From Sleep Scores to Self-Knowledge: Older Adults’ Experiences with Tracking Sleep Using the Oura RingAs people age, sleep often becomes lighter, more fragmented, and a source of increasing concern. Smart rings, like Oura, offer a discreet and comfortable means of supporting sleep tracking, yet it remains unclear how older adults engage with the sleep-related insights they provide. Our research investigates how older adults engage with wearable-derived physiological and behavioural sleep data, the barriers they encounter in understanding health metrics, and the ways these technologies influence self-perception and wellbeing practices. We report findings from a one-month diary study (n=20) and follow-up interviews (n=10) after around four months of ring use. Participants reflected on the meanings they attributed to app-based metrics, and whether such feedback felt useful, confusing, or intrusive, revealing misalignments with youthful defaults that negatively impacted engagement. We explore this in terms of "age friction" and discuss opportunities for more age-inclusive wearable technologies that promote meaningful engagement with personal health and wellbeing data.2026ASAneesha Singh et al.University College LondonHealth Self-TrackingBehavior Change & Reflection TechnologyAging-Friendly Technology DesignCHI
StylusPort: Investigating Teleportation using Stylus in VRWith a stylus, users can both sweep sketches across models and pinpoint locations with precision. Building on this dual capability, we explore how teleportation can be integrated into stylus interaction without disrupting the flow of common stylus usage. We introduce two key ideas: flipping the stylus as an intuitive mode switch between drawing and teleportation, and using gaze to set orientation while the stylus handles positioning. In a user study that features a teleport-and-orient task, we evaluate six teleportation techniques, covering two mode-switching methods (Button and Flip) and three orientation approaches (StylusRoll, StylusPoint, and GazePoint). The results offer new insights into the relative merits and limitations of each technique. Our work contributes to knowledge about teleportation in VR and fills the gap in seamlessly integrating teleportation with stylus use in 3D.2026YLYang Liu et al.Aarhus UniversitySocial & Collaborative VRHand Gesture RecognitionEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionCHI
Gaze and Speech in Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction: A Scoping ReviewMultimodal interaction has long promised to make interfaces more intuitive and effective by combining complementary inputs. Among these, gaze and speech form a compelling pairing: gaze provides rapid spatial grounding, while speech conveys rich semantic information. Together, they offer rich cues for understanding user behaviour and intent. Yet despite decades of exploration, the research remains fragmented, making this synthesis timely as these inputs mature and are integrated into consumer-ready devices. This scoping review examined 103 studies published between 1991 and 2025, organised into \emph{explicit}, where users intentionally provide gaze and speech, and \emph{implicit}, where systems leverage users' natural behaviours to support interaction. Across both, we identified recurring ways for combining gaze and speech to resolve ambiguity, ground references, and support adaptivity. We contribute a synthesis of research on their combined use while highlighting challenges of temporal alignment, fusion and privacy, offering guidance for future research toward richer multimodal human-computer interaction.2026AKAnam Ahmad Khan et al.KAISTEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionVoice User Interface (VUI) DesignAffective Human-Computer DialogueCHI
Preshaping Hand Behaviour for Direct and Indirect Manipulation of 3D ObjectsEffortless manipulation informs and relies on preshaping: the subconscious posing of the hand before grasping. Virtual environments and the design of interaction techniques alters interaction requirements like contact and reach, forcing behavioural adaptation. We present a comparative study investigating preshaping behaviour across direct versus indirect (gaze-assisted) and bare-hand versus controller techniques on a docking task. Results reveal that response patterns scale with anticipated task difficulty, and that direct techniques elicit effective posing of the hand. Indirect techniques shortcut hand transport and, in turn lacks the sensory feedback to guide planning, inducing efficient but attenuated responses that necessitate compensatory manipulation and clutching. Notably, controllers that afford in-hand rotation allow users to extend their range of motion. These findings can inform interaction design to better afford preshaping and optimise 3D manipulation tasks.2026TMThorbjørn Mikkelsen et al.Aarhus UniversityHand Gesture RecognitionFull-Body Interaction & Embodied Input3D Modeling & AnimationCHI
