Generative AI and Creative Mediums for Youth’s Emotion Regulation: An Interview Study with CliniciansEmotion regulation (ER) is essential to youth well-being, and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is an established approach for building ER skills. Clinicians often use creative mediums such as visuals and narratives to support ER through CBT, yet access and personalization remain limited. Generative AI (GenAI) shows promise for addressing these limitations, but its benefits and risks in youth ER remain underexplored, underscoring the need for expert perspectives. We interviewed 20 ER specialists--psychotherapists, art therapists, and psychiatrists--using a GenAI technological probe that generated CBT-based visuals and narratives. Clinicians highlighted GenAI’s potential as a “bridge” to help youth concretely identify and express emotions, practice personalized coping skills, and mediate ER conversations between home and clinics. They also cautioned that the vividness and unpredictability of GenAI outputs may trigger trauma or reinforce maladaptive thinking. We propose psychologically grounded design implications for GenAI to foster safe, engaging youth ER as a foundation for lifelong well-being.2026DYDaeun Yoo et al.University of WashingtonGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Mental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesMental Health Technology for YouthCHI
Generative AI in Children's Creative Collaboration: Impact, Perception, and Design GuidelinesThe advent of Generative AI (GenAI) has raised discussions about its effects on individuals. However, little is known about its impact on children’s creative collaboration, despite its importance for social and cognitive development. We examined GenAI’s role in children’s creative collaboration through five co-design sessions with 28 children (ages 5-11) using diverse GenAI tools (text, image, video, voice); 17 parents participated in focus group interviews. Our findings show that GenAI can foster positive social dynamics by enabling “Human vs. AI” teaming and children’s co-creation with shared ownership. However, GenAI disrupted collaborations when roles between children were unclear, AI ignored group dialogue, and AI dominated children’s agency. Children and parents envisioned socially attuned AI that could play an “older sibling” role--scaffolding while allowing playful disagreement--while raising concerns about children’s overreliance on GenAI. This work advances understanding of GenAI in collaboration and proposes design implications for designing AI systems that support child-centered collaboration.2026DYDaeun Yoo et al.University of WashingtonGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Creative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsChild-Computer Interaction DesignCHI
Relief or displacement? How teachers are negotiating generative AI's role in their professional practiceAs generative AI (genAI) rapidly enters classrooms, accompanied by district-level policy rollouts and industry-led teacher trainings, it is important to rethink the canonical “adopt and train” playbook. Decades of educational technology research show that tools promising personalization and access often deepen inequities due to uneven resources, training, and institutional support. Against this backdrop, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 teachers from a large U.S. school district that was an early adopter of genAI. Our findings reveal the motivations driving adoption, the factors underlying resistance, and the boundaries teachers negotiate to align genAI use with their values. We further contribute by unpacking the sociotechnical dynamics---including district policies, professional norms, and relational commitments---that shape how teachers navigate the promises and risks of these tools.2026ADAayushi Dangol et al.University of WashingtonHuman-LLM CollaborationAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityIntelligent Tutoring Systems & Learning AnalyticsCHI
Domain Experts, Design Novices: How Community Practitioners Enact Participatory Design ValuesThere is a growing interest among researchers to define and promote equitable practices in participatory design (PD). Our work contributes to this research by exploring the values of facilitators with varying professional backgrounds. We conducted interviews with 15 facilitators who are novice in their design background but who possess a range of domain expertise and community memberships. The interviews focused on their experiences leading a series of PD sessions with rural educators, community college instructors, community organization members, and rural librarians. We identified five key values that facilitators saw as fundamental to their PD practice: community and shared culture, co-production of knowledge, respect and non-hierarchy, trust building, and creating practical and sustainable solutions. This study demonstrates how values that are core to PD are refracted through novice facilitators' professional expertise and community membership. We offer two strategies for novice facilitators as they strive to practice more equitable PD.2025EKEunhye Grace Ko et al.The University of Texas at Austin, School of InformationInclusive DesignParticipatory DesignCHI
``You Go Through So Many Emotions Scrolling Through Instagram'': How Teens Use Instagram To Regulate Their EmotionsPrior work has documented various ways that teens use social media to regulate their emotions. However, little is known about what these processes look like on a moment-by-moment basis. We conducted a diary study to investigate how teens (N=57, Mage = 16.3 years) used Instagram to regulate their emotions. We identified three kinds of emotionally-salient drivers that brought teens to Instagram and two types of behaviors that impacted their emotional experiences on the platform. Teens described going to Instagram to escape, to engage, and to manage the demands of the platform. Once on Instagram, their primary behaviors consisted of mindless diversions and deliberate acts. Although teens reported many positive emotional responses, the variety, unpredictability, and habitual nature of their experiences revealed Instagram to be an unreliable tool for emotion regulation (ER). We present a model of teens’ ER processes on Instagram and offer design considerations for supporting adolescent emotion regulation.2025KDKatie Davis et al.University of WashingtonMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
