My Body, Their Business: User Perspectives on Commercial Data Practices in FemTech AppsFemTech, including apps for fertility, menstruation, and menopause, increasingly shapes how users manage intimate aspects of their health. Yet these apps are often built on opaque commercial models, raising ethical concerns about consent, privacy, and misuse of sensitive health data. While prior work has documented these risks, less is known about how users perceive and negotiate commercial data practices in FemTech apps. We conducted an online survey with 187 participants, combining factorial vignettes with provotypes--- interface prototypes designed to provoke reflection--- to examine user boundaries and discomforts around FemTech data collection and commercial use. Participants drew sharp distinctions across data types, resisting peripheral data collection and pervasive tracking. Commercial practices were often judged conditionally: tolerated only when functionally relevant. Notably, our provotypes, even under exaggerated transparency, elicited more forgiving responses to commercial practices compared to brief text descriptions in the vignettes. We discuss implications for designing transparent, accountable, and user-aligned FemTech.2026GAGhada Alsebayel et al.Northeastern UniversityPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingReproductive & Women's HealthCHI
"Do I Really Need This?": Illuminating Challenges in Integrating Computational Training Tools in Esports CoachingThe rise in popularity and value of esports motivates the creation of computational training tools (CTTs) for learning, assessment, and skill gain. While some tools exist commercially, much of the work in the research literature is rarely used outside of a lab, resulting in a lack of knowledge on the challenges involved in real-world integration. In this work, we develop a bespoke CTT for League of Legends, MySkills, based on prior work and deploy it at a professional training academy for three months. Based on two rounds of stakeholder interviews, we uncover insights into users' perspectives on using CTTs in esports coaching and the challenges inherent in introducing a novel tool into an existing, real-world esports training context. From these results, we connect the domain of esports training technology to existing conversations on translational HCI, challenges in bridging research and practice, and present implications for future work.2026EKErica Kleinman et al.Northeastern UniversityGame UX & Player BehaviorSerious & Functional GamesPrototyping & User TestingCHI
“It Depends”: Re-Authoring Play Through Clinical Reasoning in Wearable AR Rehab GamesAugmented reality (AR) games hold promise for rehabilitation, yet most remain confined to laboratory studies with limited clinical uptake. Recent advances in spatial computing, especially lightweight, glasses-form-factor AR, create a timely opportunity to embed rehabilitative play into clinical practice and daily contexts. To investigate this potential, we systematically reviewed 132 applications and conducted playtesting with 14 licensed physical therapists. Our analysis revealed three ways therapists re-authored AR games: co-authored play (reshaping movements, progressions, and difficulty), situated play (adapting across specialties, conditions, and contexts), and dual play (mediating both physical recovery and psychological support). We reframe therapists’ frequent phrase—“It depends”—as a generative design principle. This study contributes a clinical reasoning–based framework and design principles and guidelines for creating personalized, situated forms of play that align with therapists’ everyday workflows and inform future lab-to-clinic translation.2026BXBinyan Xu et al.Northeastern UniversityVR Medical Training & RehabilitationFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringMobile Augmented RealityCHI
Reimagining Wearable AR Gesture Design: Physical Therapy Reasoning in Everyday ContextsLightweight augmented reality (AR) glasses are increasingly entering everyday use, extending interaction design beyond short, isolated sessions. However, most existing gesture vocabularies are inherited from VR headsets or early AR goggles. These systems tend to prioritize recognizer accuracy while overlooking fatigue, sustainability, and social legibility in daily contexts. To address this gap, we collaborated with physical therapists (PTs) to reimagine gesture design for everyday AR, drawing on their expertise in safe and sustainable movement. Through a review of 104 AR applications, we identified 15 common gesture intents and implemented an on-device gesture generator. Ten licensed physical therapists, with an average of 14.8 years of professional experience, then shaped these gesture intents through three iterative stages: unaided gesture performance, PT-guided gesture substitution, and stage-aware card sorting. This work contributes (1) a PT-informed gesture translation method, (2) the Everyday-AR Golden Ergonomic Canvas, and (3) a stage-aware social legibility framework that illustrates how gesture suitability shifts with social readability. Together, these contributions provide a recognizer-agnostic reference framework for designing sustainable and socially coherent gesture vocabularies for lightweight AR glasses.2026WWWei Wu et al.Northeastern UniversityHand Gesture RecognitionAR Navigation & Context AwarenessFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringCHI
