Children’s career imagination of their future selves is critical for motivation and identity formation, particularly by fostering continuity between present and future. However, current interventions often lead children—whose developmental stage limits future-oriented thinking—to view their future not as something connected to themselves, but as a detached job title or label. We present FutureMe, a generative AI–driven system that helps children imagine self-represented futures. Through a step-by-step process of taking a photo, exploring career options, imagining actions, and building story strips, children see themselves embedded in AI-generated narratives. The activity concludes with writing letters to their future selves. In a study with 17 children, through FutureMe, children revealed hidden aspirations, integrated past and present experiences into imagined futures, and redefined externally prescribed “good careers” as personally meaningful choices. We discuss implications for designing AI tools that empower children’s agency in imagining futures.

While the rise of AI has benefited professionals, it also induces technostress that threatens their expertise and jobs. To ensure the human-centered advancement of technology, a deep understanding of users technostress and how to cope with it is essential. Despite technostress having long been discussed, the growing integration of AI tools into professionals’ everyday work amplifies these challenges and calls for further exploration. Accordingly, this is a timely moment to examine their real-world experiences and voices. Thus, our study aims to investigate AI-induced technostress experienced by professionals, and the coping strategies they employ. Through focus group interviews with 19 professionals from diverse fields, we identified seven AI-induced technostressors and examined their coping strategies along two dimensions: stress Coping Style (problem-focused and emotion-focused) and Value Orientation (AI-oriented and humanness-oriented). Drawing on professionals’ coping strategies, we suggest practical implications to support users in coping with AI-induced technostress.

As generative AI becomes embedded in adolescents' everyday lives, it is important to understand what young users want from these systems, what concerns they hold, and how these perspectives should shape youth-centered AI design. This study investigates early adolescents' perspectives on generative AI through a four-week art-based participatory workshop with 55 middle school students. Using comic storytelling, AI-themed clay modeling, and reflective discussions, participants expressed their understandings, concerns, and expectations through visual and narrative artifacts. Inductive qualitative analysis revealed recurring patterns in how youths imagined AI's roles, articulated tensions around autonomy, dependency, and responsibility, and identified values important for maintaining agentic relationships with AI. Our findings show that participants came to recognize the importance of autonomy, critical understanding, and relational boundaries in engaging with AI. Based on these insights, we propose design implications for youth-centered AI systems that support agency and developmentally appropriate, ethically grounded engagement.

Accelerated globalization has made migration commonplace, creating significant cultural adaptation challenges, particularly for young migrants. While HCI research has explored the role of technology in migrants’ cultural adaptation, there is a need to address the diverse cultural backgrounds and needs of young migrants specifically. Recognizing the potential of conversational AI to adapt to diverse cultural contexts, we investigate how young migrants could use this technology in their adaptation journey and explore its societal implementation. Through individual workshops with young migrants and stakeholder interviews—including AI practitioners, public sector workers, policy experts, and social scientist—we found that both groups of participants expect conversational AI to support young migrants in connecting with the host culture before migration, exploring the home culture, and aligning identities across home and host cultures. However, challenges such as expectation gaps and cultural bias may hinder cultural adaptation. We discuss design considerations for culturally sensitive AI that empower young migrants and propose strategies to enhance societal readiness for AI-driven cultural adaptation.

Autistic individuals often draw on insights from their supportive networks to develop self-help life strategies ranging from everyday chores to social activities. However, human resources may not always be immediately available. Recently emerging conversational agents (CAs) that leverage large language models (LLMs) have the potential to serve as powerful information-seeking tools, facilitating autistic individuals to tackle daily concerns independently. This study explored the opportunities and challenges of LLM-driven CAs in empowering autistic individuals through focus group interviews and workshops (N=14). We found that autistic individuals expected LLM-driven CAs to offer a non-judgmental space, encouraging them to approach day-to-day issues proactively. However, they raised issues regarding critically digesting the CA responses and disclosing their autistic characteristics. Based on these findings, we propose approaches that place autistic individuals at the center of shaping the meaning and role of LLM-driven CAs in their lives, while preserving their unique needs and characteristics.

Migrants often face a complex situation for navigating services and administrative processes to transition and integrate into a new environment. They rely on guidance from service advisors and informal peers like other migrants to assist them. Service advisors try to understand, explore, and resolve migrant concerns through conversational interaction, while often seeking advice from other domain experts. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated communication holds the potential for enhancing communication between migrants and service advisors while leveraging the expertise of service advisors and facilitating migrants' autonomy in the integration process. Our research investigates the social context, mental models, and challenges encountered in guidance counseling for migrants in Finland, while examining what role AI-mediated communication can play in supporting the process. Based on our findings, we propose design implications for improving shared understanding between service advisors and migrants through salient summarization of conversations and creating collaborative visual narratives. Our findings also indicate the crucial role of leveraging peer-based knowledge between (and within) service advisors, domain experts, and migrants, which can be facilitated by AI-based tools. Our exploratory research offers insights into human-centered AI integration in the migration process, as well as the opportunities and challenges of using AI-mediated communication to improve the migrant experience.