Boundary Switching and Cursor Warping: A Comparative Study of Performance and Comfort in Multi-Display XR EnvironmentsExtended Reality (XR) headsets enable large, reconfigurable multi-display workspaces and support view manipulation, allowing the workspace to reposition itself around the user. Cursor warping similarly reduces traversal distance and pointer search by reinitialising the cursor at defined locations. Yet when both mechanisms operate together, the spatial relationship between user, displays, and cursor becomes dynamic, and it remains unclear how cursor repositioning behaves when the workspace itself moves. In a study (N=20) of five cursor-warping strategies with two view manipulations, we show that the benefits of both do not automatically combine: workspace motion can disrupt spatial consistency and alter both performance and movement costs. We show that continuous cursor movement in world space is limited compared to alternative warping techniques, and cursor behaviour and view control are tightly coupled. Hence, cursor initialisation and view manipulation must be co-designed to support efficient and comfortable interaction in XR multi-display environments.2026YCYuzheng Chen et al.Lancaster UniversityMixed Reality WorkspacesImmersion & Presence ResearchPrototyping & User TestingCHI
Supporting Holistic AI Ethics Literacy Education Through Critical Reflection: Three Recommendations for Fostering Children’s Ethical GrowthWith childhood increasingly mediated by AI and marked by children's heightened vulnerabilities, critical reflection emerges as a vital tool for both understanding and strengthening children's ethical reasoning, steering them between uncritical adoption and blanket pessimism about AI. As such, we present outcomes of a study with 66 children (aged 10-11) wherein we trace what children attend to and how they perceive AI ethics. Aligned with UNESCO's ethical principles for AI, we utilised 10 design fiction scenarios set in familiar contexts to prompt reflection. Mixed-methods data showed that children's perceptions skewed towards caution; ethical concerns were also distributed unevenly across principles, indicating where AI ethics literacy may need targeted scaffolding. This work contributes to HCI by highlighting the complexity of children's perceptions and showing how speculative, reflection-based methods can shift children's ethical considerations about AI, with three recommendations for AI ethics literacy education that the HCI community should consider in future.2026GCGail Collyer-Hoar et al.Lancaster UniversityHuman-LLM CollaborationAI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityParticipatory DesignCHI
Cohort Differences in Internet Use Among Older Adults: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)While much has been written on the age-based digital divide, more understanding of the relative importance of factors affecting use of the internet is needed. This paper analyses nationally representative data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to understand older adults’ frequency of using the internet and reasons for not using it more. We examine the extent to which health, lifestyle, and sociodemographic correlate with the pronounced age gradient in not using the internet. We find that the reasons why people in the 80+ cohort did not use the internet more are not qualitatively different from the reasons people aged 50–64 or 65--79 did not use it more, but do differ between rare and regular users. We also find that of the myriad factors that are potentially relevant, only cognitive ability, educational attainment, and employment status were robustly associated with the age gradient in internet use.2026BKBran Knowles et al.Lancaster UniversityAging-Friendly Technology DesignUniversal & Inclusive DesignCHI
The Eye–Head Mover Spectrum: Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual RealityPeople differ in how much they move their head versus their eyes when shifting gaze, yet such tendencies remain largely unexplored in HCI. We introduce head movement tendencies as a fundamental dimension of individual difference in VR and provide a quantitative account of their population-level distribution. Using a 360° video free-viewing dataset (N=87), we model head contributions to gaze shifts with a hinge-based parametric function, revealing a spectrum of strategies from eye-movers to head-movers. We then conduct a user study (N=28) combining 360° video viewing with a short controlled task using gaze targets. While parameter values differ across tasks, individuals show partial alignment in their relative positions within the population, indicating that tendencies are meaningful but shaped by context. Our findings establish head movement tendencies as an important concept for VR and highlight implications for adaptive systems such as foveated rendering, viewport alignment, and multi-user experience design.2026JHJinghui Hu et al.Lancaster UniversityImmersion & Presence ResearchEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionSocial & Collaborative VRCHI