``Control Is a Trajectory, Not a Point'': Conceptualizing Control in Human-AI Co-CreativityControl is a critical yet underexplored concept in human-AI co-creativity and more broadly human-AI collaboration, where AI systems are expected to act as collaborative partners with creative autonomy. Existing frameworks for characterizing control remain limited and often fall short in capturing the tensions and complexities of co-creation dynamics. In this paper, we examine how experts conceptualize control and expect human-AI control dynamics by leveraging a recent framework on characterizing control as our theoretical probe. We conduct a semi-structured focus group study with nine experts in HCI, co-creativity, and AI. Our findings reveal that control is widely viewed as a dynamic, context-dependent construct that should adapt across different phases of co-creation, domains, and levels of trust in AI. Drawing on our findings, we propose a conceptualization of control along with actionable design implications for designing such AI systems. This work contributes to the literature on Human-AI collaboration, Computational Creativity, and HCI, advancing our understanding of control in co-creative human-AI partnerships.2026AIAlayt Issak et al.Northeastern UniversityGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Human-LLM CollaborationCreative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsCHI
"Words are not enough": Examining Emotional Support by Conversational AI for CaregiversCaregivers often experience emotional difficulties and social isolation due to their demanding caregiving duties. Conversational AI has the potential to provide emotional support, yet it lacks effective emotional-regulation support. In this study, we conducted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with mental health professionals and caregivers (n = 17) to explore the potential benefits, challenges, and concerns of users on the applications of conversational AI for caregivers’ emotional support. Our findings suggest that, while current text-based conversational AI is deemed valuable for emotional support, there is a desire to have a more empathic AI, an AI that actively listens, takes cultural, religious, and linguistic context into consideration; and makes humans feel heard. We examined the dimensions of empathic AI in mental health, from authenticity and trust to over-reliance, misuse, and even exacerbating mental health problems, and how this can potentially be addressed to improve caregivers’ well-being.2026MVMelika Vafafar et al.Northeastern University LondonAffective Human-Computer DialogueMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesEmpathy & Emotional DesignCHI
"An Ad Posing as Medical Advice": User Accounts of Dark UX in FemTech mHealth AppsFemTech is an emerging industry offering products, software, and services to support women’s health and well-being. Within FemTech, mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are popular for managing menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause. Yet, these apps expose users to deceptive and misleading practices, which can be characterized as Dark Patterns in user experience (or dark UX). Dark UX in commercial FemTech mHealth apps is underexplored, leaving a critical gap in understanding how deceptive patterns manifest in intimate health contexts, the harms they cause, and how to address them. We crowd-source and thematically analyze user accounts of dark UX through user reviews from sixteen systematically selected FemTech mHealth apps. User-reported accounts of dark UX in FemTech mHealth apps reveal several problematic design patterns, which emphasize risks for minors and the need for more transparent design of FemTech mHealth apps. Based on our results, we outline recommendations for enhancing ethical UX design and furthering regulatory action in FemTech.2025GAGhada Alsebayel et al.Reproductive & Women's HealthPrivacy by Design & User ControlDark Patterns RecognitionMobileHCI
Kaleidoscope Gallery: Exploring Ethics and Generative AI Through ArtEthical theories and Generative AI (GenAI) models are dynamic concepts subject to continuous evolution. This paper investigates the visualization of ethics through a subset of GenAI models. We expand on the emerging field of Visual Ethics, using art as a form of critical inquiry and the metaphor of a kaleidoscope to invoke moral imagination. Through formative interviews with 10 ethics experts, we first establish a foundation of ethical theories. Our analysis reveals five families of ethical theories, which we then transform into images using the text-to-image (T2I) GenAI model. The resulting imagery, curated as Kaleidoscope Gallery and evaluated by the same experts, revealed eight themes that highlight how morality, society, and learned associations are central to ethical theories. We discuss implications for critically examining T2I models and present cautions and considerations. This work contributes to examining ethical theories as foundational knowledge that interrogates GenAI models as socio-technical systems.2025AIAlayt Issak et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Explainable AI (XAI)Digital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceC&C
