Understanding Young People’s Creative Goals with Augmented RealityYoung people are major consumers of Augmented Reality (AR) tools like Pokémon GO, but they rarely engage in creating these experiences. Creating with technology gives young people a platform for expressing themselves and making social connections. However, we do not know what young people want to create with AR, as existing AR authoring tools are largely designed for adults. To investigate the requirements for an AR authoring tool, we ran eight design workshops with 17 young people in Argentina and the United States that centered on young people’s perspectives and experiences. We identified four ways in which young people want to create with AR, and contribute the following design implications for designers of AR authoring tools for young people: (1) Blending imagination into AR scenarios to preserve narratives, (2) Making traces of actions visible to foster social presence (3) Exploring how AR artifacts can serve as invitations to connect with others, and (4) Leveraging information asymmetry to encourage learning about the physical world.2025ALAmna Liaqat et al.Perspectives on VRCSCW
Digital Civic Engagement in China: Using “Micro Advice” Platform to Improve People’s LivelihoodMicro Advice is a mobile platform for democratic governance in China, allowing access to voice social issues and advice to the government with the aim of improving people’s livelihood. However, due to the lack of first-hand experience, the current understanding of how end-users utilize Micro Advice to participate in democratic governance is incomplete. We interviewed 12 users to understand their practices and challenges in using the platform. Specifically, we illustrate the user's experience, introduce what difficulties they encountered, and how they strategically use the platform to improve people's livelihood. We also investigate the socio-technical aspects of Micro Advice within the Chinese political context, discussing how to accept and utilize Micro Advice in China's social environment, and develop technological solutions adapted to these backgrounds. Finally, we propose some design implications for civic technology participation platforms. Micro Advice provides a novel, open, and real-time channel for civic engagement, showcasing the practical effects and impact of digitized civic engagement in China. It offers researchers a new perspective for expressing and addressing societal issues. We believe that the innovation and insights of Micro Advice can extend to other types of digitized civic engagement initiatives. We will continue to explore the interactive processes between the government and the public, along with innovative technological approaches.2025YLYeye Li et al.Community Engaged ResearchCSCW
Reviving Mural Art through Generative AI: A Comparative Study of AI-Generated and Hand-Crafted RecreationsVirtual reality (VR) provides an immersive and interactive platform for presenting ancient murals, enhancing users' understanding and appreciation of these invaluable culture treasures. However, traditional hand-crafted methods for recreating murals in VR are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and require significant expertise, limiting their scalability for large-scale mural scenes. To address these challenges, we propose a comprehensive pipeline that leverages generative AI to automate the mural recreation process. This pipeline is validated by the reconstruction of Foguang Temple scene in Dunhuang Murals. A user study comparing the AI-generated scene with a hand-crafted one reveals no significant differences in presence, authenticity, engagement and enjoyment, and emotion. Additionally, our findings identify areas for improvement in AI-generated recreations, such as enhancing historical fidelity and offering customization. This work paves the way for more scalable, efficient, and accessible methods of revitalizing cultural heritage in VR, offering new opportunities for mural preservation, demonstration, and dissemination using VR.2025SZShuo Zhao et al.Duke Kunshan University, Data Science Research CenterImmersion & Presence ResearchGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Museum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationCHI
"Voices Help Correlate Signs and Words": Analyzing Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) TikTokers’ Content, Practices, and PitfallsVideo-sharing platforms such as TikTok have offered new opportunities for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) people to create public-facing content using sign language -- an integral part of DHH culture. Besides sign language, DHH creators deal with a variety of modalities when creating videos, such as captions and audio. However, hardly any work has comprehensively addressed DHH creators' multimodal practices with the lay public's reactions taken into account. In this paper, we systematically analyzed 308 DHH-authored TikTok videos using a mixed-methods approach, focusing on DHH TikTokers' content, practices, pitfalls, and viewer engagement. Our findings highlight that while voice features such as synchronous voices are scant and challenging for DHH TikTokers, they may help promote viewer engagement. Other empirical findings, including the distributions of topics, practices, pitfalls, and their correlations with viewer engagement, further lead to actionable suggestions for DHH TikTokers and video-sharing platforms.2024JCJiaxun Cao et al.Duke Kunshan UniversityTeleoperated DrivingDeaf & Hard-of-Hearing Support (Captions, Sign Language, Vibration)CHI
