Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Towards Designing for Everyday Embodied Remembering: Findings from a Diary Study

Our bodies play an important part in our remembering practices, for example when we can remember passwords by typing, even if we cannot verbalise them. An increasing number of technologies are being developed to support remembering. However, so far, they seem to have not taken the opportunity yet to support remembering through bodily movements. To better understand how to design for such embodied remembering, we conducted a diary study with 12 participants who recorded their embodied remembering experiences in everyday life over a three-week period. Our thematic analysis of the diaries and interviews led to the creation of a framework that helps understand embodied remembering experiences (ERXs) based on the level of skilled and conscious movements used. We describe how this ERX framework could help with the design of technologies to support embodied remembering.
Design Fiction in a Corporate Setting – a Case Study

While speculative methods (e.g., design fiction) could help industry to reflect critically about future products and services, little is known about their potentials and limits when applied in a corporate setting. In this case, we worked with an automobile manufacturer to explore the near future of self-driving cars. For more than a year, we speculated using diverse methods, developed stories about a future with self-driving cars, and told them through 24 artifacts (e.g., city map, quick start guides). In this paper, we scrutinize the process, discuss what has worked and what not, which challenges we faced, and how corporate requirements shaped the emerging design fiction. We saw a trend toward affirmative rather than speculative design, driven by product-centricity and the need to justify process and outcome through concrete innovation. While speculation raised interesting questions about technological futures, it remained a challenge to transform them into concrete design implications.
VeatherReflect: Employing Weather as Qualitative Representation of Stress Data in Virtual Reality

While personal trackers can collect a vast amount of information about their users, the representation of such data has remained unchanged, with bar charts being the most dominant. However, to build systems that facilitate reflection and support well-being, it is crucial to explore alternative ways of representation. Thus, we designed VeatherReflect, a VR application that uses weather metaphors to illustrate tracker stress scores, aiming to encourage users to reflect on their stress data. In a pre-study, we mapped stress scores to weather states. We then compared VeatherReflect with a standard visualisation of stress data presented in VR. VeatherReflect increased participant engagement with personal data and stress awareness. Participants reported reflective insights for stress-reducing behaviour. We contribute findings on how virtual weather as a metaphor for stress can support reflection. We discuss design recommendations for VR applications aiming to facilitate a deeper understanding of complex personal data through engaging qualitative experiences.
Embracing the messy and situated practice of dance technology design

Designing technology for dance presents a unique challenge to conventional design research and methods. It is subject to diverse and idiosyncratic approaches to the artistic practice that it is situated. We investigated this by joining a dance company to develop interactive technologies for a new performance. From our firsthand account, we show the design space to be messy and non-linear, demanding flexibility and negotiation between multiple stakeholders and constraints. Through interviews with performers and choreographers, we identified nine themes for incorporating technology into dance, revealing tensions and anxiety, but also evolution and improvised processes to weave complex layers into a finished work. We find design for dance productions to be resistant to formal interpretation, requiring designers to embrace the intertwining stages, steps, and methods of the artistic processes that generate them. We suggest that our findings can be of value in other HCI contexts requiring flexible design approaches.
About being an “influencer” or how to exploit the tool of the oppressor for our own expression

Surveillance is at the core of today's monitored society. Privacy is becoming a fluid regulatory process the values and expectations of which are being actively rewritten, deconstructed, reconstructed and negotiated as new technologies open up novel forms of social relations and identity construction opportunities. Our proposal is based on using our bodies as tools for identity expression and personal proclamation, seeking to pervert surveillance and its embodied data as a site for opportunity, disruption and resistance. We asked XXX, a writer and journalist, to work with us on a design exploration, to understand new implications of what being an “influencer” means by shaping identities through technologies in an extreme way. After analyzing some of the most commonly employed surveillance technologies worldwide and the main biometric parameters used to monitor the human body, we came up with a series of prostheses and garments in order to exploit XXX's algorithmic presence.
From Inclusive Theatre to inclusive technologies: Lessons learnt from co-designing Touch Tours with an Inclusive Theatre group

The HCI community has attempted to understand the role theatre can play in systems design, but the ways inclusive design methodologies could benefit from inclusive theatre are underexamined. To better understand inclusive theatre practices for technology design, we worked with the first professional inclusive theatre ensemble in Greece, which faced difficulties due to social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, we attempt to better understand inclusion within such theatre practices through the co-designing of a prototype digital system for Touch Tours, an experience through touch service. We conducted a series of research through design activities with the group, building on eighteen months of ethnographic research. Our goal was to develop a service based on their practices. We contribute design implications for inclusive services, with respect to equity in experience, which enhance the activistic character of the movement, and HCI research concerned with developing technologies that support inclusion.
Balancing Flexibility and Authority: Exploring Negotiation as an Interaction Strategy for Healthy Sleep Behaviors