CT4ALL: Towards Putting Teachers in the Loop to Advance Automated Computational Thinking Metric Assessments in Game-Based LearningComputational thinking (CT) is essential for the 21st century learner. Yet, assessing CT remains challenging. This is particularly challenging in constructionist learning, where individual idiosyncrasies may clash with one-size-fits-all assessments. Tools like Dr. Scratch offer CT metrics that show promise for effective and scalable CT assessments, particularly in constructionist game-based learning (GBL). Prior work has advanced the design of automated CT metrics but hardly included teachers in the process. We extend Dr. Scratch to improve automated CT assessments for GBL and put teachers in the loop to assess its novel features. Specifically, we interviewed seven middle school teachers employing GBL in STEM curricula and asked them to provide feedback on the newly designed CT metrics. Teachers view the new CT metrics positively, underscoring their potential for adaptive CT assessments despite hindrances. We advance automated CT assessments via teacher evaluation toward design-sensitive CT metrics and CT for all.2025GTGiovanni M Troiano et al.Northeastern University, Arts, Media, and DesignGamification DesignProgramming Education & Computational ThinkingIntelligent Tutoring Systems & Learning AnalyticsCHI
Crafting Champions: An Observation Study of Esports Coaching ProcessesAs esports grows into a multi-million dollar industry of professional players and competitions, so too grows the interest in and need for professional coaching. Accordingly, there are increased demands and attempts to support and improve coaching for esports. A more comprehensive, granular understanding of the esports coaching process would provide a valuable foundation to inform opportunities to advance the domain via HCI theories and practices. However, in-depth studies of coaching practice, from the lens of HCI, are far less common in existing literature. In this paper, we take the first steps to provide such a foundation through an observation study conducted at an elite, award-winning League of Legends training academy. By analyzing 112 hours of dialogue and footage from coaching sessions, we identify pertinent activities and events that occur within the coaching process, which enable us to consider how esports coaching can be improved via theory, practice, and technology from HCI.2025HLHanbyeol Lee et al.Yonsei UniversityBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackSerious & Functional GamesCHI
From Locked Rooms to Open Minds: Escape Room Best Practices to Enhance Reflection in Extended Reality Learning EnvironmentsExtended reality (XR) learning environments result in greater knowledge gains when coupled with opportunities to reflect on one's actions and learning. However, when and how one should prompt reflection in XR learning environments (XRLEs) to effectively enhance learning, without breaking immersion, remains an open question. In this work, we argue that we can extract insights on how to design effective, immersive reflection for XRLEs from the expertise of escape room game masters (GMs) who regularly provide reflective hints and prompts in complex, immersive problem solving environments. To explore what we can learn from GMs, we conducted exploratory semi-structured interviews with 13 escape room GMs and, via iterative open coding, captured their best practices in how they provide hints and give nudges to escape room players.2025EKErica Kleinman et al.Northeastern University, Ghost LabMixed Reality WorkspacesCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
“I Believe the Baby in the Picture is My Baby”: User Experiences with Commercial Pregnancy AppsCommercial pregnancy apps are becoming popular in mobile health and integral to health management ecosystems. For that, they can complement medical advice and be conveniently used for ubiquitous tracking of pregnancy. Besides their functional and medical purpose, they may elicit subjective, personal, and intimate experiences that are equally relevant to users. Yet, these qualitative aspects of experiencing pregnancy apps remain under-researched. An inquiry into those qualitative aspects may help advance the design of pregnancy apps for improved user embodiment, engagement, and experience. Here, we qualitatively inquire about experiences with six popular pregnancy apps through 4,000+ online reviews. Our findings reveal that pregnancy apps are more than mere trackers and can impact pregnancy experiences, either positively or negatively, based on their design features. Further, reviews pointed to a neglect of family, friends, and relatives in the apps' design, which users found often problematic. To counter these shortcomings, we outline avenues for improving the design of pregnancy apps beyond usability and medical outcomes and call for enhancing their design through more sensitive, user-centered, and inclusive design.2024GAGhada Alsebayel et al.Aging-Friendly Technology DesignUniversal & Inclusive DesignReproductive & Women's HealthMobileHCI
