Future Wellbeing: Using Design Fiction to Explore Human-Agent Interaction and Mental Health

This hands-on workshop will explore the potential implementations of human-agent interaction and mental health, with a specific focus on virtual companions. To achieve this, we will be using design fiction to anticipate individual, societal, ethical, and cultural implications. 

Within the field of human-agent interaction, virtual companions - a virtual agent that can form a "relationship" with its user - have become more common and advanced in the past years, driven by the fast-paced development of generative AI and large language models. Commercial virtual companions lead to ethical issues, particularly regarding privacy, user data, emotional impact, and stereotypical visual representations. This is especially poignant in the application area of mental health, where the user might be in a vulnerable state. This concern has motivated us to propose a workshop using design fiction to critically examine virtual companions and their societal implementation in mental healthcare. Design fiction (overlapping with the methods speculative design and sci-fi prototyping) is an explorative method for examining the possible future development of new technology, anticipating both the potential risks and opportunities. 

Relevance of Topic

This workshop is relevant for conference attendees in two ways: 1) Design fiction is a hands-on, explorative method to examine the potential future development of technology and its implementation in society. It is especially suitable to learn and explore together with others in a workshop format. 2) Virtual companions and affective computing are a growing field boosted by recent developments in large language models. The societal implementation of virtual companions as a support for users with mental health conditions has a number of potentially severe ethical issues and therefore deserves attention from a range of viewpoints.

We acknowledge that language accessibility can be a challenge in the bilingual environment of the HAI conference, and we will accommodate the possibility for participants to work in groups of their own selection. We also open up for design fiction products that can be primarily visual, such as posters and manga.

Objectives

The objective of this workshop is to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers involved in affective computing, virtual companions, human-agent interaction, and mental health. We anticipate that this group, after the workshop, can form a community dedicated to continue the work with design fiction as a method within these areas of expertise. The workshop organizers can take the lead on sustaining this community after the workshop.

We welcome submissions of research/position papers that are 2-4 pages long (including references). Submissions should be prepared in the “ACM Standard” format, more specifically, the “SigConf” format, see HAI Conference Call for Papers for details. We seek contributions from a range of design fiction topics in relation to human-agent interaction. Topics include, but are not limited to: 

• Exploration of how virtual companions can affect users' mental health

• The design of virtual companions (both avatar design and behavioral design) and how this affects user trust

• The risks of reinforcing stereotypes, especially gender stereotypes

• Ethical concerns regarding the use of virtual companions for mental health purposes 

Workshop papers must be submitted in PDF format via email to hashmati@chalmers.se by the deadline. Please write HAI-WS-WELLBEING in the subject line. In addition to the paper's content, the submission should include a section at the end that outlines the authors' interest and motivation around the workshop's topic. 

Submission Deadline: October 10th, 2025

Notification of Acceptance: October 17th, 2025

Participants who are attending the workshop are required to register through the conference. The papers that will be accepted to the workshop will not be published in the proceedings of HAI.

Note: you do not need to submit a workshop paper to attend the workshop. 

This full day, hands-on workshop will take place on November 10th, 2025 in Yokohama and is part of the International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI). The workshop will follow the double diamond model of design with the steps of discover, define, develop, and deliver.

Morning (Discover and Define)

09:00 Kickoff and Introductions: Introduction to the workshop and participants introduce themselves. 

09:30 Mental Health Briefing: Organizers give primer on mental health and the target user. 

10:15-10:45 Coffee break (coffee/tea provided by HAI)

10:45 Interactive Session I: Story outline presentations and participants brainstorm in small groups on what aspect of virtual companions they want to focus on in their design fictions, and select the format.

12:00-13:00 Lunch (not provided by HAI)

Afternoon (Develop and Deliver)

13:00 Interactive Session II: Participants create their design fiction narratives, in small groups or individually. 

15:00-15:30 Coffee break (coffee/tea provided by HAI)

15:30 Deliver: Participants present their design fictions and discuss what the future of virtual companions might look like. 

16:30 Wrap-up and Future Road Map: We conclude the workshop and highlight the main outcomes, and participants reflect on the topics that were discussed. Closing remarks will decide on actionable further work and collaboration.