A generative session that directly involves users in the design process is an effective way to design user-centered experiences by uncovering intrinsic needs. However, engaging users who lack coding knowledge in AI system design poses significant challenges. Recognizing this, the recently revealed GPT-creating tool, which allows users to customize ChatGPT through simple dialog interactions, is a promising solution. We aimed to identify the possibility of using this tool to uncover intrinsic users’ needs and expectations towards AI. We conducted individual participatory design workshops with generative sessions focusing on middle-aged individuals. This approach helped us to delve into the latent needs and expectations of conversational AI among this demographic. We discovered a wide range of unexpressed needs and expectations for AI among them. Our research highlights the potential and value of using the GPT-creating tool as a design method, particularly for revealing the users’ unexpressed needs and expectations.

Environmental sustainability is increasingly important, and actions on “digital sustainability” are expanding to reduce energy consumption from digital infrastructures. As many digital services today have extensive user bases, exploring sustainable design features holds significant potential for reducing environmental impact. However, further exploration of foundational research is still necessary to enable broader and more effective adoption of digital sustainability in design practice. This study focuses on understanding important considerations when encouraging more designers, especially those with limited expertise in sustainability-oriented design, to integrate sustainable practices into digital services—acknowledging that embracing unfamiliar approaches presents natural challenges. We conducted design workshops and debriefing interviews with user experience (UX) designers unfamiliar with design for sustainability to explore their early encounters with sustainable interaction design (SID) in the context of digital infrastructure energy reduction. Our study provides insight into designers’ initial perceptions and challenges with sustainable design and discusses opportunities for their broader engagement.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, videoconferencing technology has been widely adopted as a convenient, powerful, and fundamental tool that has simplified many day-to-day tasks. However, video communication is dependent on audible conversation and can be strenuous for those who are Hard of Hearing. Communication methods used by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community differ significantly from those used by the hearing community, and a distinct language gap is evident in workspaces that accommodate workers from both groups. Therefore, we integrated users in both groups to explore ways to alleviate obstacles in mixed-group videoconferencing by implementing user-generated icons. A participatory design methodology was employed to investigate how the users overcome language differences. We observed that individuals utilized icons within video-mediated meetings as a universal language to reinforce comprehension. Herein, we present design implications from these findings, along with recommendations for future icon systems to enhance and support mixed-group conversations.

Online dating is a space where autistic individuals can find romantic partners with reduced social demands. Autistic individuals are often expected to adapt their behaviors to the social norms underlying the online dating platform to appear as desirable romantic partners. However, given that their autistic traits can lead them to different expectations of dating, it is uncertain whether conforming their behaviors to the norm will guide them to the person they truly want. In this paper, we explored the perceptions and expectations of autistic adults in online dating through interviews and workshops. We found that autistic people desired to know whether they behaved according to the platform's norms. Still, they expected to keep their unique characteristics rather than unconditionally conform to the norm. We conclude by providing suggestions for designing inclusive online dating experiences that could foster self-guided decisions of autistic users and embrace their unique characteristics.

Today’s youth lives in a world deeply intertwined with AI, which has become an integral part of everyday life. For this reason, it is important for youth to critically think about and examine AI to become responsible users in the future. Although recent attempts have educated youth on AI with focus on delivering critical perspectives within a structured curriculum, opportunities to develop critical thinking competencies that can be reflected in their lives must be provided. With this background, we designed an informal learning experience through an AI-related exhibition to cultivate critical thinking competency. To explore changes before and after the exhibition, 23 participants were invited to experience the exhibition. We found that the exhibition can support the youth in relating AI to their lives through critical thinking processes. Our findings suggest implications for designing learning experiences to foster critical thinking competency for better coexistence with AI.

As artificial intelligence (AI) has become prevalent in users' daily lives, it is becoming critical for HCI designers to envision and design future human-AI interactions. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of exploring user-centered future design directions before implementing a technology in users' lives. However, it is challenging for HCI designers to envision the societal impact of future technology that does not exist and understand potential users' perceptions. Therefore, to comprehensively envision future human-AI interactions and their impact and elicit potential users' perceptions of the future technologies, we created high-fidelity illustrations with designers and illustrators for immersive experience. Subsequently, through an online exhibition of these illustrations, we derived potential users' perceptions, expectations, and concerns about the future. Based on our findings, we explored user-centered considerations for implementing AI in users' daily lives through elaborately articulated human-AI interactions.