Understanding Online Parental Help-Seeking and Help-Giving in Early Childhood: The Design Challenges of Supporting Complex Parenting QuestionsEarly parenting is one of the strongest predictors of child well-being. Online social communities have shown promise in supporting parents across a range of contexts. However, we only have a limited understanding of how posters and commenters interact within a forum, or how well commenter responses can support complex parenting questions, such as attempts to change a child's behaviour or to apply new parenting approaches. We start addressing this gap by combining an empirical analysis of 1 year of parent posts from an exemplar online forum (Mumsnet) with literature on parenting interventions from psychology. In particular, we examine the types of question parents of 2-5 year olds seek help for around their children's behaviour, and the challenges with the support that they do (or do not) receive from the Mumsnet community. Combining empirical and theory-driven insights, we outline an 'information-to-application' gap that conceptually underpins the difficulties observed, and suggest plausible research directions that could address such design problems.2024SISeray B Ibrahim et al.Session 2a: Designing Technology for Parenting and Child DevelopmentCSCW
“Sharing, Not Showing Off”: How BeReal Approaches Authentic Self-Presentation on Social Media Through Its DesignAdolescents are particularly vulnerable to the pressures created by social media, such as heightened self-consciousness and the need for extensive self-presentation. In this study, we investigate how \textit{BeReal}, a social media platform designed to counter some of these pressures, influences adolescents' self-presentation behaviors. We interviewed 29 users aged 13-18 to understand their experiences with BeReal. We found that BeReal's design focuses on spontaneous sharing, including randomly timed daily notifications and reciprocal posting, discourages staged posts, encourages careful curation of the audience, and reduces pressure on self-presentation. The space created by BeReal offers benefits such as validating an unfiltered life and reframing social comparison, but its approach to self-presentation is sometimes perceived as limited or unappealing and, at times, even toxic. Drawing on this empirical data, we distill a set of design guidelines for creating platforms that support authentic self-presentation online, such as scaffolding reciprocity and expanding beyond spontaneous photo-sharing to allow users to more accurately and comfortably portray themselves.2024JKJaeWon Kim et al.Session 3a: Self-Presentation and Relationships in Digital SpacesCSCW
Exploring Situated & Embodied Support for Youth's Mental Health: Design Opportunities for Interactive Tangible DevicesThe ability to manage emotions effectively is critical to healthy psychological and social development in youth. Prior work has focused on investigating the design of mental health technologies for this population, yet it is still unclear how to help them cope with emotionally difficult situations in-the-moment. In this paper, we aim to explore the appropriation, naturally emerging engagement patterns, and perceived psychological impact of an exemplar interactive tangible device intervention designed to provide in-situ support, when deployed with n=109 youth for 1.5 months. Our findings from semi-structured interviews and co-design workshops with a subset of participants (n=44 and n=25, respectively) suggest the potential of using technology-enabled objects to aid with down-regulation and self-compassion in moments of heightened emotion, to facilitate the practice of cognitive strategies, and to act as emotional companions. Lastly, we discuss design opportunities for integrating situated and embodied support in mental health interventions for youth.2022CRClaudia Daudén Roquet et al.King's College LondonFull-Body Interaction & Embodied InputMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
The Kids Are / Not / Sort of All Right: Technology’s Complex Role in Teen Wellbeing During COVID-19We investigated changes in and factors affecting American adolescents’ subjective wellbeing during the early months (April – August 2020) of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Twenty-one teens (14-19 years) participated in interviews at the start and end of the study and completed ecological momentary assessments three times per week between the interviews. There was an aggregate trend toward increased wellbeing, with considerable variation within and across participants. Teens reported greater reliance on networked technologies as their unstructured time increased during lockdown. Using multilevel growth modeling, we found that how much total time teens spent with technology had less bearing on daily fluctuations in wellbeing than the satisfaction and meaning they derived from their technology use. Ultimately, teens felt online communication could not replace face-to-face interactions. We conducted two follow-up participatory design sessions with nine teens to explore these insights in greater depth and reflect on general implications for design to support teens’ meaningful technology experiences and wellbeing during disruptive life events.2021CPCaroline Pitt et al.University of WashingtonMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesParticipatory DesignCHI
