The world is, as Geertz noted, a deeply woven web of significance, yet Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has historically reduced culture to a static context. This approach fails to address the critical modern challenge where technological complexity leads to dynamically fluctuating multistable meanings. This study moves beyond simple usability to place the multilayered nature of Human-Culture Interaction at its core, transforming culture from a static background into an operable design object. Our study first constructs a theoretical foundation by defining five analytical axes, embodiment, aesthetics, defamiliarization, ritualization, and pluriverse, as a framework to reorganize cultural meaning structures. We then validate this framework by developing three distinct design artifacts, and adopt the partial connections concept as a new methodology for describing the complexity of meaning interconnections. This work contributes a novel framework that treats culture as a dynamic element reconfigurable by design, bridging the theory-practice gap and driving a paradigm shift for HCI to become an architect of meaning.

Designing effective solutions for a complex world requires innovative approaches that embrace complexity, interconnectedness, and dynamism. Systems thinking and holistic design methods are essential for understanding the interplay of various social challenges. By employing human-centered design and co-creation processes, we can engage end users and ensure solutions are tailored to their needs. Furthermore, data-driven decision-making and the use of analytics and technology enable real-time adaptation and the monitoring of intervention effectiveness. However, these methods alone are unlikely to fully address the deeply rooted issues in our interconnected world; a more comprehensive approach is needed. As a case study of an interconnected world, this study explores fandom activities (known as “Oshikatsu” in Japanese) within Japanese idol culture. We analyze idol culture through a new lens that employs a more-than-human perspective. Idol culture is a multifaceted phenomenon involving marketing, fan culture, media, and performance, alongside idol agencies and diverse idol groups. To comprehend this complexity, we focus our discussion on the affordances of things related to fan interactions through a more-than-human approach. Specifically, we will utilize practical theory to examine how new affordances in fandom activities influence everyday life.

The objective of this study is to perform a case study analysis of several theories predominantly used in sociology, specifically critical realism, sociomateriality, and postphenomenology, in the context of digital platform development. We employ a combination of multiple approaches to disentangle our intricate world. This combination is crucial for effective disentanglement, as each approach can only partially unravel the complexities from its unique perspective. This study introduces an innovative approach by presenting a conceptual framework that incorporates three distinct affordance concepts and employs the imbrication metaphore to reveal the hidden creativity within the relevant digital platforms from both human and material perspectives cooperatively. The goal of the framework is to explore the multistable affordances of digital platforms in order to uncover their diverse possibilities. By focusing on multistability, various forms of digital platforms can be derived through the use of the imbrication metaphor. Then, we utilize case studies involving digital platforms to demonstrate how this conceptual framework can be applied to explore design opportunities within an entangled world.

This paper proposes ViGen, an Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced vision system designed to facilitate defamiliarization in daily life. Humans rely on sight to gather information, think, and act, yet the act of seeing often becomes passive in daily life. Inspired by Victor Shklovsky's concept of defamiliarization and the artistic technique of photomontage, ViGen seeks to disrupt habitual perceptions. It achieves this by overlaying semi-transparent, AI-generated images, created based on the user's view, through an AR display. The system is evaluated by several structured interviews, in which participants experience ViGen in three different scenarios. Results indicate that AI-generated visuals effectively supported defamiliarization by transforming ordinary scenes into unfamiliar ones. However, the user's familiarity with a place plays a significant role. Also, while the feature that adjusts the transparency of overlaid images enhances safety, its limitations in dynamic environments suggest the need for further research across diverse cultural and geographic contexts. This study demonstrates the potential of AI-augmented vision systems to stimulate new ways of seeing, offering insights for further development in visual augmentation technologies.

Reflecting positive moments in daily life enhances emotions and improves happiness. This paper proposes a lifelogging platform called “Tippy,” which supports users in collecting and reflecting positive memories. The platform provides two presentation styles: “TippyMirror,” which utilizes a mirror metaphor, and “TippyVR,” which employs virtual reality (VR). These presentation styles explore the reality–virtuality continuum. The objective of this study is to gather insights into the differences between these two presentation methods based on this continuum. Experimental results indicate that users tend to choose different systems depending on the number of users and time constraints. Furthermore, the findings provide important insights for future research on the reality–virtuality continuum.