Our society suffers from unpredictable global pandemics such as COVID-19. Thus, the demand for emergency mobile hospitals for infectious diseases has greatly increased. However, the existing mobile hospitals have been developed mainly focusing on functional requirements. There is a lack of understanding of the needs of different stakeholders in a pandemic situation. This paper presents the stakeholders' needs for designing an emergency mobile negative pressure ward hospital to be used in an infectious disease situation. We conducted two studies with diverse stakeholders related to an infectious disease; 1) an interview study with 12 long-term patients in order to figure out the needs of patients, 2) a Co-design workshop study with 3 medical staff, 4 management staff, 3 engineers, and designers. The findings revealed three main needs for emotional support for patients in terms of reducing mental anxiety, improvement of the clinic environment, and increasing trust in the clinic. Also, there were findings related to managing mobile hospitals for reducing infection risk with delivering fast care of medical staff, effective operational support for manage staff, and designing to consider both medical staff and patient. We discuss the design insight and considerations for the design of emergency mobile hospitals for infectious diseases. Our work provides insights on how the user's perspective can be reflected in designing emergency mobile hospitals for the pandemic crisis.

The breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted people’s daily activities from in-person to video-mediated ones. Many people with hearing loss encounter cognitive overload due to ineffective visuals of the videoconferencing interface and therefore find meeting contents difficult to comprehend. This research incorporates a participatory design methodology to investigate the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) users’ tacit needs. DHH users demonstrated ways of mitigating their hardships in the workshop, such as emphasizing the visual hierarchy or assigning visual cues to fixed positions. These findings are used in developing design directions for creating a more inclusive online environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced workers around the world to switch their working paradigms from on-site to video-mediated communication. Despite the advantages of videoconferencing, diverse circumstances have prevented people from focusing on their work. One of the most typical problems they face is that various surrounding factors distract them during their meetings. This study focuses on conditions in which remote workers are distracted by factors that disturb, interrupt, or restrict them during their meetings. We aim to explore the various problem situations and user needs. To understand users’ pain points and needs, focus group interviews and participatory design workshops were conducted to learn about participants’ troubled working experiences over the past two years and the solutions they expected. Our study provides a unified framework of distracting factors by which to understand causes of poor user experience and reveals valuable implications to improve videoconferencing experiences.

Although conversational agents (CA) have increased in the control of smart devices, recent research has revealed that the frequency of interaction with agents decreases over time due to a gap between the user's expectations and the actual experience. To reduce the gap, previous studies explored the mental model related to the user's expectation for designing a CA through a verbal approach such as an interview, but this was insufficient because the mental model can contain abstract images that are difficult to express in words. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to understand user perceptions through a drawing approach. We asked 34 smart speaker users to draw what the CA looks like. We found that the participants drew not only the CA but also the environment surrounding the CA, and the perception of the environment influences the expectation and intimacy with the CA. Based on these findings, we suggest that environmental factors be considered significant in designing CA persona.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the proliferation of non-face-to-face video-mediated communication such as through ZOOM or Google Meet. However, video-mediated communication has several limitations related to exchanging vocal reactions and non-verbal expressions. Consequently, although current video conferencing platforms provide visual support through icons, it remains challenging for users to express various intentions because of the limited number of icons, their uniform size, and their fixed location. In particular, these limitations challenge designers who require collaborative design processes such as brainstorming. To investigate user needs related to icons that better support video-mediated communication, we conducted a participatory design methodology. Based on the analyses of participants’ brainstorming experiences with various icons through participatory paper prototyping, we found that icons that accurately reflect diverse user needs facilitated turn-taking during the design process, and allowed participants to exchange more opinions and emotions. Thus, they created a positive atmosphere in the online meeting environment.

Children with mild intellectual disability (MID) and borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) have problems with adequate social behavior. Children with MID or BIF seem no different from typically developing children as preschoolers. However, from school age, children with MID or BIF begin to have problems with their social skills, requiring special education. In the special education, emotion recognition and empathy responses are important. Serious games using interactive design exist to help children with disabilities learn social skills, but little has been done for children with MID or BIF. To support emotion recognition and empathy behavior in children with MID or BIF, we developed a story-based serious game called MODU. We conducted a user study of a pair of siblings, one with MID and one with BIF, to explore the educational effects of MODU. Based on our findings, we investigated MODU’s educational possibilities.

The popularity of conversational agents (CAs) in the form of AI speakers that support ubiquitous smart homes has increased because of their seamless interaction. However, recent studies have revealed that the use of AI speakers decreases over time, which shows that current agents do not fully support smart homes. Because of this problem, the possibility of unobtrusive, invisible intelligence without a physical device has been suggested. To explore CA design direction that enhances the user experience in smart homes, we aimed to understand each feature by comparing an invisible agent with visible ones embedded in stand-alone AI speakers. We conducted a drawing study to examine users' mental models formed through communicating with two different physical entities (i.e., visible and invisible CAs). From the drawings, interviews, and surveys, we identified how users' mental models and interactions differed depending on the presence of a physical entity. We found that a physical entity affected users' perceptions, expectations, and interactions toward the agent.