Sleep hygiene is a recommendation to help improve sleep quality; many persuasive technologies have been designed in human–computer interaction (HCI) studies to support sleep hygiene routines. However, a critical challenge is that users intentionally do not follow the recommendations because these often conflict with the user’s preferences or circumstances. To overcome this problem, we propose an alternative interaction strategy by which users can negotiate their sleep hygiene activities. Instead of emphasizing idealized rules for users, goals mutually agreed between the user and the system may support adherence to sleep hygiene. To explore the potential and experience of negotiating sleep hygiene goals, users and design researchers engaged in improvisational role-playing to simulate negotiations. We found that negotiation could support positive attitudes and self-efficacy in adhering to sleep hygiene practices. We discuss the balance between flexibility and authority as the primary characteristics of negotiation, and how to design negotiation-based interactive systems.
From Discovery to Adoption: Understanding the ML Practitioners’ Interpretability Journey

Models are interpretable when machine learning (ML) practitioners can readily understand the reasoning behind their predictions. Ironically, little is known about the ML practitioners’ experience of discovering and adopting novel interpretability techniques in production settings. In a qualitative study with 18 practitioners at a large technology company working with text data, we found that despite varied tasks, practitioners experienced nearly identical challenges related to interpretability methods in model analysis workflows. These stem from problem formulation, the social nature of interpretability investigations, and non-standard practices in cross-functional organizational contexts. A follow-up examination of early-stage design probes with seven practitioners suggests that self-reported experts are “perpetual intermediates”, who can benefit from regular, responsive, and in-situ education about interpretability methods across workflows, regardless of prior experience with models, analysis tools, or interpretability techniques. From these findings, we emphasize the need for multi-stage support for learning of interpretability methods for real-world NLP applications.
When Materials Meet Sound: Discovering the Meaning of Deformable Materials in Musical Interaction

Research on Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) design highlights that materiality plays an important role in DMI design and musical interaction. However, DMI design research often focuses on technology-oriented factors, with less exploration of the meaning of materials in design practice. In this paper, we explore how DMI designers understand deformable sensor materials and how they use these as a resource for creative aesthetic design. Eleven DMI designers were invited to use a selection of deformable sensor materials to create prototype DMIs with them in a design activity. Three design approaches emerged, determined by how designers perceived and explored sensor materials. We discuss the potential of the methodology for exploring strongly entangled elements, such as material, gesture, and sound, in DMI design. The results contribute to the design practice for DMI designers and to further exploration of material-based design research in Human-Computer Interaction.
Stubbi: an Interactive Device for Enhancing Remote Text and Voice Communication in Small Intimate Groups through Simple Physical Movements

The remote communication within intimate groups can be challenging due to lack of or excessive of non-verbal messages, which lack physicality. In this paper, we introduce Stubbi, a device designed to enhance remote text and voice communication in small intimate groups by enabling the exchange of simple physical movements. Each group member is equipped with Stubbi, which consists of three stubs that represent each person and enable the expression of physical movements through height changes and rotation. Our in-lab study involving six groups of three friends revealed that Stubbi effectively maintained the flow of IM conversations by increasing attentiveness and responsiveness. Additionally, in group voice calls, the exchange of personified messages through physical movements of the stubs assisted group interactions, such as turn-taking. Our findings suggest faurther implications for designing interactive systems that can support improved remote communication by seamlessly connecting IM and voice call conversations for small intimate groups.
Artinter: AI-powered Boundary Objects for Commissioning Visual Arts

When commissioning visual art, clients and artists communicate to agree on what is to be created. This often requires bridging a language gap in how they conceive art. To arrive at a mutual understanding, they leverage boundary objects—organized language and artifact instances. However, building and working with such objects is hard due to their innate subjectivity and ambiguity. Moreover, acquiring artifact instances, such as references and sketches, requires effort. We introduce Artinter, an AI-powered commission-support system for sharing, concretizing, and expanding boundary objects. Artinter helps artists and clients develop a mutually understood ‘language’ by allowing them to define concepts with artifacts (e.g., what they mean by ‘happy’). The system provides two AI-powered approaches for expanding commission boundary objects: 1) guided search with user-defined concepts and 2) instance generation by mixing concepts and artifacts. Our studies identify how AI features can support commissions and reveal future directions for AI-powered collaborative art-making.
Designing Stardust: Reimagining Self-care through Everyday Latte Art

