Laughing Through the Struggles: Understanding ADHD Experience and Community Engagement Through Memes and Comments on InstagramWhile public discourse often reduces Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to stereotypes that overlook the invisible struggles of those who live with it, ADHD people are increasingly using social media to express their experiences on their own terms. On platforms like Instagram, memes have become a powerful and accessible medium for expressing everyday challenges through humor and relatability. This study analyzed 350 ADHD-related memes and over 28,000 associated comments to explore how ADHD was expressed and engaged with in online spaces, and consulted a neurodevelopmental science and clinical researcher. Findings show that memes depict behavioral inconsistencies, internal conflicts, and societal pressures, while comments reveal strong resonance, personal identification, and peer support, including informal self-diagnosis and shared experiences. By combining meme and comment analyses, this study contributes to digital mental health research by demonstrating how memes serve as an interactional mechanism for neurodivergent storytelling and identity formation and informing future platform design.2026FZFan Zhang et al.Independent ResearcherCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Social Platform Design & User BehaviorMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Audience in the Loop: Viewer Feedback-Driven Content Creation in Micro-drama Production on Social MediaThe popularization of social media has led to increasing consumption of narrative content in byte-sized formats. Such micro-dramas contain fast-pace action and emotional cliffs, particularly attractive to emerging Chinese markets in platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou. Content writers for micro-dramas must adapt to fast-pace, audience-directed workflows, but previous research has focused instead on examining writers’ experiences of platform affordances or their perceptions of platform bias, rather than the step-by-step processes through which they actually write and iterative content. In 28 semi-structured interviews with scriptwriters and writers specialized in micro-dramas, we found that the short-turn-around workflow leads to writers taking on multiple roles simultaneously, iteratively adapting to storylines in response to real-time audience feedback in the form of comments, reposts, and memes. We identified unique narrative styles such as AI-generated micro-dramas and audience-responsive micro-dramas. This work reveals audience interaction as a new paradigm for collaborative creative processes on social media.2026GCGengchen Cao et al.Tsinghua - Anta Joint Research CenterCreative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorLive Streaming & Content CreatorsCHI
Hear You in Silence: Designing for Active Listening in Human Interaction with Conversational Agents Using Context-Aware PacingIn human conversation, empathic dialogue requires nuanced temporal cues indicating whether the conversational partner is paying attention. This type of "active listening" is overlooked in the design of Conversational Agents (CAs), which use the same pacing for one conversation. To model the temporal cues in human conversation, we need CAs that dynamically adjust response pacing according to user input. We qualitatively analyzed ten cases of active listening to distill five context-aware pacing strategies: Reflective Silence, Facilitative Silence, Empathic Silence, Holding Space, and Immediate Response. In a between-subjects study (N=50) with two conversational scenarios (relationship and career-support), the context-aware agent scored higher than static-pacing control on perceived human-likeness, smoothness, and interactivity, supporting deeper self-disclosure and higher engagement. In the career-support scenario, the CA yielded higher perceived listening quality and affective trust. This work shows how insights from human conversation like context-aware pacing can empower the design of more empathic human-AI communication.2026ZJZhihan Jiang et al.The University of Hong KongConversational ChatbotsAffective Human-Computer DialogueAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismCHI
Vistoria: A Multimodal System to Support Fictional Story Writing through Instrumental Image-Text Co-EditingHumans think visually—we remember in images, dream in pictures, and use visual metaphors to communicate. Yet, most creative writing tools remain text-centric, limiting how writers plan and translate ideas. We present Vistoria, a system for synchronized image-text co-editing in fictional story writing. A formative Wizard-of-Oz co-design study with 10 story writers revealed how sketches, images, and text serve as essential elements for ideation and organization. Drawing on theories of Instrumental Interaction, Vistoria introduces instrumental operations—Lasso, Collage, Perspective Shift, and Filter that enable seamless narrative exploration across modalities. A controlled study with 12 participants shows that co-editing enhances expressiveness, immersion, and collaboration, opening space for writers to follow divergent story directions and craft more vivid, detailed narratives. While multimodality increased cognitive demand, participants reported stronger senses of ownership and agency. These findings demonstrate how multimodal co-editing expands creative potential by balancing abstraction and concreteness in narrative development.2026KFKexue Fu et al.City University of Hong KongAI-Assisted Creative WritingCreative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsCHI
Tell Me What I Missed: Interacting with GPT during Recalling of One-Time Witnessed EventsLLM-assisted technologies are increasingly used to support cognitive processing and information interpretation, yet their role in aiding memory recall—and how people choose to engage with them—remains underexplored. We studied participants who watched a short robbery video (approximating a one-time eyewitness scenario) and composed recall statements using either a default GPT or a guided GPT prompted with a standardized eyewitness protocol. Results show that default-condition participants who believed they had a clearer understanding of the event were more likely to trust GPT’s output, whereas guided-condition participants showed stronger alignment between subjective clarity and actual recall. Additionally, participants evaluated the legitimacy of the individuals in the incident differently across conditions. Interaction analysis further revealed that default-GPT users spontaneously developed diverse strategies, including building on existing recollections, requesting potentially missing details, and treating GPT as a recall coach. This work shows how GPT–user interplay subconsciously affects beliefs and perceptions of remembered events.2026SZSuifang Zhou et al.City University of Hong KongHuman-LLM CollaborationExplainable AI (XAI)Empathy & Emotional DesignCHI
From Tool to Partner: Expressive Behaviors as the Bridge to Human-Robot Creative CollaborationHuman–robot creative collaboration is often constrained by command–response paradigms that position robots as tools rather than partners. While expressive robotics has shown social values, its role and behaviors in shaping creative partnerships with humans remains underexplored. Therefore, we investigate how robots' expressive behaviors influence co-creative engagement. In a formative study with 5 participants, we identified design insights for users to perceive a robot arm's expressive behaviors. We then implemented these expressive behaviors and conducted a within-subject study with 18 participants, comparing functional-only and expressive conditions in figure drawing tasks. Results showed that expressive behaviors significantly enhanced human-robot collaboration where they shifted from viewing the robot as a tool to a partner with a stronger emotional connection and collaborative satisfaction. Our contributions include empirical evidence of partnership transformation and design insights for facilitating human-robot creative collaboration.2026JYJie Yu et al.The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC)Creative Collaboration & Feedback SystemsCHI
“I Was Told to Come Back and Share This”: Social Media-Based Near-Death Experience Disclosures as Expressions of Spiritual BeliefsPeople who experience near-death events often turn to personal expression as a way of processing trauma and articulating their beliefs. While scholars have examined how individuals share near-death experiences (NDEs), limited research has explored how these narratives are communicated collaboratively on today’s social media platforms. We analyzed 200 randomly sampled TikTok videos tagged with \#nde and related hashtags. Content analysis revealed that individuals often use NDE narratives to articulate personal meaning, with spiritual and religious themes appearing in the majority of posts and serving as a means of exploring and making sense of personal spiritual perspectives. Consistent with this, analysis of comment sections reveals that videos containing spiritual themes tend to attract more engagement and foster deeper conversations around faith and meaning. Our findings offer insight into how online platforms facilitate community-level engagement with spirituality, and suggest directions for designing spaces that support shared expression and connection in specialized communities.2026YZYifan Zhao et al.City University of Hong KongSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorMisinformation & Fact-CheckingOnline Identity & Self-PresentationCHI
"I recall the past": Exploring How People Collaborate with Generative AI to Create Cultural Heritage NarrativesVisitors to cultural heritage sites often encounter official information, while local people's unofficial stories remain invisible. To explore generative AI's potential in assisting individuals to access local narratives, we conducted a workshop with 20 participants, asking them to use Stable Diffusion to create images of familiar cultural heritage sites, as well as images of unfamiliar ones for comparison. The results revealed three narrative strategies and highlighted generative AI's strengths in illuminating, amplifying, and reinterpreting personal narratives. However, the AI showed limitations in meeting detailed requirements, portraying cultural features, and avoiding bias, which were particularly pronounced with unfamiliar sites due to participants' lack of local knowledge. To address these challenges, we recommend providing detailed explanations, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning AI models to reduce uncertainties, using objective references to mitigate inaccuracies from participants' inability to recognize errors or misconceptions, and curating datasets to train AI models capable of accurately portraying cultural features.2025ZHZhiting He et al.Games, Entertainment, & CultureCSCW