"I Deleted It After the Overturn of Roe v. Wade": Understanding Women's Privacy Concerns Toward Period-Tracking Apps in the Post Roe v. Wade EraThe overturn of Roe v. Wade has taken away the constitutional right to abortion. Prior work shows that period-tracking apps' data practices can be used to detect pregnancy and abortion, hence putting women at risk of being prosecuted. It is unclear how much women know about the privacy practices of such apps and how concerned they are after the overturn. Such knowledge is critical to designing effective strategies for stakeholders to enhance women's reproductive privacy. We conducted an online 183-participant vignette survey with US women from states with diverse policies on abortion. Participants were significantly concerned about the privacy practices of the period-tracking apps, such as data access by law enforcement and third parties. However, participants felt uninformed and powerless about risk mitigation practices. We provide several recommendations to enhance women's privacy awareness toward their period-tracking practices.2024JCJiaxun Cao et al.Duke Kunshan University, Duke UniversityAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingCHI
StarRescue: the Design and Evaluation of A Turn-Taking Collaborative Game for Facilitating Autistic Children's Social SkillsAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) presents challenges in social interaction skill development, particularly in turn-taking. Digital interventions offer potential solutions for improving autistic children's social skills but often lack addressing specific collaboration techniques. Therefore, we designed a prototype of a turn-taking collaborative tablet game, StarRescue, which encourages children's distinct collaborative roles and interdependence while progressively enhancing sharing and mutual planning skills. We further conducted a controlled study with 32 autistic children to evaluate StarRescue's usability and potential effectiveness in improving their social skills. Findings indicated that StarRescue has great potential to foster turn-taking skills and social communication skills (e.g., prompting, negotiation, task allocation) within the game and also extend beyond the game. Additionally, we discussed implications for future work, such as including parents as game spectators and understanding autistic children's territory awareness in collaboration. Our study contributes a promising digital intervention for autistic children's turn-taking social skill development via a scaffolding approach and valuable design implications for future research.2024RBRongqi Bei et al.University of MichiganCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Serious & Functional GamesCHI
Technology-Mediated Non-pharmacological Interventions for Dementia: Needs for and Challenges in Professional, Personalized and Multi-Stakeholder Collaborative InterventionsDesigning and using technologies to support Non-Pharmacological Interventions (NPI) for People with Dementia (PwD) has drawn increasing attention in HCI, with the potential expectations of higher user engagement and positive outcomes. Yet, technologies for NPI can only be valuable if practitioners successfully incorporate them into their ongoing intervention practices beyond a limited research period. Currently, we know little about how practitioners experience and perceive these technologies in practical NPI for PwD. In this paper, we investigate this question through observations of five in-person NPI activities and interviews with 11 therapists and 5 caregivers. Our findings elaborate the practical NPI workflow process and characteristics, and practitioners’ attitudes, experiences, and perceptions to technology-mediated NPI in practice. Generally, our participants emphasized practical NPI is a complex and professional practice, needing fine-grained, personalized evaluation and planning, and the practical executing process is situated, and multi-stakeholder collaborative. Yet, existing technologies often fail to consider these specific characteristics, which leads to limitations in practical effectiveness or sustainable use. Drawing on our findings, we discuss the possible implications for designing more useful and practical NPI intervention technologies.2024YSYuling Sun et al.East China Normal UniversityElderly Care & Dementia SupportCHI