This pictorial illustrates the design and making of a carefully crafted multi-sensory spice kit, Stardust, to encourage and nurture self-care in everyday practice. Stardust contains a set of dotted pattern cards and a secret set of 9 spices. The user engages with the kit by poking holes in the pattern card to reveal a unique art and a number that guides the user to a secret spice from the box. The user then places the poked pattern card over their favorite hot coffee or tea, and gently sprinkles the secret spice over it, thus serendipitously finds the spice and the punched pattern. The user can then enjoy their coffee featuring a visually appealing and aromatic latte art. We present a descriptive account on how we brought Stardust into being and contribute ideas for integrating art based multisensory experiences in mundane activities.
FestForward: Participatory Design Futuring and World-Building for Equitable Digital Futures in Performing Arts Festivals

FestForward is a fictional, local, cultural magazine, set in 2030, designed to stimulate conversations about equitable and sustainable digital futures in performing arts festivals. This extensive design fiction was developed through a series of participatory workshops, where creative and cultural practitioners responded to various ‘provotypes’ suggesting narrative content for the magazine. In this pictorial, we annotate and unpack the making of FestForward to reflect upon various formats and approaches to design futuring, and to offer a platform for further world-building, research and discussion on equitable digital futures in arts festivals.
Tacit Descriptions: Uncovering Ambiguity in Crowdsourced Descriptions of Motions and Materials

Although a picture, GIF, or tutorial video is "worth a thousand words", every viewer has a unique perspective of which words they ‘see.’ Packed with rich meaning, these words, or descriptions, are often used to describe the ambiguity of working with materials, artifacts, and processes in creative practices. Our work reframes the traditional crowdsourced description tasks to leverage crowdworker diversity in generating a corpus of tacit descriptions. These descriptions are synthesized into a typology and describe how users communicate ambiguity and tacit knowledge embedded in unfamiliar material properties and familiar handed motions. We propose three design concepts that demonstrate how tacit descriptions could enhance the interpretation of tutorial artifacts - Tacit Layer, or breadth-first interpretation, Tacit Space, or depth-first interpretation, and Tacit Localizer, or context-based interpretation. These concepts are then translated into physical card-sort activities and used in a workshop to gauge how participants consider tacit information in their respective practices.
Bedtime Pals: A Deployment Study of Sleep Management Technology for Families with Young Children

Sleep has been studied as an individual activity, with the interconnected behaviors among family members being rarely considered. In this study, by incorporating the identified themes from the previous phase, we designed and tested two types of family-based sleep management systems: Bedtime Pal and Caring Heart. These systems redistributed sleep-relevant tasks among family members, so that they would have the chance to reflect on the difficulties and values involved in those tasks. We deployed the two prototypes and performed an in-the-wild study with 12 families in their homes. This study empirically revealed the importance of considering social dynamics as a design factor for family sleep management technologies. Design implications for sleep management technologies are discussed.
What the Sensor Knows: More-Than-Human Knowledge Co-Production in Wood Carving

From an engineering perspective, sensors provide measurements of phenomena in the world. Sensor data might be noisy, biased or otherwise subject to error, and these labels presuppose the existence of an objective ground truth the sensor is intended to approximate. This paper explores an alternative look at sensor signals as situated observations entangled with the systems they seek to measure, where meaning can be carried in qualitative particulars rather than quantitative and statistical analyses. Karen Barad’s ‘agential realism’ [3] and Graham Harman’s ‘tool-being’ [29] inform our approach to understanding together with the sensors, which become co-investigators and co-creators of the subsequent knowledge. We illustrate our collaborative effort with the sensor through a case study where we examine sensor signals from a device designed to query the experience of woodcarving by making the experience unfamiliar. We seek a qualitative approach to knowledge (co-)creation with sensor data from a more-than-human perspective.
Deep data hiding‐based channel state information feedback within audio signals

Abstract Deep learning‐based channel state information (CSI) hiding within images has been introduced to eliminate the downlink CSI feedback overhead in frequency division duplexing systems. In this letter, a deep data hiding‐based CSI feedback framework (named Au_EliCsiNet), which hides/superimposes downlink CSI within the transmitted audio signals, is proposed. Convolution neural networks are adopted to extract CSI features, hide CSI within audio signals, and reconstruct CSI from the audio signals. Simulation results show that the proposed Au_EliCsiNet can feed back downlink CSI accurately with no (or fewer) effects on the original audio transmission.
Reflectance spectroscopy as a promising tool for ‘sensing’ metals in hyperaccumulator plants

