William Odom, Simon Fraser University, SIAT

Capra: Making Use of Multiple Perspectives for Capturing, Noticing and Revisiting Hiking Experiences Over Time 

As the practice of hiking becomes increasingly captured through personal data, it is timely to consider what kinds of data encounters might support forms of noticing and connecting to nature as well as one’s self and life history over time. To investigate, we designed Capra — a system that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term use. Over four years, our team progressively designed, built, refined, and tested. Capra. This talk will offer a glimpse into how we balanced unobtrusiveness, transforming hiking data into interconnected elements, and supported ongoing open-ended engagements. 

Anna R L Carter, Northumbria University, NORSC 

Participatory Design, Sustainable Management and Cultural Heritage 

The talk will look will focus on work in progress looking into how participatory design can be used as a tool in sustainable management projects, evaluating collaboration with communities and stakeholders in challenging environments. It will highlight the need to involve locals in managing their surroundings, even if they're unfamiliar with the area, through education and engagement. Additionally, it will stress the importance of preserving cultural heritage within urban areas undergoing sustainable management to ensure interventions are relevant and sustainable.

Hanieh Shakeri, Simon Fraser University, SIAT 

Designing Smart Home Technology For Passive Co-Presence Over Distance 

When families live in the same home, they feel a sense of connection through the subtle, passive aspects of family life. Over distance, these passive aspects are hard to experience as most communication technologies support sharing conversations or activities. Through a research-through-design methodology, we explored the design of smart home technologies for passive co-presence over distance. Based on our design explorations, we arrived at an interaction space which includes the dimensions of Activity, Solitude, Synchronicity, and Spontaneity. Our research-through-design process additionally resulted in the design of two smart home systems. The There Chair employs the senses of touch and sight to passively display sitting in the remote dining room. The Fragrance Frame is a paired picture frame that detects when a remote family member is passing by, and emits a scent reminiscent of togetherness. We reflect on our design decisions and propose considerations for future design.

Alexandra Kitson, Simon Fraser University, SIAT

Virtual Games, Real Interactions: A Look at Cross-reality Asymmetrical Co-located Social Games 

Multiuser, multi-device extended reality (XR) environments enable synchronous social interactions. The flexibility to choose the most suitable device can foster inclusive environments where even spectators can be involved. In a mixed methods study with social XR experts, we explored situated and asymmetrical modalities in the context of XR gaming. Our research suggests asymmetrical interfaces may reduce barriers to entry for XR, support social connection, and promote cross-platform communication and collaboration. In a world where not everyone will have or want an XR device, developers can benefit from a stronger understanding of flexible play modalities, including considerations of spectator appeal.

Philippe Pasquier, Simon Fraser University, SIAT 

Creative AI interface evaluations

In this brief talk, we will synthesize ongoing research on HCI evaluation of AI-driven computer-assisted creation interface in the fields of music composition and visual generation. 

Cristina Conati, University of British Columbia, CS

Personalized Explainable AI

At the UBC Human-AI Interaction group, we investigate how to support Human-AI collaboration via AI artifacts that can understand relevant properties of their users (e.g., states, skills, needs) and personalize the interaction accordingly in a manner that preserves transparency, user control, and trust. In this talk, I will illustrate examples of our research in AI-drive personalization spanning areas such as I User Adaptive Visualizations, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Personalized Explainable AI.

Thitaree (Mint) Tanprasert, University of British Columbia

Debate Chatbots to Facilitate Critical Thinking on YouTube: Social Identity and Conversational Style Make A Difference  

Exposure to diverse perspectives is helpful for bursting the filter bubble in online public video platforms. The recent advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) illuminates the potential of creating a debate chatbot that prompts users to critically examine their stances on a topic formed by watching videos. However, whether the viewer is influenced by the chatbot may depend on its persona. In this paper, we investigated the and discussed the effect of two persona attributes - social identity and rhetorical styles - on critical thinking, stance, perception of chatbot, and engagement. 

Angelica Lim, Simon Fraser University

React To This! How Humans Challenge Interactive Agents with Nonverbal Behaviors 

How do people use their faces and bodies to test the interactive abilities of a robot? Making lively, believable agents is often seen as a goal for robots and virtual agents but believability can easily break down. In this Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) study, we observed 1169 nonverbal interactions between 20 participants and 6 types of agents. We collected the nonverbal behaviors participants used to challenge the characters physically, emotionally, and socially. The participants interacted freely with humanoid and non-humanoid forms: a robot, a human, a penguin, a pufferfish, a banana, and a toilet. We present a human behavior codebook of 188 unique nonverbal behaviors used by humans to test the virtual characters. The insights and design strategies drawn from video observations aim to help build more interaction-aware and believable robots, especially when humans push them to their limits. 

Jon Corbett, Simon Fraser University, SIAT 

mâmitoneyihcikanihkân âpacihcikana ekwa atanskomocikana (Creeboard: A Useful Computing Tool) 

This talk explores the indigenization of computer hardware, and stories the development of a physical keyboard for the nehiyaw orthography (i.e. Plains Cree), designed and built from nehiyaw cultural knowledge. 