The rapid advancement of information technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives. We rely on tools like the Google search engine for instant information access and Google Maps for efficient navigation during travelPlease check and confirm if the authors given and family names have been correctly identified. Software plays a pivotal role in adding value to various aspects of our lives. However, the infrastructure required to enhance the services we use daily remains less understood. This paper aims to address this gap by presenting three research agendas focused on developing high-level platforms through software to enhance everyday life services from a perspective of operating systems. The first research agenda is titled "Alternate Reality Experience" which seeks to guide people's attitudes and behaviors to manage future virtualized resources within the real-world operating system. The goal is to create a seamless integration of virtual and physical elements, shaping future interactions and experiences. The second research agenda, "Sharing Everything" aims to foster the sharing and protection of real-world physical and virtualized resources. The concepts of sharing and protection are crucial features in designing efficient operating systems. The third research agenda, "Physical Embodiment" focuses on introducing new I/O device management as an interface to the real world. This agenda emphasizes the importance of incorporating physical behavior and information embodiment to facilitate seamless communication between the operating system and the real world. By exploring these approaches, we can gain valuable insights into developing advanced services that better support our daily lives. This research contributes to understanding the potential of operating system concepts in shaping the future of everyday life services. In conclusion, we highlight several future research questions that can further propel this direction of exploration.

The absence of adequate tools for examining the societal implications of newly developed information technologies has led to the neglect of many potentially superior technologies that were not widely accepted. To address this issue, the concept of performativity has been introduced in sociology, highlighting that artificial theories, concepts, and technologies do not exist in isolation but actively shape society. This paper aims to emphasize the significance of performativity as an analytical tool that can effectively analyze the impact of technology on society. Through six case studies exploring the social impact of information technology on performativity, the paper demonstrates the importance of performativity as an analytical tool. The key contribution of this study is to underscore that investigating tools for analyzing the influence of art on society is a crucial research area within computer science. By delving into this aspect, we can gain valuable insights and make informed decisions about the societal implications of various technologies, ultimately fostering more responsible and impactful innovations.

In recent years, gamification has been attracting attention in various domains, aiming to increase motivation and the degree of participation of participants by introducing game elements and design into everyday activities and systems. However, conventional gamification approaches have the challenge of having only temporary effects and superficial motivation. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that goes beyond traditional gamification and seeks to enrich people's lives by ritualizing their daily routines. Traditional gamification often relies on external motivation and may be effective for some participants while being less appealing to others. They may not always provide a specific goal or significance, and as a result, participants' engagement and interest may be disengaged. Ritualization, on the other hand, is a process that makes everyday activities and behaviors more meaningful and enhances social solidarity and synaesthesia. Based on examples of ritualization in everyday life, this paper examines a novel approach to improving the quality of life of participants.

Chance discoveries and unexpected events in daily life provide opportunities for new perspectives and ideas, and the importance of consciously promoting serendipity is increasing, especially in today's information-overloaded society. Japanese culture has a tendency to feel spirituality in nature and everyday life, and spiritual serendipity obtained in the city can contribute to improving people's wellbeing. Ambient displays are attracting attention as a technology that encourages unconscious awareness, supporting inspiration and discovery by softly presenting information as part of the environment while avoiding providing excessive information. It has also been suggested that unexpected information may stimulate creativity.

RamenJourney is a lifelog service designed to recall daily positive memories of ramen geeks. It offers various display modes to highlight individual past positive visual moments. The design principles of RamenJourney are based on an interview conducted with a ramen geek who sought to amplify their positive moments using a social media platform. Furthermore, we have gleaned some preliminary insights from our current prototype.

This paper emphasizes the significance of embracing the more-than-human perspective, which goes beyond conventional human-centered design approaches and offers a foundation for innovative design methodologies. We will delve into the fundamental concepts underpinning the more-than-human perspective, elucidating its core principles. Following this, we will present recommendations on integrating this perspective into distinct design methodologies, fostering a comprehensive and inclusive approach to design. Furthermore, the paper will illuminate the practical implications of adopting the more-than-human perspective through three detailed case studies. These case studies will serve as practical illustrations of how this perspective can influence the design process, unlock novel design possibilities, and contribute to the development of innovative solutions. By delving into these real-world scenarios, we aim to showcase the tangible benefits and transformative potential of the more-than-human perspective in the realm of design.

Reflecting on positive moments in daily life can amplify emotions and improve well-being. In this study, we develop a life-logging service called TippyMirror, focusing on a display method using the mirror metaphor. TippyMirror helps people collect and reflect on their daily positive moments. This study compares TippyMirror with TippyVR-Plus, which uses Virtual Reality (VR) technology, from psychological and motivational perspectives, where previous studies have shown that VR technology has strong effects on emotions. The experiment showed that TippyMirror has similar effects to TippyVR-Plus in reducing negative emotions. While TippyVR-Plus was better at amplifying positive emotions, the introduction of a function focusing on individual positive moments indicates that TippyMirror can provide effects similar to TippyVR-Plus. For that, we found that a contact-less interaction method such as gaze-based interaction should be added to TippyMirror.