The VNIR reflectance spectra of nickel hyperaccumulator plant leaves have spectral variations due to high nickel concentrations and this property could potentially be used for discovery of these plants. Hyperaccumulator plants accumulate high concentrations of certain metals, including manganese, cobalt, or nickel. Of these metals, the divalent ions of nickel have three absorption bands in the visible to near-infrared region which may cause variations in the spectral reflectance of nickel hyperaccumulator plant leaves, but this has not been investigated previously. In this shortproof-of-concept study, the spectral reflectance of eight different nickel hyperaccumulator plant species leaves were subjected to visible and near-infrared and shortwave infrared (VNIR-SWIR) reflectance spectrum measurements in dehydrated state, and for one species, it was also assessed in hydrated state. Nickel concentrations in the plant leaves were determined with other methods and then correlated to the spectral reflectance data. Spectral variations centred at 1000 ± 150 nm were observed and had R-values varying from 0.46 to 0.96 with nickel concentrations. The extremely high nickel concentrations in nickel hyperaccumulator leaves reshape their spectral reflectance features, and the electronic transition of nickel-ions directly contributes to absorption at ~ 1000 nm. Given that spectral variations are correlated with nickel concentrations it make VNIR-SWIR reflectance spectrometry a potential promising technique for discovery of hyperaccumulator plants, not only in the laboratory or herbarium, but also in the field using drone-based platforms. This is a preliminary study which we hope will instigate further detailed research on this topic to validate the findings and to explore possible applications.
PhotoClock: Reliving Memories in Digital Photos as the Clock Ticks in the Present Moment

As digital photos grow exponentially, people need new approaches to engage with their photos over time. We describe our study of PhotoClock, a mobile application that leverages the temporal metadata embedded in digital photos to encourage contemplation of memories bound up in one's photo archive. PhotoClock uses the clock-time of the present moment to re-present one's photos taken around that same time of the day in the past. As time ticks away relentlessly, PhotoClock highlights the ephemeral and ongoing quality of time. We conducted the field study with 12 participants over 8 weeks. Our goals are: (i) to investigate the reflective potential of clock-time as an alternative design approach for supporting memory-oriented photo interaction, and (ii) to explore conceptual propositions related to slowness and temporality. Findings revealed that PhotoClock generated diverse and reflective experiences on participants’ life stories. We conclude with implications and opportunities for future HCI and design research.
Beyond Audio: Towards a Design Space of Headphones as a Site for Interaction and Sensing

Via Research through Design (RtD), we explore the potential of headphones as a general-purpose input device for both foreground motion-gestures as well as background sensing of user activity. As a familiar wearable device, headphones offer a compelling site for head-situated interaction and sensing. Using emerging sensing modalities such as inertial motion, capacitive touch sensing, and depth cameras, our implemented prototypes explore sensing and interaction techniques that offer a range of compelling capabilities.
Location, Location, Security? Exploring Location-Based Smart Device Security Concerns and Mitigations within Low-Rent Homes

The increasing adoption of smart devices in the home introduce new security implications for tenants, with previous research showing the significance of where the devices are placed. This paper examines the relationship between device location and security: we ask how users’ security concerns shape where they place their smart devices and how they attempt to mitigate their concerns. The research focuses on an underrepresented group, those people living in social (low-rent) housing, motivated by the growing interest of housing providers to install smart devices within tenants’ homes. Using speculative design as a probe followed by interviews with eleven tenants, we find that security concerns are centred around ‘intimate places’, ‘social responsibility’ and ‘surveillance’ with users combining social practices and technical security features to mitigate these. Our research contributes new ethical implications for deploying and designing smart home devices addressed to social housing providers and smart device designers.
Playful Inspiration for a New Wave of Joyful Forest Technology

Here we present an exploration into the playful potential of forests and how interactive tech might respond to it. Through first-person, speculative, and situated generative design methods, we engaged with a range of forestry activities to explore their capacity to afford experiences based on joy and care. An analysis of our 16 trips to the forest (and the reflections they motivated) revealed 13 play potentials [6] of human-forest interactions: 13 aspects of forestry experiences that can be intrinsically joyful. We present them clustered as 5 overarching directions that can guide the design of technology that pays more attention to nature's inherent playful character. Our work can inspire a new wave of forest technology that transcends techno-solutionism and privileges alternative values of joy and care.