Connected Learning, Collapsed Contexts: Examining Teens’ Sociotechnical Ecosystems Through the Lens of Digital BadgesResearchers and designers have incorporated social media affordances into learning technologies to engage young people and support personally relevant learning, but youth may reject these attempts because they do not meet user expectations. Through in-depth case studies, we explore the sociotechnical ecosystems of six teens (ages 15-18) working at a science center that had recently introduced a digital badge system to track and recognize their learning. By analyzing interviews, observations, ecological momentary assessments, and system data, we examined tensions in how badges as connected learning technologies operate in teens' sociotechnical ecosystems. We found that, due to issues of unwanted context collapse and incongruent identity representations, youth only used certain affordances of the system and did so sporadically. Additionally, we noted that some features seemed to prioritize values of adult stakeholders over youth. Using badges as a lens, we reveal critical tensions and offer design recommendations for networked learning technologies.2021CPCaroline Pitt et al.University of WashingtonCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)Prototyping & User TestingCHI
When Screen Time Isn’t Screen Time: Tensions and Needs Among Tweens and Their Parents During Nature-Based ExplorationWe investigated the experiences of 15 parents and their tween children (ages 8-12, n=23) during nature explorations using the NatureCollections app, a mobile application that connects children with nature. Drawing on parent interviews and in-app audio recordings from a 2-week deployment study, we found that tweens’ experiences with the NatureCollections app were influenced by tensions surrounding how parents and tweens negotiate technology use more broadly. Despite these tensions, the app succeeded in engaging tweens in outdoor nature explorations, and parents valued the shared family experiences around nature. Parents desired the app to support family bonding and inform them about how their tween used the app. This work shows how applications intended to support enriching youth experiences are experienced in the context of screen time tensions between parents and tween during a transitional period of child development. We offer recommendations for designing digital experiences to support family needs and reduce screen time tensions.2021SKSaba Kawas et al.University of WashingtonEarly Childhood Education TechnologyInclusive DesignParticipatory DesignCHI
Modeling the Engagement-Disengagement Cycle of Compulsive Phone UseMany smartphone users engage in compulsive and habitual phone checking they find frustrating, yet our understanding of how this phenomenon is experienced is limited. We conducted a semi-structured interview, a think-aloud phone-use demonstration, and a sketching exercise with 39 smartphone users (ages 14-64) to probe their experiences with compulsive phone checking. Their insights revealed a small taxonomy of common triggers that lead up to instances of compulsive phone use and a second set that end compulsive phone use sessions. Though participants expressed frustration with their lack of self-control, they also reported that the activities they engage in during these sessions can be meaningful, which they defined as transcending the current instance of use. Participants said they periodically reflect on their compulsive use and delete apps that drive compulsive checking without providing sufficient meaning. We use these findings to create a descriptive model of the cycle of compulsive checking, and we call on designers to craft experiences that meet users' definition of meaningfulness rather than creating lock-out mechanisms to help them police their own use.2019JTJonathan A. Tran et al.University of WashingtonMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesNotification & Interruption ManagementWorkplace Wellbeing & Work StressCHI
A Badge, Not a Barrier: Designing for–and Throughout–Digital Badge ImplementationWe synthesize insights from a multi-year project involving the design and implementation of a digital badge system with youth co-designers at a science center. Using stakeholder interviews and surveys, participatory design session data, and user analytics, we identify the sociotechnical, sociocultural, and technical challenges of long-term badge implementation and propose several recommendations for the design and implementation of future badge systems. By identifying these challenges and providing recommendations that foreground stakeholder values and participation, we show how to support implementation throughout the entire design-to-implementation cycle.2019CPCaroline Pitt et al.University of WashingtonSpecial Education TechnologyParticipatory DesignCHI
"Everything's the Phone": Understanding the Phone's Supercharged Role in Parent-Teen RelationshipsThrough focus groups (n=61) and surveys (n=2,083) of parents and teens, we investigated how parents and their teen children experience their own and each other's phone use in the context of parent-teen relationships. Both expressed a lack of agency in their own and each other's phone use, feeling overly reliant on their own phone and displaced by the other's phone. In a classic example of the fundamental attribution error, each party placed primary blame on the other, and rationalized their own behavior with legitimizing excuses. We present a conceptual model showing how parents' and teens' relationships to their phones and perceptions of each other's phone use are inextricably linked, and how, together, they contribute to parent-teen tensions and disconnections. We use the model to consider how the phone might play a less highly charged role in family life and contribute to positive connections between parents and their teen children.2019KDKatie Davis et al.University of WashingtonSmart Home Interaction DesignCommunity Engagement & Civic TechnologyCHI