Extending the Child-Centered Ethics Framework: Researchers' Reflections on Multiple Projects with Children and TeenagersIn this paper, we use the Child-Centred Ethics framework to critically reflect on the planning, implementation, and impact of twelve (2-4 year) projects with children (ages 2-18 years) in Finland, the UK, India, Japan, and the USA. Our analysis reveals diverse ethical challenges and experiences: adapting materials based on the abilities, interests and agendas of the children, teachers, and schools, considering consent and assent as continuous processes, and exploring impacts beyond the project duration. We also discuss handling data ownership among participants and international collaborators, and managing difficult situations that arise, such as, participants pushing the boundaries of technology and people, technical breakdowns, and in situ negotiations of roles among teachers and researchers. We use our analysis to extend the CCE Framework in two distinct ways; incorporating adult stakeholders and impacts beyond a projects’ lifecycle. Our work contributes to research on ethics in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) research, addressing how to plan, implement, and create an impact in CCI projects with children.2026SSSumita Sharma et al.University of OuluParticipatory DesignCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Child-Computer Interaction DesignCHI
Robot, Avatar, or Human: The Impact of Partner Representation and Task on the Communication ExperienceAvatars and telepresence robots have long received attention for remote communication. However, the specific nature of their physicality, expressiveness, and mobility may affect their usefulness for different tasks. This work compares using an avatar (presented in augmented reality) and a telepresence robot to Face-to-Face (F2F) communication. We focus on the influence of different communication tasks: free conversation, negotiation, and referential communication with movement. Thus, we conducted a user study (split-plot design, N=54) with the type of representation of the conversational partner as the within variable and the communication task as the between variable. Our results show that type of task, especially referential communication with movement, influenced attention to nonverbal cues and perceived closeness. Generally, gestures and body movements received the least focus with telepresence robots. Gestures in avatars and F2F drew similar attention, attributed to the avatar’s tracking fidelity. Gaze received less attention in both mediums than F2F, while facial expressions on the robot’s screen heightened attention compared to avatars. These findings advance the fundamental understanding of mediated communication and support researchers and practitioners in shaping the design of communication applications beyond today’s video calls.2025SAStephanie Arevalo Arboleda et al.Collaborating in Virtual EnvironmentsCSCW
Metaphors for Good Digital IdentitiesDigital identities are often discussed or explained as digital versions of physical documents such as passports. This metaphor tends to ignore, intentionally or not, the social challenges associated with real-world implementation of these technologies. This paper presents eight alternative metaphors for “good" digital identities which are derived from a 12-month Research-through-Design process. This process is presented as an annotated portfolio showcasing insights from a variety of design activities and stakeholder engagements, including design sprints, workshops, an artist residency and an exhibition, with the metaphors operating as “meta-annotations" on the portfolio. The eight metaphors intend to provoke and enable wider conversation with various stakeholders including academics, non-profits, industry professionals and policy makers about what “good" digital identities might mean, by focusing on societal rather than common technical concerns.2025KSKim Snooks et al.Online Identity & Self-PresentationInclusive DesignParticipatory DesignDIS
Adopting Mixed Reality Product Customisation in Brick-and-Mortar Retail: Stakeholder Insights for Commercialisation ChallengeAlthough increasing attention is being paid to implementing mixed reality (MR) technology in retail purchases, integrating MR with brick-and-mortar shops has been overlooked. This study focuses on adopting MR product customisation interfaces in brick-and-mortar shops using fashion retail as an example. It evaluates the designed Mixed Reality Product Configurator (MRPC) through prototype testing (n=15) and in-depth stakeholder interviews (n=26). The study provides recommendations for software developers, designers, and retail managers in four aspects: 1) addressed the significance of MRPC for brick-and-mortar retailing, 2) identified four aspects for MR retail mass adoption, namely system development, interior environment design, marketability, and management strategy, 3) defined prospective retail shop genres that adopt MRPC, and 4) defined prospective consumer genres that adopt MRPC. The findings define the challenges and requirements of MR retail commercialisation, facilitating stakeholders to develop MR-based retail for commercial mass customisation in the marketplace.2025LJLingyao JinMixed Reality WorkspacesMotor Impairment Assistive Input TechnologiesCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsDIS
"Suits as Masculine and Flowers as Feminine": Investigating Gender Expression in AI-Generated ImageryGenerative AI’s growing use in content creation significantly impacts societal perceptions by perpetuating and reinforcing gender stereotypes. The amplification of stereotypes in AI-generated content can lead to increased discrimination, exclusion, misinformation, and contribute to racial and gender disparities. To address this challenge, we explore the direct impact of generative AI on gender attribution and stereotype reinforcement in digital imagery through a survey with 111 participants, analysing interpretations of gender expression in 216 AI-generated images. Findings reveal a pronounced bias toward masculine-leaning attributions, particularly in images where gender identity is labelled as androgyne. This research provides three key contributions: (1) an in-depth understanding of how people perceive gender expressions in AI-generated images; (2) a dataset of 216 images evaluated by participants for masculinity, femininity, and neutrality; and (3) two key challenges to consider in order to address the stereotyped representations of gender expressions in AI-generated content, highlighting the need for more inclusive AI practices.2025GCGail Collyer-Hoar et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)AI Ethics, Fairness & AccountabilityGender & Race Issues in HCIDIS
Towards Holistic Prompt CraftWe present an account of an ongoing practice-based Design Research programme that explores real-time AI image generation. Based on three installations, we reflect on the design of PromptJ, a user interface built around the concept of a prompt ‘mixer’. We present a series of strong concepts based on the design and deployment of PromptJ. Later, we cohere and abstract our strong concepts into the notion of Holistic Prompt Craft, which describes the importance of considering all relevant parameters concurrently. Finally, we present PromptTank, a prototype design which exemplifies these principles. Our contributions are articulated as strong concepts or intermediate knowledge, intended to be used generatively by informing and inspiring practitioners and researchers working in this space.2025JLJoseph Lindley et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Prototyping & User TestingDIS
Child Centred Ethics (CCE): A Practical Framework for Enhanced Child Participation in HCIFollowing a review of papers in the ACM DL on ethics and children, this paper shows the growth of interest in this area, summarises the literature found, and then, using detail from 26 papers that offer practical advice, distils a Child Centred Ethics Framework that maps literature onto ethical concerns in relation to the practical application of ethics with children. The framework offers questions and solutions for researchers from the first inception of a project to the dissemination of the results back to the children. The framework is offered as an adjunct to an ethics / IRB document in that it places the child's experience at the centre of decision-making allowing fuller exploration of aspects like assent, anonymity, inclusion and contribution. As a practical resource that researchers can use, the framework is presented as a living document waiting to be owned by the community.2025JRJanet Read et al.ChiCI Lab, University of Central LancashireParticipatory DesignCHI
On-body Icons: Designing a 3D Interface for Launching Apps in Augmented RealityOn-body tapping provides a quick way to launch augmented reality (AR) apps using virtual shortcuts placed on the user’s skin, clothes, and jewelry. While prior work has focused on tapping performance, social acceptance, and sensing techniques, users’ behaviour in placing shortcuts on their body has been underexplored. In this work, we propose On-body Icons — a novel interface for launching apps via touching virtual icons placed across the user’s entire body, and use it to investigate locations, reasons for chosen icon placement, and users’ attitudes towards the feature. Results of the qualitative study conducted with 24 participants demonstrated that people employ a wide variety of placement strategies that balance memorability of the locations with accuracy and comfort of reaching the icons. We discuss these findings in regard to current understanding of memorability of icon placement, placement appropriateness, and privacy, and offer design implications for similar features in spatial applications.2025UTUliana Tsimbalistaia et al.HSE UniversityAR Navigation & Context AwarenessOn-Skin Display & On-Skin InputCHI
