"Same Voice, Different Language": An Exploration of Voice-Cloned Translation to Support Non-Native Speakers in Online MeetingsCross-lingual meetings have become essential for global collaboration, yet current translation technologies often strip away vocal identity — the unique speaker characteristics that convey nuance and social presence. While generic text-to-speech (TTS) provides basic intelligibility, it creates a disconnect between speakers and their translated voices, potentially undermining engagement and comprehension. This paper investigates whether voice cloning technology can bridge this gap by preserving speaker identity in real-time translation. We present a controlled study comparing four voice conditions in meeting interpretation: original speech, gender-neutral TTS, gender-matched TTS, and voice cloning. Through a within-subjects experiment with 45 participants, we demonstrate that voice cloning significantly reduces mental workload ($p < .001$) and enhances user experience across pragmatic quality ($p < .001$), hedonic quality ($p < .001$), and overall satisfaction ($p < .001$) compared to traditional TTS. While original speech maintained advantages in naturalness, voice cloning achieved superior intelligibility, social impression, and user preference. Qualitative analysis revealed that participants valued voice cloning for preserving speaker identity and improving conversation tracking in multi-speaker scenarios. Our findings suggest that identity-preserving translation represents a significant advancement for cross-lingual communication systems, offering both cognitive and social benefits. We conclude with design implications for integrating voice cloning into meeting platforms while addressing ethical considerations around consent and transparency.2026YMYong Ma et al.University of BergenMultilingual & Cross-Cultural Voice InteractionVoice User Interface (VUI) DesignHuman-LLM CollaborationIUI
Operationalizing Perceptions of Agent Gender: Foundations and GuidelinesThe “gender” of intelligent agents, virtual characters, social robots, and other agentic machines has emerged as a fundamental topic in studies of people's interactions with computers. Perceptions of agent gender can help explain user attitudes and behaviours—from preferences to toxicity to stereotyping—across a variety of systems and contexts of use. Yet, standards in capturing perceptions of agent gender do not exist. A scoping review was conducted to clarify how agent gender has been operationalized—labelled, defined, and measured—as a perceptual variable. One-third of studies manipulated but did not measure agent gender. Norms in operationalizations remain obscure, limiting comprehension of results, congruity in measurement, and comparability for meta-analyses. The dominance of the gender binary model and latent anthropocentrism have placed arbitrary limits on knowledge generation and reified the status quo. We contribute a systematically-developed and theory-driven meta-level framework that offers operational clarity and practical guidance for greater rigour and inclusivity.2026KSKatie Seaborn et al.Institute of Science TokyoAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismGender & Race Issues in HCITechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
A Meat-Summer Night's Dream: A Tangible Design Fiction Exploration of Eating Biohybrid Flying Robots\textit{What if future dining involved eating robots?} We explore this question through a playful and poetic experiential dinner theater: a tangible design fiction staged as a 2052 Paris restaurant where diners consume a biohybrid flying robot in place of the banned delicacy of ortolan bunting. Moving beyond textual or visual speculation, our “dinner-in-the-drama” combined performance, ritual, and multisensory immersion to provoke reflection on sustainability, ethics, and cultural identity. Six participants from creative industries engaged as diners and role-players, responding with curiosity, discomfort, and philosophical debate. They imagined biohybrids as both plausible and unsettling—raising questions of sentience, symbolism, and technology adoption that extend beyond conventional sustainability framings of synthetic meat. Our contributions to HCI are threefold: (i) a speculative artifact that stages robots as food, (ii) empirical insights into how people negotiate cultural and ethical boundaries in post-natural eating, and (iii) a methodological advance in embodied, multisensory design fiction.2026ZWZiming Wang et al.Chalmers University of TechnologyDesign FictionHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)Digital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceCHI
Queer, Nonbinary, or Ambiguous? Rethinking Voice Labels through Queer Theory in HCIThis paper explores how feminist and queer theories can inform voice design in technology, particularly in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It argues that biological sex and gender are socially constructed and performative, and that voice is a site where identity is both enacted and interpreted. Building on this framework, the paper examines the political and cultural implications of labels such as ``ambiguous'', ``queer'' and ``nonbinary'' in voice design. While ``ambiguous'' voices aim to reduce gendering broadly, ``queer'' and ``nonbinary'' voices intentionally represent gender-non-conforming people and challenge binary thinking. To ground this analysis in community perspectives, we report findings from a survey with nonbinary participants, examining how they label voices constructed from gender-expansive individuals and which terms they find most affirming. With this work, we offer practical guidelines for labelling voices in ways that affirm queer and nonbinary identities, clarifying when terms like ``queer'' and ``nonbinary'' are preferable and when ``ambiguous'' may be appropriate. Recognising these distinctions is key to inclusive design.2026MCMartina De Cet et al.Chalmers University of Technology and University of GothenburgAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismInclusive DesignGender & Race Issues in HCICHI