RePresent: Enabling Access to Justice for Pro Se Litigants via Co-Authored Serious GamesIncreasing numbers of people represent themselves in legal disputes---known as pro se litigants. Many lack the skills, experience, or knowledge to navigate legal proceedings without a lawyer, resulting in limited access to justice. Serious games may provide an effective, interactive, and engaging way of educating pro se litigants about the law and enabling their access to justice. Through participatory design with legal experts and an authoring tool, we co-designed RePresent, a serious game that helps individuals with limited access to legal support prepare for pro se litigation. A total of 965 people played RePresent and 149 provided feedback on their player experience. Results show that RePresent was engaging and valuable for learning about the law and pro se litigation. Our work highlights avenues for co-design methodologies with co-creative authoring tools that facilitate serious game design, contributing a potentially scalable solution to enable access to justice via co-authored serious games.2024CHCasper Harteveld et al.Serious & Functional GamesParticipatory DesignDIS
Stairway to Heaven: A Gamified VR Journey for Breath AwarenessGamification and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly being explored for their potential to enhance mindful practices and well-being. We further explore the potential of gamification and VR for breath awareness and mindfulness, and contribute Stairway to Heaven, a VR artifact that combines gamification with respiratory sensor biofeedback to cultivate mindful awareness of breathing. In our mixed-method study with 21 participants, we evaluated the usability and effectiveness of our artifact in promoting breathing frequencies between 4 and 10 breaths per minute (BPM). We integrate breath-driven teleportation as a virtual locomotion technique (VLT) using respiratory biofeedback to gamify progression through a virtual wilderness. Additionally, we supplement our design with a mindfulness audio guide. The results of our user study showcase the potential of combining actionable gamification and VR, guided mindfulness, and breath-driven VLT to foster slow breathing self-regulation successfully.2024NMNathan Miner et al.Northeastern UniversitySerious & Functional GamesMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Thought Bubbles: A Proxy into Players' Mental Model DevelopmentStudying mental models has recently received more attention, aiming to understand the cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction. However, there is not enough research on the elicitation of mental models in complex dynamic systems. We present Thought Bubbles as an approach for eliciting mental models and an avenue for understanding players' mental model development in interactive virtual environments. We demonstrate the use of Thought Bubbles in two experimental studies involving 250 participants playing a supply chain game. In our analyses, we rely on Situation Awareness (SA) levels, including perception, comprehension, and projection, and show how experimental manipulations such as disruptions and information sharing shape players' mental models and drive their decisions depending on their behavioral profile. Our results provide evidence for the use of thought bubbles in uncovering cognitive aspects of behavior by indicating how disruption location and availability of information affect people's mental model development and influence their decisions.2023OMOmid Mohaddesi et al.Northeastern UniversityHuman Pose & Activity RecognitionGame UX & Player BehaviorCHI
Sustainable HCI Under Water: Opportunities for Research with Oceans, Coastal Communities, and Marine SystemsAlthough the world’s oceans play a critical role in human well-being, they have not been a primary focus of the sustainable HCI (SHCI) community to date. In this paper, we present a scoping review to show how concerns with the oceans are threaded throughout the broader SHCI literature and to find new research opportunities. We identify several themes that could benefit from focused SHCI research, including marine food sources, culture and coastal communities, ocean conservation, and marine climate change impacts and adaptation strategies. Finally, we discuss opportunities for further work on marine human-natural systems research in SHCI and interdisciplinary collaboration with marine science and coastal communities.2023LPLaura J Perovich et al.Northeastern UniversitySustainable HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)CHI