A Constructed Response: Designing and Choreographing Robot Arm Movements in Collaborative Dance ImprovisationIn dance, dancers improvise and choreograph with each other, prototyping movement designs with each other. These interactions extend into collaboration with technology to enhance the creative process. We want to understand how dancers design and improvise movements together in the case of working with a robotic arm, which serves as an instrument in the stage space capable of non-humanoid movements. We engaged and observed dancers in a workshop to co-create movements with robots in one-human-to-one-robot and three-human-to-one-robot settings. We found that dancers produced more fluid movements in one-to-one scenarios, experiencing a stronger sense of connection and presence with the robot as a co-dancer. Conversely, in three-to-one scenarios, the dancers divided their attention between the human dancers and the robot, resulting in increased perceived use of space and more stop-and-go movements, perceiving the robot as part of the stage background. This work highlights how technologies can drive creativity in movement artists as they adapt to new ways of working with instruments, extending prior research on dancing with inanimate objects by exploring how robotic arms influence creative collaboration. We contribute insights into designing systems that support improvisational processes and artistic collaborations with non-humanoid agents.2025XCXiaoyu CHANG et al.Games, Entertainment, & CultureCSCW
"Salt is the Soul of Hakka Baked Chicken": Reimagining Traditional Chinese Culinary ICH for Modern Contexts Without Losing TraditionIntangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) like traditional culinary practices face increasing pressure to adapt to globalization while maintaining their cultural authenticity. Centuries-old traditions in Chinese cuisine are subject to rapid changes for adaptation to contemporary tastes and dietary preferences. The preservation of these cultural practices requires approaches that can enable ICH practitioners to reimagine and recreate ICH for modern contexts. To address this, we created workshops where experienced practitioners of traditional Chinese cuisine co-created recipes using GenAI tools and realized the dishes. We found that GenAI inspired ICH practitioners to innovate recipes based on traditional workflows for broader audiences and adapt to modern dining contexts. However, GenAI-inspired co-creation posed challenges in maintaining the accuracy of original ICH workflows and preserving traditional flavors in the culinary outcomes. This study offers implications for designing human-AI collaborative processes for safeguarding and enhancing culinary ICH.2025SLSijia Liu et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Participatory DesignFood Culture & Food InteractionC&C
RetroChat: Designing for the Preservation of Past Chinese Online Social ExperiencesRapid changes in social networks have transformed the way people express themselves, turning past neologisms, values, and mindsets embedded in these expressions into online heritage. How can we preserve these expressions as cultural heritage? Instead of traditional archiving methods for static material, we designed an interactive and experiential form of archiving for Chinese social networks. Using dialogue data from 2000-2010 on early Chinese social media, we developed a GPT-driven agent within a retro chat interface, emulating the language and expression style of the period for interaction. Results from a qualitative study with 18 participants show that the design captures the past chatting experience and evokes memory flashbacks and nostalgia feeling through conversation. Participants, particularly those familiar with the era, adapted their language to match the agent's chatting style. This study explores how the design of preservation methods for digital experiences can be informed by experiential representations supported by generative tools.2025SZSuifang Zhou et al.Identity & Avatars in XRMuseum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingC&C
Eliciting (Immersive) Intangibles: GenAI-Supported Collaborative Visual Narration in a Physically Immersive SpaceThis qualitative paper examines the needs of residents to remember a local cultural heritage site collaboratively. The study observes and then designs for intangible affordances supporting this memory recall using the photo-elicitation method with generative artificial intelligence imagery. Specifically, collaboration was observed when editing a panoramic photograph using generative artificial intelligence. These instances were rare, and were analyzed to highlight intangible affordances aiding collaborative memory recall and content creation. Afterward, five examples were correlated to influence the design of an immersive and responsive 360° theatre system using specific combinations of artificial intelligence models to aid subjective recall. In this immersive space, storyteller preferences for edited content are finally made available for new users, thereby affording new collaborative storytelling about a cultural heritage site. As a contribution, this study aids the work of designers and sociologists by showing the photo-elicitation method’s crossdisciplinary relevance to designing for collaborative, yet intangible storytelling affordances.2025MMMarty Miller et al.360° Video & Panoramic ContentGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Interactive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