Request a Note: How the Request Function Shapes X's Community Notes SystemX's Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking system. To improve its scalability, X introduced ``Request Community Note'' feature, enabling users to solicit fact-checks from contributors on specific posts. Yet, its implications for the system---what gets checked, by whom, and with what quality---remain unclear. Using 98,685 requested posts and their associated notes, we evaluate how requests shape the Community Notes system. We find that requested posts with higher GPT-estimated misleadingness and from authors with greater misinformation exposure are more likely to receive notes. Conversely, requested political posts (vs. non-political) are less likely to receive notes. We also observe partisan asymmetries: posts from Republicans are more likely to receive notes than those from Democrats. Although only 12% of requested posts receive request-fostered notes from top contributors, these notes are rated as more helpful and less polarized than others, partly reflecting top contributors' selective fact-checking of misleading posts. Our findings highlight both the limitations and promise of requests for scaling high-quality community-based fact-checking.2026YCYuwei Chuai et al.University of LuxembourgContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceMisinformation & Fact-CheckingVolunteer Coordination & Crowdsourced Disaster ReliefCHI
AI That Moves With You: A Review of Interactive Technologies Powered by Large Foundation Models for Mobility ImpairmentLarge foundation models (FMs) -- including large language model (LLM), large vision model (LVM), vision language model (VLM), and related variants -- are rapidly reshaping interactive assistive technologies during past years. We present a review of FM-enabled interactive systems for people with mobility impairments, covering work published from January 2020 to May 2025. Searching five databases, we screened 6,249 records and included 27 full papers. We first summerize descriptive results including study design and evaluation approaches of the reviewed studies. We then synthesize FM techniques, model integration patterns, interaction paradigms, and mobility impairment contexts. Our analysis surfaces and distills both technical and ethical challenges existed, lighting up future research topics. We contribute: (i) a conceptualization of FM-enabled interactions for mobility impairment functioning as a design space; (ii) a tabulated corpus with a reproducible codebook; and (iii) a forward agenda to guide and inspire the design of future mobility-assistance interactive systems within human-computer interaction (HCI) and CHI community.2026DDDuosi Dai et al.Aarhus universityGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationMotor Impairment Assistive Input TechnologiesCHI
Mind Over Matter - Investigating the Influence of Driver's Perception in the Misuse of Automated VehiclesAs vehicles with several levels of automation become increasingly common, there is an increase in incidents involving the misuse of Driving Automation Systems (DAS). The manner in which drivers interact with DAS indicates that the problem extends beyond UI design. We investigate how drivers' perceptions and expectations affect the understanding and consequent usage of DAS. The study employed a Wizard-of-Oz approach to simulate a vehicle with a Level 2 and Level 3 DAS on a public highway. Sixteen participants were exposed to the two driving modes and two distinct UIs. Observations, think-aloud protocols, and in-depth interviews documented their interaction with the different DAS. Irrespective of the UI, various errors were detected, including omission, commission, mode confusion. Deeper investigation into the sources led to the conclusion that drivers' preconceptions of the DAS were a major contributor, resulting in misuse. This highlights the need to look beyond UI design as a sole solution to address driver-vehicle interaction.2025FNFjollë Novakazi et al.Head-Up Display (HUD) & Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)AI-Assisted Decision-Making & AutomationAutoUI
