This paper describes the motivation, framework, concepts, method, implementation, and results of the HCII2023 Design Café, a dedicated participatory highly interactive design workshop held in Copenhagen in July 2023. Motivated by the ubiquitous challenges our world is facing, this initiative had the goal to explore six main issues from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on the UN SDG 11: “Sustainable Cities and Communities” and the HCI Grand Challenge 2 “Human-Environment Interactions.” The six issues were formulated as questions and presented to the participants working in small groups. (1) How to create inclusive and ethical smart cities? (2) How to establish trust between people and smart environments? (3) How to address privacy concerns in smart environments that adopt the “disappearing computer” paradigm? (4) How to promote explainability and transparency of policies and measures to citizens of smart cities or in smart environments in general? (5) How to design incentives and rewards for engagement and sustainable behavior in smart cities at a personal as well as collective/corporate level? (6) How to measure success and impact in sustainable smart city projects? The method and approach of the Design Café is a tailored composition of a guided, structured format combined with and inspired by processes of informal communication and exchange of knowledge and ideas. Aligned moderation, a minimum set of rules, a set of relevant topics and an interdisciplinary group of motivated participants working in rotating formations provides the structure for achieving results. The results show that the six issues are not independent of each other, but require a holistic view, considering the various dependencies as well as synergies when exploring solutions. Nevertheless, the importance of first establishing higher-level goals based on ethical and inclusive approaches fostering human dignity and human rights were key. Acceptance of overall goals, processes, rules, and regulations was considered as the fundamental pre-requisite for sustainable change towards a declared goal. Acceptance needs trust and privacy as well as explainability and transparency of policies and measures. The role of incentives and rewards for engagement and sustainable behavior was twofold. Offering incentives must include planning on how to measure their impact. Effective measurement of success and impact depends heavily on how the institutions address privacy. Explainability and transparency should become one of the ethical guidelines that steer and control concepts, decision making, and implementations of all activities. The scale of these societal challenges still needs to be recognized by those responsible. It is essential to educate decision makers in the psychological needs and effects of sense making, comprehensibility, and finally acceptance and well-being moving towards a humanity-centered design.

Motivated by the rapid technological advancements achieved in the last five years and the pervasiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this paper investigates the evolving role of HCI and revisits the seven grand challenges outlined in 2019: human-technology symbiosis, human-environment interactions, ethics, privacy and security, well-being, health and eudaimonia, accessibility and universal access, learning and creativity, and social organization and democracy. Through literature analysis, the paper reevaluates the status of each challenge and highlights emerging requirements. Key findings reveal the widespread impact of AI across all domains and emphasize the need for improved AI transparency, alignment with human values, and the development of explainable, personalized, and privacy-preserving technologies to enhance user trust and control. The analysis also highlights the interconnected nature of these challenges and firmly asserts the role of technology in actively supporting human activities and collaborating harmoniously with humans to help them live meaningfully and fulfill aspirations.

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their caregivers face daily challenges which can adversely affect their well-being, especially regarding communication within their care ecosystems, comprising family, friends, educators, and therapists. To foster communication among children and their care ecosystem and support their well-being, we created REMEMO, a mobile app that was iteratively designed and evaluated by actively involving ADHD children and their caregivers. REMEMO supports both individual and collaborative use, offering tailored features for different user groups: children, parents, or therapists and educators. Its primary function is to enable users to record their experiences and emotions and choose whether to share these with other members of the care ecosystem. We deployed REMEMO in a multi-week field study with five groups encompassing ADHD children (total participants n=18). Our analysis showed that REMEMO can support emotional expression, regulation, reflection, transparent and affectionate communication, as well as therapeutic practices, addressing needs of both ADHD children and their caregivers. Our findings also highlight the critical role of mutual understanding regarding technology use and contextual challenges in shaping usage patterns. We discuss opportunities and challenges in designing technologies that cater to the varying needs of different stakeholders of ADHD children's care ecosystems and engage in critical reflection regarding evaluating technologies with vulnerable populations, such as families of ADHD children.

Visual analytics focuses on amplifying users’ reasoning and understanding by enhancing data analysis procedures with the efficient incorporation of information visualization and data processing techniques. In this study, we conduct an overview of this multidisciplinary field, focusing on both the process that formalizes its primary concepts and the affiliated research areas. We identify key developments in each area, as well as the challenges that arise when these areas are interconnected under the visual analytics process. We consider that to address the identified challenges, an appropriate representation of key user needs is essential. Therefore, inspired by human-centered design and its principles, we propose a novel methodological approach comprising a human-centered definition of visual analytics that expands on models of the field and quantifies the intermediate states of a data analysis. In addition to the theoretical aspects of the definition, we also provide a set of directions that align the process with technical aspects of the development cycle. In this respect, our research endeavor aims to transform the visual analytics process into an essential method for both conceptualizing data analysis systems capable of anticipating user needs and for streamlining their technical implementation.