This paper introduces an application of the digital twin-collage model in CollectiveEyes, a digital platform designed to facilitate the collective sharing of diverse human perspectives and the development of innovative services. The digital twin-collage model represents the realworld from the perspective of human vision. Byconceptualizing theworld as a collection of nudges and leveraging information technology to make these nudges explicit, the platform can create services that influence people's decision-making and thought processes. The paper also showcases two case studies in which the digital twin-collage model was applied to examine CollectiveEyes, highlighting the potential for developing innovative services based on collective human perspectives.

We present Tippy, a lifelog service designed to maintain human well-being through the practice of tiny habits. Fostering happiness in life is a crucial societal concern, and Tippy seeks to promote sustainable happiness by establishing an ongoing cycle of recording and revisiting positive personal visual moments. Additionally, we delve into some initial insights gleaned from our current prototype.

Sustainable happiness in life is one of the most important societal themes deserving special attention. The pursuit of abundance extends beyond financial success, with equal significance placed on the small joys experienced in our daily lives. This paper demonstrates that a digital platform named TinyHappy can contribute to sustaining individual happiness by aiding in recollecting small joys and significant world events from the past. TinyHappy adopts the tiny habits approach, which centers around the concept that commencing with small, simple habits lays the foundation for progressing to more substantial changes and goals. The paper’s conclusions highlight the importance of consciously cultivating small habits of happiness in our day-to-day lives through three case studies.

In this paper, we propose a conceptual-model called the virtualizing/reframing (V/R) twin model to construct a digitally enhanced real world. The V/R twin model simulates the real world, and is an extension of the conventional digital-twin model, which can accurately model the real world and provides a general-purpose method for building digital services that enhance the real world. The major difference between the proposed model and the conventional digital-twin model is its consideration of diverse new information-presentation devices that have been recently developed. The V/R twin model is inspired by agential realism to include the “entanglement of the social and the material”, and the proposed observable-world consists of the social and material that are separate, according to the current context. After explaining the outline of the V/R twin model, where four virtualizing-patterns and reframing-patterns are introduced, the potential opportunities for the V/R twin model are examined, from multiple perspectives.

Digital platforms are becoming critical infrastructures for supporting a variety of innovative services that enhance our everyday lives. These platforms need to offer not only rational services but also ludic or slow services that focus on human pleasure. One important aspect of creating innovative digital platforms is that their concrete requirements and potential opportunities are vague before they are designed. Thus, designing, prototyping and evaluating digital platforms iteratively is essential for refining or customizing them, as knowledge is gradually gained throughout these iterations. However, it is costly to develop prototype platforms and evaluate them with traditional methods. A better tool that can be used to reveal these platforms’ potential opportunities by conceiving them in a simple and rapid way is needed. In this paper, we present our journey to develop nine digital platforms that share collective human sight and hearing with the Human-Material-Pleasure (HMP) annotation method, which is a tool that we use to describe the visually structured annotations of multiple digital platforms based on the annotated portfolio method. The most significant part of the paper presents annotated portfolios based on the HMP annotation method for the nine digital platforms that we develop and shows how these annotated portfolios play an essential role in revealing and exploring the potential opportunities of our platforms during the refinement process. We also discuss how the HMP annotation method is used in the context of exploring the potential opportunities of wearable shape-changing robotic devices; these devices have significantly different characteristics from our digital platforms, which allows for showing insights more objectively by extracting diverse insights from an alternative angle.

This paper presents the design and evaluation of Gamified CollectiveEyes that is a digital infrastructure to collectively share human eyes. Gamified CollectiveEyes collects people’s viewpoints in the world anywhere at all times, and a user sees several collected viewpoints simultaneously in a 3D virtual space. For navigating human viewpoints collected by Gamified CollectiveEyes, we propose a novel abstraction named topic channel in the paper, where a user can choose appropriate viewpoints and hearings that he/she wants to see. After presenting an overview of Gamified CollectiveEyes, we show two user studies to investigate potential opportunities and pitfalls of Gamified CollectiveEyes: the first user study is to investigate the human motivation mechanism to offer their viewpoints and the second user study is to investigate the configuration to present multiple viewpoints. We also show the limitation and future work of the current development of Gamified CollectiveEys.