Hearing Ambiguity: Exploring Beyond-Gender Impressions of Artificial Ambiguous VoicesVoice perception plays a fundamental role in all types of interactions, from human-to-human communication to human-technology interaction. When it comes to technology, we sometimes have the option to choose the type of voice we want to hear. But why is the default (almost) always a feminine or masculine voice? In this research, we evaluated user perceptions of gender-ambiguous voices, a relatively unexplored option. In our novel comparative study, we evaluated six gender-ambiguous voices with participants of diverse gender identities (men, women, and non-binary individuals), with 74 participants in each group. Additionally, half of the participants were told in advance that the voices had been designed to be gender-ambiguous, and half were not. We aimed to move beyond subjective perceptions of voice gender by exploring how such voices are perceived across different dimensions: trustworthiness, appeal, comfort, anthropomorphism, and aversion. Our findings reveal that while men and women had similar perceptions, non-binary participants rated the voices more negatively, with lower trust and higher aversion. Interestingly, priming participants about the voices' ambiguity did not significantly affect overall perceptions, though it increased critical evaluations from non-binary individuals. These findings contribute to growing research on gender-ambiguous voices by providing perceptual comparisons of multiple voices and highlighting the need for more inclusive voice designs that appeal to non-binary users.2025MCMartina De Cet et al.Voice User Interface (VUI) DesignMultilingual & Cross-Cultural Voice InteractionAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismCUI
Making Intimate Technologies TogetherFeminist research highlights the urgent need to challenge the oppressive design of commercial intimate technologies, particularly how the FemTech industry restricts access to intimate bodily knowledge through paywalls and proprietary systems. Yet, for decades, women and marginalized communities have turned to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) or 'hacking' practices to reclaim control over their own gynecology and intimate health, addressing gaps often ignored by medical research and healthcare. Inspired by visual themes from these movements, this pictorial critically explores how designers and HCI researchers might advance DIY approaches to intimate technologies. We exemplify this with reflections from a series of workshops on handmade intimate sensors, and draw out the joyful potential of collaborative making—building alliances, destigmatizing intimate health, and using craft to subvert gender stereotypes. We discuss matters of safety when making together and contribute to ongoing work on building feminist makerspaces.2025NWNadia Campo Woytuk et al.LGBTQ+ Community Technology DesignParticipatory DesignFood Culture & Food InteractionDIS
Prefer2SD: A Human-in-the-Loop Approach to Balancing Similarity and Diversity in In-Game Friend RecommendationsIn-game friend recommendations significantly impact player retention and sustained engagement in online games. Balancing similarity and diversity in recommendations is crucial for fostering stronger social bonds across diverse player groups. However, automated recommendation systems struggle to achieve this balance, especially as player preferences evolve over time. To tackle this challenge, we introduce Prefer2SD (derived from Preference to Similarity and Diversity), an iterative, human-in-the-loop approach designed to optimize the similarity-diversity (SD) ratio in friend recommendations. Developed in collaboration with a local game company, Prefer2D leverages a visual analytics system to help experts explore, analyze, and adjust friend recommendations dynamically, incorporating players' shifting preferences. The system employs interactive visualizations that enable experts to fine-tune the balance between similarity and diversity for distinct player groups. We demonstrate the efficacy of Prefer2SD through a within-subjects study (N=12), a case study, and expert interviews, showcasing its ability to enhance in-game friend recommendations and offering insights for the broader field of personalized recommendation systems.2025XWXiyuan Wang et al.Recommender System UXGamification DesignIUI
Breaking the Binary: A Systematic Review of Gender-Ambiguous Voices in Human-Computer InteractionVoice interfaces come in many forms in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), such as voice assistants and robots. These are often gendered, i.e. they sound masculine or feminine. Recently, there has been a surge in creating gender-ambiguous voices, aiming to make voice interfaces more inclusive and less prone to stereotyping. In this paper, we present the first systematic review of research on gender-ambiguous voices in HCI literature, with an in-depth analysis of 36 articles. We report on the definition and availability of gender-ambiguous voices, creation methods, user perception and evaluation techniques. We conclude with several concrete action points: clarifying key terminology and definitions for terms such as gender-ambiguous, gender-neutral, and non-binary; conducting an initial acoustic analysis of gender-ambiguous voices; taking initial steps toward standardising evaluation metrics for these voices; establishing an open-source repository of gender-ambiguous voices; and developing a framework for their creation and use. These recommendations provide important insights for fostering the development and adoption of inclusive voice technologies.2025MCMartina De Cet et al.Chalmers University of TechnologyVoice User Interface (VUI) DesignAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismInclusive DesignCHI