Big Data analysis and insight extraction are critical in contemporary large-scale criminal investigations. Analyzing large sets of information related to criminal activities can assist in the identification of correlations between records which can be utilized as strategic intelligence information for the coordination of law enforcement efforts. A Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) officer tasked with this analysis requires tools that can enable Big Data exploration while being intuitive and without requiring the need for prior knowledge. A common practice of data analysis software is the ability to create dashboards that can provide all the necessary visualizations and filters to support such an analysis. However, when it comes to dashboard-wide data exploration through drill-down or roll-up analysis; review and evaluation of correlations between data records; and creation of collections with information important to an investigation, current solutions fall short. In this paper, we present a system that addresses these limitations by facilitating the visualization and exploration of diverse data sources, allowing for individual or concurrent analysis via user-configured dashboards. Individual data records of interest to the analysis can be reviewed and their correlations evaluated by the user, allowing for the creation of collections of records and their relationships based on formalized types of correlations.

The discussion around the rapid evolution and omnipresence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already rich, and AI is expected to be integrated into most aspects of everyday life. At the same time,...

We propose and implement a tool for the access, analysis, and visual exploration of very large relational databases and data warehouses. To this end, we represent the database as a graph in which each table is represented by a tree rooted at the key and in which there is an edge from table T to table T’ if there is an attribute of T which is a foreign key of T’. The interface allows the user to define analytic queries by clicking on nodes and edges of the graph. The user actions are then translated into SQL group-by queries that are evaluated by the underlying database management system. Additionally, the interface allows the user to visualize the analysis results, and to interact with visualizations in order to explore the database content.

Motivated by a combination of social media, technological evolution, as well as new habits and preferences of TV content consumers, there is an increasing demand for enhancement of professional productions with user generated content. Studies have explored the potential and feasibility of this approach, indicating that footage from non-professionals can be effectively used to enrich the viewing experience. However, an important concern is whether such efforts are appealing to potential contributors, and what can actually impact their satisfaction and loyalty. Aiming to investigate these factors, this paper presents a mobile application for content contributors and a study involving 38 attendees of live events, using the application in the field. The events were hosted in two different countries, and transmitted by two well-known broadcasters. The results suggest that age, gender, technological expertise, and overall sharing attitude do not affect the satisfaction and loyalty of contributors. The differentiating factors, however, are the filming confidence and expertise of contributors, as well as the Wi-Fi/4G connectivity on-site. Implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations for similar endeavors are provided.

Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This article aims to investigate the Grand Challenges which arise in the current and emerging landscape of rapid technological evolution towards more intelligent interactive technologies, coupled with increased and widened societal needs, as well as individual and collective expectations that HCI, as a discipline, is called upon to address. A perspective oriented to humane and social values is adopted, formulating the challenges in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Seven Grand Challenges are identified and presented in this article: Human-Technology Symbiosis; Human-Environment Interactions; Ethics, Privacy and Security; Well-being, Health and Eudaimonia; Accessibility and Universal Access; Learning and Creativity; and Social Organization and Democracy. Although not exhaustive, they summarize the views and research priorities of an international interdisciplinary group of experts, reflecting different scientific perspectives, methodological approaches and application domains. Each identified Grand Challenge is analyzed in terms of: concept and problem definition; main research issues involved and state of the art; and associated emerging requirements. BACKGROUND This article presents the results of the collective effort of a group of 32 experts involved in the community of the Human Computer Interaction International (HCII) Conference series. The group’s collaboration started in early 2018 with the collection of opinions from all group members, each asked to independently list and describe five HCI grand challenges. During a one-day meeting held on the 20th July 2018 in the context of the HCI International 2018 Conference in Las Vegas, USA, the identified topics were debated and challenges were formulated in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Further analysis and consolidation led to a set of seven Grand Challenges presented herein. This activity was organized and supported by the HCII Conference series.

This paper describes an educational game that aims to familiarize cognitive impaired children with household objects, the overall home environment and the daily activities that take place in it. In addition to touch-based interaction, the game supports physical manipulation through printed cards on a tabletop setup, using a webcam to detect and track the cards placed on the game board.

Information and Communication technologies have the potential to permeate the classroom and modernize the educational process. However, in the context of a smart classroom, building educational applications poses unique challenges from an HCI perspective, due to the diversity of user and context requirements. This paper introduces a framework that facilitates the design, development and deployment of pervasive educational applications that can automatically transform according to the context of use to ensure their usability. The collection of widgets incorporates both common basic widgets (e.g., buttons, images) and mini interfaces frequently used in educational applications, as ready-to-use modules. The designer can either (i) combine and customize widgets from both categories to build an interface just once, or (ii) build and incorporate it as a custom-made mini interface in the collection for future reuse. Finally, the framework's usability has been evaluated with users obtaining very positive results and potential suggestions for extensions.