Revisiting Worker-Centered Design: Tensions, Blind Spots, and Action SpacesWorker-Centered Design (WCD) has gained prominence over the past decade, offering researchers and practitioners ways to engage worker agency and support collective actions for workers. Yet few studies have systematically revisited WCD itself, examining its implementations, challenges, and practical impact. Through a four-lens analytical framework that examines multiple facets of WCD within food delivery industry, we identify critical tensions and blind spots from a Multi-Laborer System perspective. Our analysis reveals conflicts across labor chains, distorted implementations of WCD, designers’ sometimes limited political-economic understanding, and workers as active agents of change. These insights further inform a Diagnostic-Generative pathway that helps to address recurring risks, including labor conflicts and institutional reframing, while cultivating designers’ policy and economic imagination. Following the design criticism tradition, and through a four-lens reflexive analysis, this study expands the action space for WCD and strengthens its relevance to real-world practice.2026SMShuhao Ma et al.Instituto Superior Técnico, University of LisbonParticipatory DesignPrototyping & User TestingImpact of Automation on WorkCHI
Speculating Migrant Possible Worlds through Magic MachinesMigration and technology studies increasingly recognize the importance of incorporating migrant perspectives in design processes. Speculative design methods have emerged as powerful tools for imagining alternative futures, particularly when working with marginalized communities. However, there remains a gap in understanding how to effectively engage long-term settled migrants in participatory design processes that honor their experiences and imaginative capacities. Here we show how integrating feminist care principles with speculative design methods can create more inclusive and empathetic approaches to technology design with migrant communities. Through workshops applying the "magic machines" methodology, we demonstrate how participatory speculation enables migrants to articulate their experiences, anxieties, and hopes for technological futures. Our findings reveal the importance of considering diasporic minds and cross-border connectivity in future technologies. This work provides immediate opportunities for researchers and designers to develop more inclusive approaches to speculative design while challenging dominant narratives about technological futures in migrant communities.2025VNValentina Nisi et al.Technology's Impact on (Im)migrationCSCW
Critter Connect, wearable design for place-based & multisensory species encounters.This study presents Critter Connect, a wearable device fostering multispecies relationships in natural ecosystems. Grounded in posthuman theory and More-than-Human geography, the work responds to human-centred design limitations, which often overlook non-visual and non-linguistic modes of interaction. It also highlights the need for practical tools fostering direct, place-specific, and non-hierarchical sensory-rich engagements with other beings. This pictorial shows the device’s potential to enable spontaneous and embodied interactions between users and three species in a biodiversity-rich ecosystem through geolocation-based tactile and auditory feedback. We present a design process building on multispecies ethics and speculative methods to address ecological care, as well as a pilot study demonstrating Critter Connect’s capacity to amplify the wearer’s awareness of unseen multispecies presences and sense of connection to nature. This research contributes to HCI by offering a framework for designing ethically considerate, sensory-rich interactions with other beings, thus challenging human-centric engagement and promoting ecological cohabitation.2025MGMathilde Gouin et al.Haptic WearablesShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Designing Biotopia: A Transmedia Experience for Natureculture Heritage and More-than-Human EntanglementsIn recent years, HCI research around post-anthropocene design has been gaining traction. Caring and inclusive stances towards more-than-humans, multispecies dialogues, and decentering the human in design are imbuing HCI and other disciplines. Similarly, critical heritage scholars have pointed to the need to re-frame heritage in light of the challenges of the Anthropocene. As part of a heritage-focused EU-funded project, we extend these efforts, thinking through collaborative research-through-design to design "Biotopia" – a transmedia experience that aims to connect museum and nature walk visitors with entangled natureculture and more-than-human heritage. We propose three Design Constructs from our exploratory phase and detail how they have informed the design of the critical heritage experience, contributing with the transmedia experience design and proposing ways of applying emerging posthuman concepts in practice. By reflecting on our process, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of designing for more-than-human heritage in a posthuman world, working towards decentered practices in HCI.2025MFMarta Ferreira et al.Sustainable HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)Museum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationDIS
Speculative Job Design: Probing Alternative Opportunities for Gig Workers in an Automated FutureAutomation is reshaping the gig economy, raising urgent concerns about worker displacement. With the global rise in gig workers, there is an increasing urgency for HCI and design research to focus on the impact of designing automation technologies on labor dynamics. This study introduces speculative job design research to probe alternative opportunities for gig workers in an automated future, engaging 20 workers in the process. Guided by Feminist HCI, we performed reflexive thematic analysis to uncover gig workers' views on automation technology, human labor, speculative jobs, and their concerns about the future of work. We highlighted how workers see labor exploitation as a competitive asset over machines, urging that future platform designs must not perpetuate this. Notably, through speculative job design and conversation with workers, we proposed labor design, suggesting labor as a designable material to help address unfair labor dynamics in technology design. Our research offers potential insights and directions for addressing labor tensions in the evolving sociotechnical landscape.2025SMShuhao Ma et al.Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, ITI / LARSySImpact of Automation on WorkEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsCHI
Stories as Boundary Objects: Digital Storytelling with Migrant Communities for Heritage DiscoursesHeritage is a dynamic concept, being constantly redefined by those that value it. Modern approaches to heritage bring focus to participatory processes that put communities at the centre of the heritage discourse. For migrant communities, these participatory processes can show the tension of integration versus identity, as migrants integrating into their host country can maintain, adapt or loose connections to their cultural identity. Digital storytelling platforms can offer space for exposing such tensions. In this paper, storytelling is adopted as a practice to engage three communities of migrants (with different socio-cultural contexts) on their relation to heritage. Through workshops, participants created 78 stories (accessible through a Digital Storytelling platform), which were thematically analysed. Using the concept of boundary objects, we discuss how participant's stories reflect heritage discourse and how they are entangled within the wider social, economic, and environmental context.2024PBPaulo Bala et al.Session 3e: Content Moderation and Marginalized ExperiencesCSCW
Towards Relatable Climate Change Data: Untangling Tensions in Engaging with a HyperobjectThis research investigates the potential of emerging communication strategies to enhance engagement with climate change data through HCI, by recognizing the critical challenge of effectively communicating complex hyperobejcts. We designed "Finding Arcadia", an interactive artefact centred on ocean climate data, to explore how data humanism, storytelling, decentering the human in the narrative, and positive framing influence user engagement and perception of the information. Findings from a study in-the-wild (N=42) and a post-experience survey conducted six months later (N=19) foregrounds strategies to foster deeper engagement and connection with the information but also tensions in engaging with such a complex topic. We contribute to climate change communication and HCI research with the design decisions, study outcomes, and reflections on ways in which communication strategies can promote understanding and connection with a hyperobject.2024MFMarta Galvão Ferreira et al.Data StorytellingClimate Change Communication ToolsInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
“Before gentrification, we claim habitation”: Eliciting Values and Assets through Cultural Heritage StorytellingThis pictorial outlines findings from a field study part of an inclusive digital storytelling project, which aims to develop digital tools for migrant communities to share their lived cultural heritage (CH). The field study intended to discern migrants' perceptions of cultural heritage through a one-week story-based photo challenge involving ten young adult migrants in Lisbon, Portugal. We analysed the data highlighting participant values and heritage meaning-making. We highlight the unfolding of cultural heritage thematics through their daily journeys in the hosting country's landscapes. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) strives to secure an inclusive and socially just impact for technology. With a focus on participants' assets and values, results from this study point towards sensitising concepts contributing to facilitating the design of inclusive digital tools for telling of lived cultural heritage experiences of migrant communities.2023VNValentina Nisi et al.Inclusive DesignLGBTQ+ Community Technology DesignEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsDIS
Interactions with Climate Change: a Data Humanism Design ApproachInteractions about climate change have been mostly focused on a negative or neutral form of communication, in line with the so-called “doom-and-gloom” narrative. However, recent research and guidelines point to the need to engage audiences in a more positive, story-focused and actionable way. In this pictorial, we describe a Data Humanism design approach formulated from its original manifesto. We present this proposal through a prototype that engages users with climate change data related to the oceans in a contextualised, personalised and action-focused way. To create this approach, we operationalised data humanism into design steps that guided the design process. Through the analysis of the applied study, we identify opportunities and challenges faced with this approach and with engaging diverse audiences “in the wild” with climate issues, guiding the design of future data humanism climate narratives through interactive data visualisations.2023MFMarta Ferreira et al.Data PhysicalizationSustainable HCIClimate Change Communication ToolsDIS
Assertiveness-based Agent Communication for a Personalized Medicine on Medical Imaging Diagnosis: Assertiveness-based BreastScreening-AIIntelligent agents are showing increasing promise for clinical decision-making in a variety of healthcare settings. While a substantial body of work has contributed to the best strategies to convey these agents’ decisions to clinicians, few have considered the impact of personalizing and customizing these communications on the clinicians’ performance and receptiveness. This raises the question of how intelligent agents should adapt their tone in accordance with their target audience. We designed two approaches to communicate the decisions of an intelligent agent for breast cancer diagnosis with different tones: a suggestive (non-assertive) tone and an imposing (assertive) one. We used an intelligent agent to inform about: (1) number of detected findings; (2) cancer severity on each breast and per medical imaging modality; (3) visual scale representing severity estimates; (4) the sensitivity and specificity of the agent; and (5) clinical arguments of the patient, such as pathological co-variables. Our results demonstrate that assertiveness plays an important role in how this communication is perceived and its benefits. We show that personalizing assertiveness according to the professional experience of each clinician can reduce medical errors and increase satisfaction, bringing a novel perspective to the design of adaptive communication between intelligent agents and clinicians.2023FCFrancisco Maria Calisto et al.IST - U. Lisboa, IST - U. LisboaExplainable AI (XAI)AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityCHI
Towards Critical Heritage in the wild: Analysing Discomfort through Collaborative AutoethnographyAs we engaged in designing digital interventions for intercultural dialogues around public cultural heritage sites, we saw an opportunity to surface multiple interpretations and points of view of history and shine a critical lens on current societal issues. To do so, we present the results of a collaborative auto-ethnography of alternative tours accompanied by intercultural guides, to explore sensory and embodied engagements with cultural heritage sites in a southern European capital. By focusing on the differences in how we experienced the heritage sites, we analyse the duality of discomfort, a common concept in HCI, in that it can both be deployed as a resource for designing systems that can transform people’s understanding of history or it can be a hindrance for engagement, having an unequal effect on individuals.2023PBPaulo Bala et al.ITI/LARSYSMuseum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationCHI
Climate Change Communication in HCI: a Visual Analysis of the Past DecadeClimate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time, and the HCI community has shown a growing interest and application in this topic. Considering the communication and interaction challenges it poses, now is an opportune time to analyse how the academic community has explored interaction addressing climate change. Following this premise, we present a visual analysis of the past decade, focusing on HCI research projects that target the general public. For this survey we used the grounded theory review method, resulting in a final corpus of 40 projects, with data visualization as a key step in our investigation.2021MFMarta Ferreira et al.Visualization Perception & CognitionSustainable HCIClimate Change Communication ToolsC&C
Dynamic Field of View Restriction in 360º Video: Aligning Optical Flow and Visual SLAM to Mitigate VIMSHead-Mounted Display based Virtual Reality is proliferating. However, Visually Induced Motion Sickness (VIMS), which prevents many from using VR without discomfort, bars widespread adoption. Prior work has shown that limiting the Field of View (FoV) can reduce VIMS at a cost of also reducing presence. Systems that dynamically adjust a user's FoV may be able to balance these concerns. To explore this idea, we present a technique for standard 360º video that shrinks FoVs only during VIMS inducing scenes. It uses Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping and peripheral optical flow to compute camera movements and reduces FoV during rapid motion or optical flow. A user study (N=23) comparing 360º video with unrestricted-FoVs (90º), reduced fixed-FoVs (40º) and dynamic-FoVs (40º-90º) revealed that dynamic-FoVs mitigate VIMS while maintaining presence. We close by discussing the user experience of dynamic-FoVs and recommendations for how they can help make VR comfortable and immersive for all.2021PBPaulo Bala et al.Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Instituto Superior Técnico - U. de LisboaMotion Sickness & Passenger ExperienceImmersion & Presence ResearchCHI