MinYoung Yoo, Simon Fraser University 

Remembering through Sound: Co-creating Sound-based Mementos with People with Blindness

 The paper outlines our 12-month multi-stage co-creative design journey, engaging with seven people with blindness and two of their sighted loved ones, towards a co-design workshop on "remembering through sound." We report three types of sonic mementos, designed together with the participants, that Encapsulate, Augment and Re-imagine personal audio recordings into more interesting and meaningful sonic memories for people with blindness. Building on these sonic mementos, we offer critical reflections and insights into the design of sound that supports personal and social experiences of reminiscence and propose design opportunities and recommendations for remembering through sound.

Yichun Zhao, University of Victoria 

Improving information accessibility for blind and low-vision people 

I will present the main findings from our accepted paper in CHI 2024 on TADA which is a system that enables blind and low-vision people to access diagrammatic information. These mainly include the qualitative findings and the system design. I will also share some plans as part of the future work extending from this paper. 

Teerapaun (Mui) Tanprasert, University of British Columbia

HelpCall: Designing Informal Technology Assistance for Older Adults via Videoconferencing 

Older adults commonly rely on younger family members for remote tech support, but the current general-purpose video-conferencing platforms fall short of effectively catering to their needs. In this talk, I will introduce the design concept and prototypes for HelpCall, an augmentation of these platforms that provides aids for learning computer tasks, including a step-by-step visual guide automatically generated from synchronous human instruction. Through observations and interviews with older adults, we validated the potential of the HelpCall concept, compared its two design candidates, Tooltip and List, and generated new insights into designing synchronous software help for older adults. 

Diana Gromala, Simon Fraser University, SIAT 

When XR technologies become “non-pharmacological analgesics” and medical interventions, content and users’ cultural contexts matter. 

XR technologies such as VR have proven to be effective medical interventions. Certified by entities like the FDA, their adoption is accelerating in clinics, hospitals, across Veteran’s Administrations and homecare. Health experts work with technologists to define therapeutic goals and validate patient outcomes, adopting HCI practices such as co-design and usability studies. Nevertheless, ‘content,’ — what patients see, hear and feel, and what, how and why they interact — has been largely ignored. We outline why ‘content’ is largely inseparable from XR systems, focusing on how research in China, Kenya, Middle Eastern countries and Canada met surprising cultural barriers.  

Dawn Branley-Bell, Northumbria University, PaCT Lab

Co-designed Animation as a Method to Explore HCI Considerations for Remote Eating Disorder Support 

The pandemic accelerated the shift to remote support for Eating Disorders necessitating innovative integration of digital technologies. The RHED-C (Remote Healthcare for Eating Disorders throughout COVID-19) project builds upon insights from the pandemic to enhance future remote care. This talk provides a pre-CHI preview of a co-designed animation used as an ethnographic method, capturing experiences of support recipients. Creative workshops generated ideas and guided storyboard creation. The animation features voiceovers exclusively by individuals with lived experience. Animation is demonstrated as an impactful way to disseminate findings beyond academia; and as an inclusive approach capturing diverse forms of expression and preference. 

Sang-Wha Sien, University of British Columbia, eDAPT 

Co-designing Mental Health Technologies with International University Students in Canada 

International students in Canada face significant challenges regarding mental health, stemming from the underutilization of services, stigma, and cultural unfamiliarity. In a recent CSCW paper, I introduced a co-design study to identify designs for interactive technologies tailored to address these students' needs. Our findings led to the development of four distinct mockups, revealing a nuanced relationship between types of support (professional, social, self) and their motivation for use. Notably, students expressed tension between their preference for less social support and recognition of its necessity, highlighting the challenges in designing for more inclusive and accessible designs for mental health technologies. 

Kevin Chow, University of British Columbia, eDAPT  

Feeling Stressed and Unproductive? A Field Evaluation of a Therapy-Inspired Digital Intervention for Knowledge Workers 

Today's knowledge workers face rising stress and burnout, making a holistic perspective of work, jointly considering productivity and well-being, increasingly important. As such, we designed a holistic intervention inspired by cognitive behavioural therapy that consists of: (1) using "Time Well Spent" in place of "productivity", (2) a mobile self-logging tool for logging activities, feelings, and thoughts, and (3) a reflective visualization. We ran a 4-week exploratory field evaluation (n=24) to examine our Therapy-inspired intervention alongside a baseline, finding that participants who used our intervention shifted toward a holistic perspective of work, marked by an increased consideration of breaks and emotions. 

What next for HCI/CHI? 

Panel Discussion, chaired by Pam Briggs 

Panelists:

Joanna McGrenere, University of British Columbia 

Regan Mandryk, University of Victoria

John Vines, Edinburgh Univeristy

Shaun Lawson, Northumbria University

Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, Simon Fraser University