MuscleRehab: Improving Unsupervised Physical Rehabilitation by Monitoring and Visualizing Muscle Engagement Unsupervised physical rehabilitation traditionally has used motion tracking to determine correct exercise execution. However, motion tracking is not representative of the assessment of physical therapists, which focus on muscle engagement. In this paper, we investigate if monitoring and visualizing muscle engagement during unsupervised physical rehabilitation improves the execution accuracy of therapeutic exercises by showing users whether they target the right muscle groups. To accomplish this, we use wearable electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to monitor the muscle engagement and visualize the current state on a virtual muscle-skeleton avatar. We use additional optical motion tracking to also monitor the user's movement. We run a user study with 10 participants that compares exercise execution while seeing muscle + motion data vs. motion data only, and also present the recorded data to a group of physical therapists for post-rehabilitation analysis. The results indicate that monitoring and visualizing muscle engagement can improve both the therapeutic exercise accuracy for users during rehabilitation, and post-rehabilitation evaluation for physical therapists.2022JZYunyi Zhu et al.Surgical Assistance & Medical TrainingBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringComputational Methods in HCIUIST
``Rather Solve the Problem from Scratch'': Gamesploring Human-Machine Collaboration for Optimizing the Debris Collection ProblemOptimizing operations on critical infrastructure networks is key to reducing the impact of disruptive events. In this paper, we explore the potential of having humans and algorithms work together to address this difficult task. For this purpose, we used gamified experiments to build and assess this potential in the context of the debris collection problem (i.e., ``gamesploring''). We developed a digital game where players can request the help of the computer while facing a multi-objective problem of assigning contractors to road segments for clearing debris in a disaster area. Through a within-subjects experimental study, we assessed how players optimized under various circumstances (e.g., initial solution vs. from scratch) compared to the computer on its own. The results are both surprising as well as insightful: they suggest that human-machine collaboration is indeed beneficial but also that more work is needed on how to appropriately guide this form of collaboration.2022AUAybike Ulusan et al.AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationGamification DesignIUI
“Guilty of Talking Too Much”: How Psychotherapists Gamify TherapyTraditionally, game designers have driven the development process of psychotherapeutic games with psychotherapists playing a consultant role. In contrast, our study explores psychotherapists independently designing digitally gamified psychotherapy. Our workshop participants consisted of six psychotherapists who created gamified digital therapies with the design prompt of anxiety disorder. We analyze the resulting six prototypes from a game design and psychotherapy perspective. We present insights into strategies for digitally gamifying therapy and identify challenges and opportunities for the future of gamified psychotherapy, grounded in the experiences of psychotherapists designing such therapies. This study also reflects on the use of user-friendly development tools for independently curating gamified digital therapies, especially by non-technical users such as psychotherapists.2022ETElina Tochilnikova et al.Northeastern UniversitySerious & Functional GamesSpecial Education TechnologyCHI
To Trust or to Stockpile: Modeling Human-Simulation Interaction in Supply Chain ShortagesUnderstanding decision-making in dynamic and complex settings is a challenge yet essential for preventing, mitigating, and responding to adverse events (e.g., disasters, financial crises). Simulation games have shown promise to advance our understanding of decision-making in such settings. However, an open question remains on how we extract useful information from these games. We contribute an approach to model human-simulation interaction by leveraging existing methods to characterize: (1) system states of dynamic simulation environments (with Principal Component Analysis), (2) behavioral responses from human interaction with simulation (with Hidden Markov Models), and (3) behavioral responses across system states (with Sequence Analysis). We demonstrate this approach with our game simulating drug shortages in a supply chain context. Results from our experimental study with 135 participants show different player types (hoarders, reactors, followers), how behavior changes in different system states, and how sharing information impacts behavior. We discuss how our findings challenge existing literature.2022OMOmid Mohaddesi et al.Northeastern UniversityVisualization Perception & CognitionSerious & Functional GamesPrototyping & User TestingCHI