patterns. Systematic analysis reveals how different configurations (concerning physical-spatial hardware and interactive software) distribute control differently amongst visitors. We present four mechanisms for how control can be distributed at an interactive installation: functional, temporal, physical and indirect verbal. In summary, our work explores how mechanisms that distribute control influence patterns of shared interaction with the exhibits and social interaction between museum visitor companions.2021LCLoraine Clarke et al.University of St AndrewsDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceMuseum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationCHI
Designing Clinical AAC Tablet Applications with Adults who have Mild Intellectual DisabilitiesPatients with mild intellectual disabilities (ID) face significant communication barriers within primary care services. This has a detrimental effect on the quality of treatment being provided, meaning the consultation process could benefit from augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies. However, little research has been conducted in this area beyond that of paper-based aids. We address this by extracting design requirements for a clinical AAC tablet application from n=10 adults with mild ID. Our results show that such technologies can promote communication between general practitioners (GPs) and patients with mild ID by extracting symptoms in advance of the consultation via an accessible questionnaire. These symptoms act as a referent and assist in raising the awareness of conditions commonly overlooked by GPs. Furthermore, the application can support people with ID in identifying and accessing healthcare services. Finally, the participants identified 6 key factors that affect the clarity of medical images.2020RGRyan Colin Gibson et al.University of StrathclydeCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)CHI
Making Diabetes Education Interactive: Tangible Educational Toys for Children with Type-1 DiabetesYounger children (under 9 years) with type-1 diabetes are often very passive in the management of their condition and can face difficulties in accessing and understanding basic diabetes related information. This can make transitioning to self-management in later years very challenging. Previous research has mostly focused on educational interventions for older children.<br>To create an educational tool which can support the diabetes educational process of younger children, we conducted a multiphase and multi-stakeholder user-centred design process. The result is an interactive tool that illustrates diabetes concepts in an age-appropriate way with the use of tangible toys. The tool was evaluated inside a paediatric diabetes clinic with clinicians, children and parents and was found to be engaging, acceptable and effective. In addition to providing implications for the design and adoption of educational tools for children in a clinical setting, we discuss the challenges for conducting user-centred design in such a setting.2019CKCharalampos Kyfonidis et al.University of StrathclydeSpecial Education TechnologyCHI
Designing Interactions for the Ageing PopulationsWe are experiencing two revolutions: ubiquitous digital technology and world-wide population aging: digital devices are becoming ubiquitous, and older people are becoming the largest demographic group. However, despite the recent increase in related CHI publication, older adults continue to be underrepresented in HCI research as well as commercially, further widening the digital divide they face and hampering their social participation. Therefore, the overarching aim of this workshop is to increase the momentum for such research within CHI and related fields such as gerontechnology. For this, we plan to create a space for discussing and sharing principles and strategies to design interactions and evaluate user interfaces for the aging population. We thus welcome contributions to empirical studies, theories, design and evaluation of user interfaces for older adults. Concretely, we aim to: map the state-of-art of senior-centred interaction research, build a multidisciplinary community of experts, and raise the profile of this research within SIGCHI.2018SSSayan Sarcar et al.Kochi University of TechnologyAging-Friendly Technology DesignUniversal & Inclusive DesignCHI