Identifying Critical Points of Departure for the Design of Self-Fashioning TechnologiesDesigning technologies that clothe, adorn, or are otherwise placed on the body raises questions concerning the role they will play in dressing ourselves. We situate self-fashioning – or the process through which we stylise and present our bodies – as a complex practice where a series of social, material, and contextual factors shape how we present ourselves. Informed by reflective discussions and projective design tools, we contribute three critical points of departure for self-fashioning technologies: (i) Purposeful examining discomfort as an ongoing phenomenon, (ii) Supporting mimesis and visibility as qualities to be negotiated, and (iii) Envisioning the multiplicity of the body. We call for the design community to help devise fashionable technologies that are sensitive, caring, and responsive to the complexities of fashioning our bodies.2025RCRebeca Blanco Cardozo et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyHaptic WearablesInclusive DesignCHI
ClueCart: Supporting Game Story Interpretation and Narrative Inference from Fragmented CluesIndexical storytelling is gaining popularity in video games, where the narrative unfolds through fragmented clues. This approach fosters player-generated content and discussion, as story interpreters piece together the overarching narrative from these scattered elements. However, the fragmented and non-linear nature of the clues makes systematic categorization and interpretation challenging, potentially hindering efficient story reconstruction and creative engagement. To address these challenges, we first proposed a hierarchical taxonomy to categorize narrative clues, informed by a formative study. Using this taxonomy, we designed ClueCart, a creativity support tool aimed at enhancing creators' ability to organize story clues and facilitate intricate story interpretation. We evaluated ClueCart through a between-subjects study (N=40), using Miro as a baseline. The results showed that ClueCart significantly improved creators' efficiency in organizing and retrieving clues, thereby better supporting their creative processes. Additionally, we offer design insights for future studies focused on player-centric narrative analysis.2025XWXiyuan Wang et al.ShanghaiTech University, School of Information Science and TechnologyRole-Playing & Narrative GamesInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Do Your Expectations Match? A Mixed-Methods Study on the Association Between a Robot's Voice and AppearanceBoth physical appearance and voice can elicit mental images of what someone and/or something should sound and look like. This is particularly relevant for human-robot interaction design and research since any voice can be added to a robot. Therefore, it is important to give robots voices that match users' expectations. In this paper, we examined the voice-appearance association by asking participants to match a robot image with a voice (Experiment 1, N = 24), and vice versa, a voice with a robot image (Experiment 2, N = 24), in two mixed-methods studies. We looked at participants' differences that could influence the voice-robot association (gender and nationality) and at voice and robot features that could influence participants' voice preferences (voice gender, pitch and robot's appearance). Results show that nationality influenced participants' association with a robot image after hearing its voice. Furthermore, a content analysis identified that when creating a voice mental image, participants looked at robots' gendered characteristics and height and they paid special attention to human-like and gender-specific cues in a voice when forming a mental image of a robot. Sociological differences also emerged, with Swedish participants suggesting the use of gender-neutral voices to avoid strengthening existing stereotypes, and Italians saying the opposite. Our work highlights the importance of individual differences in the robot voice-appearance association and the importance of involving the end user in designing the voice.2024MCMartina De Cet et al.Agent Personality & AnthropomorphismSocial Robot InteractionCUI
MoodShaper: A Virtual Reality Experience to Support Managing Negative EmotionsNegative emotions such as sadness or anger are often seen as something to be avoided. However, recognising, processing and regulating challenging emotional experiences can facilitate personal growth and is essential for long-term well-being. To support people in regulating and reflecting on negative emotions, we designed MoodShaper — a VR experience where participants autonomously create a virtual environment combined with emotion regulation (ER) interventions. Our system included three different interventions designed based on interviews with psychotherapists. We evaluated MoodShaper in a mixed-method between-subject study with $n=60$ participants. Participants experienced one of the three ER interventions, allowing them to manipulate visual representations of negative emotions through either externalisation, seclusion, or appreciation. We found that MoodShaper significantly increased positive affect while decreasing difficulties in ER and negative affect. Our work demonstrates how VR can provide technology-mediated support to reflect on, engage with and manage negative emotions. We contribute insights for future VR systems which support ER for challenging situations.2024NWNadine Wagener et al.Immersion & Presence ResearchVR Medical Training & RehabilitationMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesDIS
ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data PhysicalizationBuilding tangible interfaces or data physicalizations is a resource-intensive endeavour. There is a need for rapid means to prototype tangibles in order to facilitate research and design. To this end, we designed ProtoBricks: a research toolkit that uses capacitive bricks to facilitate rapid prototyping for tangible interfaces. Utilizing toy bricks that do not contain electronics, ProtoBricks can record brick position and color. Specialized knowledge is not required to build our system as it uses widely available components and 3D printing. We contribute the full software and hardware specification of the toolkit. We evaluate the utility of the toolkit by reporting on past use cases and prototyping workshops. We show that the toolkit facilitates creativity and effectively supports prototyping. ProtoBricks lowers the entry threshold for experimenting with tangible interfaces and enables researchers and designers to focus on the interaction with their prototype, delegating implementation to the toolkit.2024JDJulia Dominiak et al.Data PhysicalizationCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingDIS
Requirements and Attitudes towards Explainable AI in Law EnforcementIn high-stakes areas such as law enforcement, where artificial intelligence has the potential to enhance effectiveness and inclusivity, its decisions must be both informed and accountable. Thus, designing explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) for such settings is a key social concern. Yet, explanations in practice are often overly technical or abstract. To address this, our study engaged with police employees in an EU country, who are users of a text classifier. We found that for them, usability and usefulness are paramount in explanation design, whereas interpretability and understandability are less emphasized. Drawing from these insights, we suggest design guidelines centred on clarity and relevance for domain experts. We contribute recommendations which guide XAI system designers to better cater to the specific needs of specialized users and promote the responsible use of AI tools in public service.2024EHElize Herrewijnen et al.Explainable AI (XAI)AI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityDIS
The Undertable: A Design Remake of the Mediated BodyTables are a ubiquitous piece of furniture, a familiar sight in most environments from intimate to public. The dimensions of social interplay surrounding every single table are profoundly complex. In our project, we lift the importance of the neglected space under the table through the playful development of a tangible prototype. We approached this by a design remake of the Mediated Body: a wearable prototype encouraging touch between strangers using the conductivity of the skin. Instead, we leverage the familiarity of tables as a means to encourage playful explorations of bare-skin touch. We report in visual and textual form on the emerging design knowledge throughout our design process, including first-person narratives by the designers. We contribute with (1) a series of counterfactual table artifacts inspired by the Mediated Body; (2) a sequence of participant studies analysed through reflexive thematic analysis and summarised into the notion of ``an odd invitation'' as a new lens for homo explorens; and (3) an appeal to the importance of design remakes for research-through-design.2024SHSjoerd Hendriks et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
In Praise of Shadows: Sensibility and Somaesthetic Appreciation for Shadows in Interaction DesignWherever there is light, there is shadow --- an inevitable immaterial material, with an undeniable presence in interaction gestalt. Inspired by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's book In Praise of Shadows, we report on our journey towards building a sensibility and somaesthetic appreciation for shadows physically, metaphorically, and poetically. To investigate the idea of cultivating attentiveness to shadows, we embarked on a "dérive"-inspired adventure, gathering first-person perceptions and photographs of tables. We analysed these examples of tables and their shadows in order to inform the development of a project on interactive tables. Along with the artifact collection, we present a set of concepts, an initial prototype, and reflections on our own experience in developing this sensibility. We discuss shadows as a design material and an example of a design sensibility: a skill that can be sparked, fostered, and ultimately embedded.2024MGMafalda Gamboa et al.Design FictionDIS
The Human Behind the Robot: Rethinking the Low Social Status of Service RobotsRobots in our society are commonly perceived as subordinate servants with a lower social status than humans. This often leads to humans prioritizing themselves during conflict situations. This becomes problematic when robots start to directly represent humans as proxies if people do not think of the human operator behind them. This could be considered a cognitive bias of human representation in HRI. To explore the extent of this problem, we conducted a user study featuring several conflict situations. Participants granted more priority to the robot when the human representation was visible. This paper explores the societal consequences and emerging inequities such as potentially deprioritizing humans by deprioritizing a robot in certain situations. Possible strategies to address potential negative consequences are discussed on a design level while acknowledging that a societal change in how we perceive and treat robots that represent humans might be necessary.2024FBFranziska Babel et al.Privacy by Design & User ControlSocial Robot InteractionHuman-Robot Collaboration (HRC)HRI