NeuralGait: Assessing Brain Health Using Your Smartphone"Brain health attracts more recent attention as the population ages. Smartphone-based gait sensing and analysis can help identify the risks of brain diseases in daily life for prevention. Existing gait analysis approaches mainly hand-craft temporal gait features or developing CNN-based feature extractors, but they are either prone to lose some inconspicuous pathological information or are only dedicated to a single brain disease screening. We discover that the relationship between gait segments can be used as a principle and generic indicator to quantify multiple pathological patterns. In this paper, we propose NeuralGait, a pervasive smartphone-cloud system that passively captures and analyzes principle gait segments relationship for brain health assessment. On the smartphone end, inertial gait data are collected while putting the smartphone in the pants pocket. We then craft local temporal-frequent gait domain features and develop a self-attention-based gait segment relationship encoder. Afterward, the domain features and relation features are fed to a scalable RiskNet in the cloud for brain health assessment. We also design a pathological hot update protocol to efficiently add new brain diseases in the RiskNet. NeuralGait is practical as it provides brain health assessment with no burden in daily life. In the experiment, we recruit 988 healthy people and 417 patients with a single or combination of PD, TBI, and stroke, and evaluate the brain health assessment using a set of specifically designed metrics including global accuracy, exact accuracy, sensitivity, and false alarm rate. We also demonstrate the generalization (e.g., analysis of feature effectiveness and model efficiency) and inclusiveness of NeuralGait. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569476"2023HLHuining Li et al.Fitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringUbiComp
WavoID: Robust and Secure Multi-modal User Identification via mmWave-voice MechanismWith the increasing deployment of voice-controlled devices in homes and enterprises, there is an urgent demand for voice identification to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and property loss. However, due to the broadcast nature of sound wave, a voice only system is vulnerable to adverse conditions and malicious attacks. We observe that the cooperation of millimeter waves (mmWave) and voice signals can significantly improve the effectiveness and security of user identification. Based on the properties, we propose a multi-modal user identification system (named WavoID) by fusing the uniqueness of mmWave sensed vocal vibration and mic-recorded voice of users. To estimate fine-grained waveforms, WavoID splits signals and adaptively combines useful decomposed signals according to correlative contents in both mmWave and voice. An elaborated anti-spoofing module in WavoID comprising biometric bimodal information defend against attacks. WavoID produces and fuses the response maps of mmWave and voice to improve the representation power of fused features, benefiting accurate identification, even facing adverse circumstances. We evaluate WavoID using commercial sensors on extensive experiments. WavoID has significant performance on user identification with over 98% accuracy on 100 user datasets.2023TLTiantian Liu et al.Eye Tracking & Gaze InteractionBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackPasswords & AuthenticationUIST
"I Am a Mirror Dweller": Probing the Unique Strategies Users Take to Communicate in the Context of Mirrors in Social Virtual RealityIncreasingly popular social virtual reality (VR) platforms like VRChat created new ways for people to interact with each other, generating dedicated user communities with unique idioms of socializing in an alternative world. In VRChat, users frequently gather in front of mirrors en masse during online interactions. Understanding how user communities deal with the mirror's unique interactions can generate insights for supporting communication in social VR. In this study, we investigated the mirror’s synergistic effect with avatars on behaviors and dedicated user conversational performance. Qualitative findings indicate that avatar-mediated communication through mirrors provides functions like ensuring synchronization of incarnations, increasing immersion, and enhancing idealized embodiment to express bolder behaviors anonymously. Quantitative studies show that while mirrors improve self-perception, it has a potentially adverse effect on conversational performance, similar to the role of self-viewing in video conferencing. Studying how users interact with mirrors in an immersive environment allows us to explore how digital environments affect spatialized interactions when transported from physical to digital domains.2023KFKexue Fu et al.Hongshen Honors School, Hongshen Honors SchoolSocial & Collaborative VRImmersion & Presence ResearchIdentity & Avatars in XRCHI
