Sunday, 14 June 2026
Workshop organised in conjunction with the 2026 ACM International Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (Singapore)
This one-day, in-person workshop brings together HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping social connection across personal, professional, and societal contexts. As AI increasingly mediates human–human interaction and emerges as a social or companion presence in its own right, questions of authenticity, trust, care, and responsibility have become central design concerns.
The workshop adopts a research-through-design approach, using speculative and participatory design methods to examine how AI systems support, alter, or challenge social relationships. Participants will collaboratively explore future scenarios of AI-mediated social connection and AI companionship, critically reflecting on design decisions that surface values, establish or blur boundaries, and generate ethical tensions. The workshop focuses on two intertwined relational modes: AI-mediated human–human interaction, and AI acting as a companion or relational agent.
Apply to join the workshop by completing this short form.
The goal of this workshop is to advance collective understanding of how AI is shaping social connection and companionship, supporting designers and researchers in navigating emerging challenges and opportunities across current and near-term AI-mediated social interaction. The workshop aims to surface how design choices shape autonomy, trust, care, and responsibility across personal, professional, and societal contexts, and how potential harms, especially for vulnerable people and for future speculative scenarios involving human and multispecies AI-mediated social connection, might be anticipated and improved through design.
We anticipate the following outcomes from the workshop:
A shared articulation of key design challenges and opportunities related to AI-mediated social connection and AI companionship;
Greater clarity around key tensions, risks, and trade-offs in the design of social AI systems
Initial foundations for design principles or guiding frameworks for responsible and inclusive social AI
An interdisciplinary community of researchers and designers engaged with social connection in the age of AI
Collaborative outputs, including a future publication and design-oriented artefacts.
Morning: Situating the Space.
The workshop will open with a 20-minute keynote and 2–3 minute PechaKucha style presentations by each participant to frame the discussion. Participants will then be split into groups and engage in two complementary workshop design activities, which include interaction with pre-designed AI companion(s) developed by the workshop organisers, subject to feasibility based on venue and logistical constraints
Midday: Design-Led Exploration of Social AI Roles.
Using fictional and real-world examples, participants will explore how AI occupies different relational roles across contexts such as friendship, dating, work, education, and care. Participants will collaboratively map AI roles/systems across a spectrum/contexts from human–human mediation to AI companionship. Participants will also create images depicting AI roles across different contexts. The activity aims to surface assumptions about agency, trust, responsibility, and social norms.
Afternoon: Social AI Futures and Synthesis.
Participants will engage in a speculative design exercise that foregrounds relational boundaries for AI in social contexts. In small groups, participants will design, enact, and record a future scenario in which AI plays a social role. Scenarios may explore either explicit boundaries intended to support healthy social connection, or intentional boundary violations that expose ethical risks, power dynamics, and hidden assumptions. Participants will synthesise and reflect on their design experiences during a final joint discussion, identifying shared tensions, insights, and implications for future design and research.
Read more in our workshop proposal.