Making Hardware Devices at Scale is Still Hard: Challenges and Opportunities for the HCI CommunityEmbedded systems and interactive devices form an essential interface between the physical and digital world and are understandably an important focus for the HCI research community. However, scaling an interactive prototype of a new device concept to enable effective evaluation or to support the transition to a production-ready device is incredibly challenging. To better understand the issues innovators face when scaling up interactive device prototypes we report the results from 22 interviews with practitioners in the interactive device field, including eight academics involved in the HCI and manufacturing research communities. In our two-phase analysis we identify and validate the following four recurring themes. First and foremost is the observation that ``creating relationships with industry'' is hard. Second, ``effective communication requires a lot of effort'' despite the availability of modern collaboration tools. Thirdly, we observed that ``understanding the manufacturer's perspective'' can be difficult. Finally, ``prototyping is nothing like production''---the vast difference between these two activities still surprises many. Additionally, our university-based participants gave us further insights and helped us to identify challenges specific to the academic context, pointing to a number of opportunities relating to hardware device scaling.2025BKBo Kang et al.University of CambridgeCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCHI
The World is Not Enough: Growing Waste in HPC-enabled Academic PracticeMost research depends to some extent on technologies and computational infrastructures including, and perhaps especially, HCI. Despite the noted environmental impacts associated with information communication technology (ICT) globally, to date little consideration has been given as to how to limit the impact of research and innovation processes themselves. Working to understand the technical and cultural drivers of this impact within the specific but resource-intensive domain of High Performance Computing (HPC), we conducted 25 interviews with academic researchers, providers, funders, and commissioners of HPC. We find intersecting socio-cultural and technical dimensions that link to research institutions like conferences, funders, and universities that reinforce and embed, rather than challenge, expectations of growth and waste. At a time when large scale cloud systems, generative AI and ever larger models are multiplying, we argue to de-escalate demand for computing, aiming for more moderate, responsible and meaningful use of computational infrastructures - including within HCI itself.2025CLCarolynne Lord et al.UKCEH; Lancaster University, School of Computing and CommunicationsGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Sustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingCHI
Hidden Opportunities for Elder Living: Understanding Shared Technology Troubles and Benefits for Older Adults in the UK Cost of Living CrisisThe uptake of digital technology by older adults and service-providers has been partly driven by the pandemic but more recently by the erosion of in-person services because of increasing austerity and a harsher global economic climate. Against the backdrop of the UK’s cost of living crisis, we examine technology used frequently within five older adults’ households. Through two rounds of in- terviews and participant diaries, we show benefits and struggles of participants’ costly technology use, reflecting on what ‘cost of living’ means when technology designed to simplify older peoples lives, encounters problems. For HCI practitioners, we provide evi- dence of how personal smart devices can be better tailored to help older adults support themselves both economically and practically, during the cost of living crisis. We propose avenues for future re- search and design that better support indirect costs and reflect on how personal devices can be made self-sustaining, integrated and repairable.2025ESEwan Soubutts et al.University College London, UCL Interaction CentreAging-Friendly Technology DesignAging-in-Place Assistance SystemsCHI
Stretch Gaze Targets Out: Experimenting with Target Sizes for Gaze-Enabled Interfaces on Mobile DevicesUsers hold their mobile phones at varying distances depending on their posture, the application being used, and the task's nature. Without considering such variation when designing UI target sizes limits the applicability of gaze selection for everyday interaction with mobile devices. Towards this end, we conducted a user study (N=24) to investigate the implications of different target sizes and viewing across different screen regions. While larger targets generally improve accuracy and decrease precision, accuracy is significantly higher in the horizontal than in the vertical direction. This subsequently led us to find that increasing the tracking area in the vertical direction only, while maintaining the same visual target size, significantly improves accuracy. This suggests that visually smaller targets with larger vertical tracking areas enhance accuracy. Based on our results, we present concrete design guidelines for developers to optimise target sizes on gaze-enabled mobile devices to improve accuracy across varying user-to-screen distances.2025ONOmar Namnakani et al.University of GlasgowEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionVoice User Interface (VUI) DesignCHI