From Temporal to Spatial: Designing Spatialized Interactions with Segmented-audios in Immersive Environments for Active Engagement with Performing Arts Intangible Cultural HeritagePerformance artforms like Peking opera face transmission challenges due to the extensive passive listening required to understand their nuance. To create engaging forms of experiencing auditory Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), we designed a spatial interaction-based segmented-audio (SISA) Virtual Reality system that transforms passive ICH experiences into active ones. We undertook: (1) a co-design workshop with seven stakeholders to establish design requirements, (2) prototyping with five participants to validate design elements, and (3) user testing with 16 participants exploring Peking Opera. We designed transformations of temporal music into spatial interactions by cutting sounds into short audio segments, applying t-SNE algorithm to cluster audio segments spatially. Users navigate through these sounds by their similarity in audio property. Analysis revealed two distinct interaction patterns (Progressive and Adaptive), and demonstrated SISA's efficacy in facilitating active auditory ICH engagement. Our work illuminates the design process for enriching traditional performance artform using spatially-tuned forms of listening.2025YWYuqi Wang et al.Immersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
"If I were in Space": Understanding and Adapting to Social Isolation through Designing Collaborative StorytellingSocial isolation can lead to pervasive health issues like anxiety and loneliness. Previous work focused on physical interventions like exercise and teleconferencing, but overlooked the narrative potential of adaptive strategies. To address this, we designed a collaborative online storytelling experience in social VR, enabling participants in isolation to design an imaginary space journey as a metaphor for quarantine, in order to learn about their isolation adaptation strategies in the process. Eighteen individuals participated during real quarantine undertaken a virtual role-play experience, designing their own spaceship rooms and engaging in collaborative activities that revealed creative adaptative strategies. Qualitative analyses of participant designs, transcripts, and interactions revealed how they coped with isolation, and how the engagement unexpectedly influenced their adaptation process. This study shows how designing playful narrative experiences, rather than solution-driven approaches, can serve as probes to surface how people navigate social isolation.2025QGQi Gong et al.Social & Collaborative VRIdentity & Avatars in XRSTEM Education & Science CommunicationDIS
Cracking Aegis: An Adversarial LLM-based Game for Raising Awareness of Vulnerabilities in Privacy ProtectionTraditional methods for raising awareness of privacy protection often fail to engage users or provide hands-on insights into how privacy vulnerabilities are exploited. To address this, we incorporate an adversarial mechanic in the design of the dialogue-based serious game Cracking Aegis. Leveraging LLMs to simulate natural interactions, the game challenges players to impersonate characters and extract sensitive information from an AI agent, Aegis. A user study (n=22) revealed that players employed diverse deceptive linguistic strategies, including storytelling and emotional rapport, to manipulate Aegis. After playing, players reported connecting in-game scenarios with real-world privacy vulnerabilities, such as phishing and impersonation, and expressed intentions to strengthen privacy control, such as avoiding oversharing personal information with AI systems. This work highlights the potential of LLMs to simulate complex relational interactions in serious games, while demonstrating how an adversarial strategy provides a unique perspective in designing for social good, particularly in privacy protection.2025JFJiaying Fu et al.Serious & Functional GamesPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingDark Patterns RecognitionDIS
"Becoming My Own Audience": How Dancers React to Avatars Unlike Themselves in Motion Capture-Supported Live Improvisational Performance.The use of motion capture in live dance performances has created an emerging discipline enabling dancers to play different avatars on the digital stage. Unlike classical workflows, avatars enable performers to act as different characters in customized narratives, but research has yet to address how movement, improvisation, and perception change when dancers act as avatars. We created five avatars representing differing genders, shapes, and body limitations, and invited 15 dancers to improvise with each in practice and performance settings. Results show that dancers used avatars to distance themselves from their own habitual movements, exploring new ways of moving through differing physical constraints. Dancers explored using gender-stereotyped movements like powerful or feminine actions, experimenting with gender identity. However, focusing on avatars can coincide with a lack of continuity in improvisation. This work shows how emerging practices with performance technology enable dancers to improvise with new constraints, stepping outside the classical stage.2025FZFan Zhang et al.City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative MediaIdentity & Avatars in XRDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