Just Do Something: Comparing Self-proposed and Machine-recommended Stress Interventions among Online Workers with Home Sweet OfficeModern stress management techniques have been shown to be effective, particularly when applied systematically and with the supervision of an instructor. However, online workers usually lack sufficient support from therapists and learning resources to self-manage their stress. To better assist these users, we implemented a browser-based application, Home Sweet Office (HSO), to administer a set of stress micro-interventions which mimic existing therapeutic techniques, including somatic, positive psychology, meta cognitive, and cognitive behavioral categories. In a four-week field study, we compared random and machine-recommended interventions to interventions that were self-proposed by participants in order to investigate effective content and recommendation methods. Our primary findings suggest that both machine-recommended and self-proposed interventions had significantly higher momentary efficacy than random selection, whereas machine-recommended interventions offer more activity diversity compared to self-proposed interventions. We conclude with reflections on these results, discuss features and mechanisms which might improve efficacy, and suggest areas for future work.2023XTXin Tong et al.Duke Kunshan UniversitySleep & Stress MonitoringWorkplace Wellbeing & Work StressCHI
DreamVR: Curating an Interactive Exhibition in Social VR Through an Autobiographical Design StudyVirtual exhibitions have long been regarded as an extension of information delivery for physical exhibitions. However, what virtual exhibitions can offer audiences as a novel experience independently from physical exhibitions has been largely unexplored. In this study, we aim to understand the promises and challenges of experiencing and curating exhibitions in VR by interviewing nine expert curators. Drawing from expert insights, we summarized a set of design guidelines to inform what we can learn and adapt from physical exhibitions when curating in VR. Then, using an autobiographical design approach, we curated an interactive exhibition in VRChat to explore novel interaction techniques. We also hosted an open tour guide in the user study to validate our design guidelines with thirty participants. Results show that our approach of curating an exhibition in VRChat provided the participants with engaging and novel experiences interacting with the exhibits and other audiences.2023JCJiaxun Cao et al.Duke Kunshan University, Duke Kunshan UniversitySocial & Collaborative VRInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Community-Driven Information Accessibility: Online Sign Language Content Creation within d/Deaf CommunitiesInformation access is one of the most significant challenges faced by d/Deaf signers due to a lack of sign language information. As machine-driven solutions face challenges, we seek to understand how d/Deaf communities can create, share, and support the growth of sign language content. Based on interviews with 12 d/Deaf people in China, we found that d/Deaf videos, i.e., sign language videos created by and for d/Deaf people, can be crucial information sources and educational materials. Combining a content analysis of 360 d/Deaf videos, we reveal how d/Deaf communities co-create information accessibility through collaboration in online content creation. We uncover two major challenges that creators encounter, i.e., difficulties in translation and inconsistent content qualities. We propose potential opportunities and future research directions to support d/Deaf people's needs for sign language information through collaboration within d/Deaf communities.2023XTShiliang Tang et al.University of California, IrvineDeaf & Hard-of-Hearing Support (Captions, Sign Language, Vibration)Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)Universal & Inclusive DesignCHI
"I Never Imagined Grandma Could Do So Well with Technology'': Evolving Roles of Younger Family Members in Older Adults' Technology Learning and UseOlder adults' technology learning is a long-term process, during which family members often play significant roles. Although much research has emphasized how family support is important, little research has dove into the evolution of family dynamics when older adults are learning to use new technology. Drawing on the results from a qualitative study that performed semi-structured interviews with 20 older adults and 18 younger adults in China, we unpack how family members were involved in technology learning over time. Our findings suggest that younger family members play transformative roles throughout older adults' learning stages, i.e., as influencers, supporters, protectors, and monitors. Younger family members' roles co-evolve with not only older adults' changing needs but also their perceptions of older adults' learning abilities and online behaviors. They may struggle to adjust their teaching strategies to accommodate older adults' needs and abilities during the process. They may also worry about older adults' online benefits and safety as many older adults become far more active online than anticipated. Challenges while teaching and tensions regarding protection may thus emerge during the support process. With these findings, we suggest that older adults' technology learning should be treated as a collaborative activity with family members rather than an activity they pursue alone. We also highlight older adults' technology learning as a recurrent, dynamic, and evolving process, and call attention to the unique culture of "xiaoshun" in China that acts as a buffer to the burdens and tensions found with family support.2022XTXinru Tang et al.Parenting and Families; Parenting and FamiliesCSCW