"Ronaldo's a poser!": How the Use of Generative AI Shapes Debates in Online ForumsOnline debates can enhance critical thinking but may escalate into hostile attacks. As humans are increasingly reliant on Generative AI (GenAI) in writing tasks, we need to understand how people utilize GenAI in online debates. To examine the patterns of writing behavior while making arguments with GenAI, we created an online forum for soccer fans to engage in turn-based and free debates in a post format with the assistance of ChatGPT, arguing on the topic of "Messi vs Ronaldo". After 13 sessions of two-part study and semi-structured interviews with 39 participants, we conducted content and thematic analyses to integrate insights from interview transcripts, ChatGPT records, and forum posts. We found that participants prompted ChatGPT for aggressive responses, created posts with similar content and logical fallacies, and sacrificed the use of ChatGPT for better human-human communication. This work uncovers how polarized forum members work with GenAI to engage in debates online.2025YZYuhan Zeng et al.City University of Hong Kong, Department of Computer ScienceGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Social Platform Design & User BehaviorMisinformation & Fact-CheckingCHI
Can AI Prompt Humans? Multimodal Agents Prompt Players’ Game Actions and Show Consequences to Raise Sustainability AwarenessUnsustainable behaviors are challenging to prevent due to their long-term, often unclear consequences. Serious games offer a promising solution by creating artificial environments where players can immediately experience the outcomes of their actions. To explore this potential, we developed EcoEcho, a GenAI-powered game leveraging multimodal agents to raise sustainability awareness. These agents engage players in natural conversations, prompting them to take in-game actions that lead to visible environmental impacts. We evaluated EcoEcho using a mixed-methods approach with 23 participants. Results show a significant increase in intended sustainable behaviors post-game, although attitudes towards sustainability had only marginal effects, suggesting that in-game actions likely can motivate intended real world behaviors despite similar opinions on sustainability. This finding highlights multimodal agents and action-consequence mechanics to effectively raising sustainability awareness and the potential of motivating real-world behavioral change.2025QZQinshi Zhang et al.University of California, San Diego, University of California, San DiegoGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Serious & Functional GamesSustainable HCICHI
“It’s Like Being On Stage”: Conveying Dancers’ Expressiveness Through A Haptic-Installed Contemporary Dance PerformanceIn dance performances, choreography, music and lighting are combined to convey meaning to the audience. However, this communication typically relies on visual and auditory stimuli alone. While haptic technologies have been leveraged to enhance the perception of dancers’ movements, less focus has been placed on exploring their potential in enhancing dancers’ somatic expressiveness. Through co-design activities with 5 professional contemporary dancers, we crafted an interdisciplinary combination of choreography and haptics. In total, 128 audience members watched one of three live performances while wearing custom-made haptic wristbands. From an open-ended questionnaire and interviews with audience members, we explore how the introduction of haptics deepens their embodied sensations and helps to create a sense of resonance with the dancers. Based on our findings, we discuss implications for future directions in how haptic technologies could drive innovation in dance performances from the point of view of both dancers’ creativity and audience experiences.2025XSXiming Shen et al.Keio University Graduate School of Media DesignHaptic WearablesDance & Body Movement ComputingCHI
"Being Eroded, Piece by Piece": Enhancing Engagement and Storytelling in Cultural Heritage Dissemination by Exhibiting GenAI Co-Creation ArtifactsCultural Heritage is not just about tangible artifacts; it also includes intangible elements such as personal memories, community ties, and envisioned futures. Traditional museums and archives often emphasize physical items like architectural pieces and photos, while overlooking people's personal and emotional connections to cultural heritage. To illustrate the personal connections people have with cultural heritage sites, we designed an exhibition that displayed images created by participants, which represent their perspectives and future visions of cultural heritage sites. The exhibition's images, generated through GenAI, helped participants narratively describe cultural heritage locations, allowing them to express their visions of future threats like over-tourism and climate change on these sites. Contrary to constraints, co-creating with Generative AI associates participants with personal memories of cultural heritage, stimulating personal narratives and promoting deep reflection on cultural heritage preservation. The dissemination strategies we designed illustrate the use of GenAI to empower the expression of matters of cultural value beyond the physical.2024KFKexue Fu et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Museum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationDIS