Teenage years are a critical period for shaping food practices and health behaviors, yet teens remain underrepresented in research on future food and health technologies. This paper reports on design fiction workshops where 20 teens speculated on artifacts such as health-tracking mirrors and food-making machines while reflecting on their eating habits and values. Our analysis shows how teens negotiate their human stances in a techno-centric world, balancing excitement about innovation with concerns over health, control, and responsibility. We contribute to HCI by: (1) identifying teen-specific design considerations for reflective healthy-eating technologies, highlighting “absence” as a protective affordance; (2) reframing food technologies for teens as sites of family care and playful identity work, opening a design space at the intersection of reflection and play; and (3) advancing methodological understanding of youth-centered design fiction by showing how dual-mode speculative workshops can move teen participants beyond solutionist or anti-solutionist positions toward grounded negotiation with sociotechnical systems.

Peer Reviewed

Family members have emotional, social, and cultural ties to food that keep them connected even when they no longer live together. Adult children leaving their parental households but checking in to see what is for dinner, sharing food photos, or seeking guidance on nostalgic family recipes are examples of staying connected through food. Human-Food Interaction (HFI) is a growing domain for food-tech innovation, and in this study, we investigate the potential of mediated HFI for closeness and social presence. We conducted interviews, photo diary studies, and co-design sessions with 16 participants to elicit family members’ sharing preferences and speculative ideas about mediated HFI. Using Social Practices Theory (SPT), we examined not only how family members envisioned technology mediation but also why they chose specific food practices to be mediated and what those practices/interactions added to their relationship. Our findings aligned with the SPT model proposed by Shove and colleagues ( The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes 2012 ) and describe how family members attached sentiment to their food interactions (Meaning), envisioned different tools and technologies to craft connected food experiences (Material), and demonstrated awareness and knowledge about each other’s food interests and availability (Competence). We reflect on the intertwined relationships between these elements, highlight the nuances of family food practices and their mediation, and ultimately propose design implications by integrating literature from HFI and Social Presence.

Caregivers of older adults often undertake their caregiving journey driven by filial obligation, facing inherent expectations and multifaceted roles. While Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has explored these roles, some invisible work in managing them remains under-examined. To address this gap, we interviewed 19 informal caregivers of older adults to uncover their invisible work and the potential role of technology in supporting these complex responsibilities. Our findings detail the caregivers’ lived experiences, highlighting the challenges and strategies they employ in managing multiple roles. We discuss design opportunities that include facilitating the identification and reflection on existing roles, leveraging this understanding for coordination, aiding in role-based scheduling with acknowledgment, and providing support for the dynamic roles transitioning between various responsibilities. These insights could inform future caregiving technology design, enhancing support for caregivers in their multifaceted roles.

Managing Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is a significant challenge for pregnant individuals. Constant self-monitoring, emotional burden, and the short and long-term implications of GDM make the overall pregnancy experience challenging for these individuals, requiring action, learning, and lifestyle adjustment to manage the pregnancy properly. Prior literature on GDM mostly focuses on the medical and health management of the condition. However, pregnant individuals with GDM often must actively learn and adapt lifestyle strategies quickly without much support. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 pregnant individuals diagnosed with GDM, we investigate how these individuals experience, explore, learn, and reflect on ways to live with and manage GDM. Using Kolb’s Learning Theory to analyze and structure our findings, we built on pregnant individuals’ concrete lived experiences and uncovered the challenges as they navigate the GDM journey, managing their changing relationship with food and supporting emotional well-being while living with an often stigmatized condition in an at-risk pregnancy. Our study contributes to the discussion on the design opportunities to facilitate experiential learning of pregnant individuals’ journey.

Bereavement causes unique challenges, and bereaved individuals can benefit from support during their grieving process. Grief theory emphasizes the importance of reflection during bereavement, and HCI has established that reflective technology can support well-being. However, it remains unclear how to provide bereavement support with reflective technology. We build on constructivist grief psychotherapies to investigate bereavement meaning-making as a focus for reflective technology. We study meaning-making in the context of the digital game GRIS, due to digital games’ alignment with meaning-making. To understand the progression of meaning-making experiences, we conducted a qualitative diary and interview study: 11 bereaved individuals were interviewed on their bereavement experiences, played and completed diaries on GRIS, and were interviewed on their experiences engaging in meaning-making while playing. From these findings, we propose design recommendations for reflective technology to engage with individualized bereavement experiences, embed user agency within reflections, and focus on novel and anti-nihilistic reflections.

Professional designers often struggle to apply insights from HCI research in their work. To make academic knowledge more accessible to practitioners, HCI researchers have created translational design tools, such as design cards, that support the translation of research insights into design practice. Prior work explored design cards for behavior change, interaction design, personal health informatics, and the sharing economy. Our work complements prior research by exploring the design and use of translational design cards for social aspects of societal resilience through a two-stage study with 14 student designers and eight professional designers. Our findings provide an empirical understanding of the design cards’ generative value for incorporating research insights into the design process. Additionally, we discuss recommendations and highlight opportunities to enhance the design and use of the cards beyond societal resilience.

Researchers are increasingly facilitating qualitative research studies online. While this has made research more accessible for participation, there have been notable encounters with “fraudulent” participants. By fraudulent, we refer to individuals who are deceptive about meeting the inclusion criteria, their identity, or experiences. Fraudulent participants have generated new challenges for researchers who have to interact 1:1 with these individuals, face ethical dilemmas on appropriate next steps, diagnose and prevent the issue from happening again, and deal with their own identity as a scholar. In this study, we interview 16 HCI researchers to understand and learn from their experiences. We contribute: (1) an understanding of how HCI qualitative researchers deal with fraudulent participants; (2) a guide for qualitative HCI researchers on how to handle fraudulence; and (3) a reflection on how the HCI research community might better improve our science and training efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened disproportionately rural older adults’ health and well-being as they suffer from unique social exclusion due to a lack of services, such as transportation, communication infrastructure, healthcare, and social services. Although older adults can uniquely cope with pandemic adversity compared to younger adults, less attention has been directed to investigating the coping and resilience of rural older adults. To understand how diverse coping strategies impact the resilience of rural older adults, we conducted interviews with 26 rural and small-town older adults. Older adult participants adopted different coping strategies, such as following protective measures, keeping themselves busy, providing and receiving social support, and having a positive mindset. They experienced positive changes, such as increased interpersonal connectivity. Older adults’ individual-level coping processes are influenced by their social and physical environments. We explore design opportunities to support older adults’ resilient practices and harness their skills to facilitate community resilience.

TikTok has gained immense popularity among teenagers, offering access to numerous user-generated content. Notably, food videos have emerged as a prominent theme on this short-form video social platform. The casual and enjoyable nature of short food videos on TikTok belies their potential influence on one of teenagers' most immediate and regular health practices--eating. Understanding how teenagers interact with these videos, their subsequent actions, and the resulting impact on their food practices and eating habits have the potential to provide insight into their broader lifestyle choices and their interactions within their social circles, including parents, friends, and other people online. By examining how teenagers use TikTok food videos online and offline, we gain a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between social media, teenage lifestyle, and social dynamics surrounding food practices. In this research, we conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with teenagers aged 13 to 19, investigating their consumption of TikTok food videos and the actions inspired by them. By examining the multifaceted influence of TikTok food videos from a temporal perspective, this study contributes to the reflections of teens' use of TikTok food videos and their inspired food practices in the short and long term, online and offline. We propose design and theoretical implications to support teenagers' health. These insights have the potential to extend to various contexts, helping educators, policymakers, and designers in fostering healthy lifestyles among teenagers.

Meals are a central (and messy) part of family life. Previous design framings for mealtime technologies have focused on supporting dietary needs or social and celebratory interactions at the dinner table; however, family meals involve the coordination of many activities and complicated family dynamics. In this paper, we report on findings from interviews and design sessions with 18 families from the Midwestern United States (including both partners/parents and children) to uncover important family differences and tensions that arise around domestic meal experiences. Drawing on feminist theory, we unpack the work of feeding a family as a form of care, drawing attention to the social and emotional complexity of family meals. Critically situating our data within current design narratives, we propose the sensitizing concepts of generative and systemic discontents as a productive way towards troubling the design space of family-food interaction to contend with the struggles that are a part of everyday family meal experiences.

Research on aging technologies typically has explored health condition management and physical activity, while other aspects of active aging (e.g., psychological and social well-being) receive less attention. To better support active aging, we focus on the context of tracking technologies because half of the U.S. aging population engaged in keeping records of health and non-health information using manual and digital mediums. We interviewed 18 older adults to investigate their holistic tracking practices. We found participants were motivated to manage their everyday life tasks, preserve sentimental values, generate knowledge for broader audiences, and support relationships and caregiving. These motivations can help older adults age actively by supporting multi-dimensions of well-being besides physical health. Reflecting on findings, we discuss design considerations for tracking technologies to support active aging by expanding the current focus on supporting physical health to broader psychological and social well-being.

This research explores how teenagers interacted with food-related TikTok content and how this influenced their eating behavior and practices. Using 186 surveys and five interviews, we show how teenagers think of healthy eating and what actions they took after being inspired by TikTok. We find that teenagers take inspiration from TikTok food content in different temporal stages, from immediately trying out new food items to long-term diet planning. We discuss potential design opportunities to support teenagers’ social use of TikTok food content in online and offline contexts.

People with food hypersensitivities experience adverse reactions when eating certain foods and thus need to adapt their diet. When dining out, the challenge is greater as people entrust the care of their allergy, intolerance, or celiac disease, in the hands of staff who might not have enough knowledge to appropriately care for them. This interview study explored how people with food hypersensitivities avoid reactions while eating out, to inspire future digital technology design. Our findings show the social and emotional impact of food hypersensitivities and how people practically cope by investigating restaurants’ safety precautions, correcting orders, or even educating restaurants’ staff. We discuss our findings against the experiences of other people living with chronic conditions and offer design opportunities for digital technologies to enhance dining out experiences of people with food hypersensitivities.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to dire consequences globally, and it has been particularly challenging for older adults. They are at a higher risk of adverse outcomes of the disease \citecdc_covid. Older adults also use less technology than other age groups \citetech_old, so they mostly rely on in-person interactions and services for social support. However, disease mitigation efforts such as social distancing and self-quarantining severely limited in-person interactions, hindering older adults' social support during the COVID-19 crisis. In this paper, we present findings on social support realities from semi-structured interviews with older adults (N=15) living alone in community dwellings. We found that older adults' support roles, support sources, and support concerns evolve as they passed through this time of sweeping change. They are enthusiastic about providing support to people who are older and more vulnerable than themselves. At the same time, their needs for safety, autonomy, and independence create tensions around social support. We propose a framework to illustrate the evolving ecology of social support that can facilitate the holistic design of socio-technical support systems for older adults. We argue against the societal portrayal of older adults as vulnerable individuals. Rather, there is an opportunity to design support systems considering them as anchors in society. Towards that goal, we present design implications for future socio-technical support systems to empower older adults to age in place during a crisis.

People living with HIV experience a high level of stigma in our society. Public HIV-related stigma often leads to anxiety and depression and hinders access to social support and proper medical care. Technologies for HIV, however, have been mainly designed for treatment management and medication adherence rather than for helping people cope with public HIV-related stigma specifically. Drawing on empirical data obtained from semi-structured interviews and design activities with eight social workers and 29 people living with HIV, we unpack the ways in which needs for privacy and trust, intimacy, and social support create tensions around key coping strategies. Reflecting on these tensions, we present design implications and opportunities to empower people living with HIV to cope with public HIV-related stigma at the individual level.

Cooking and eating together is a prominent social experience amongst families. Older adults and their adult children who live apart often communicate about these experiences to stay aware of each other's health and wellbeing. In this paper, we examine current practices surrounding the communication of eating habits and meal preparation between older adults and their adult children living apart. We interviewed 18 older parents and nine adult children to understand their experiences. While most participants found the sharing of eating experiences to be rewarding and enlightening of family health behaviors, family roles and contexts could create tensions around this type of conversation. Applying the lens of symbolic interactionism theory, we examine how changing roles and contexts influence the conversation of eating and meal preparation and how participants manage tensions. We discuss future design opportunities to support family collaboration around food and eating, accounting for the transition of roles and contexts.

HIV status disclosure fields in online sex-social applications ("apps") are designed to help increase awareness, reduce stigma, and promote sexual health. Public disclosure could also help those diagnosed relate to others with similar statuses to feel less isolated. However, in our interview study (n=28) with HIV positive and negative men who have sex with men (MSM), we found some users preferred to keep their status private, especially when disclosure could stigmatise and disadvantage them, or risk revealing their status to someone they knew offline in a different context. How do users manage these tensions between health, stigma, and privacy? We analysed our interview data using signalling theory as a conceptual framework and identify participants developing 'signal appropriation' strategies, helping them manage the disclosure of their HIV status. Additionally, we propose a set of design considerations that explore the use of signals in the design of sensitive disclosure fields.

Self-tracked health data can help people and their health providers understand and manage chronic conditions. This paper examines personal informatics practices and challenges in migraine, a condition characterized by unpredictable, intermittent, and poorly-understood symptoms. To investigate how people with migraine track and use data related to their condition, we surveyed 279 people with migraine and conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 survey respondents and 6 health providers. We find four distinct goals people bring to tracking and data: 1) answering questions about migraines, 2) predicting and preventing migraines, 3) monitoring and managing migraines over time, and 4) enabling motivation and social recognition. Each goal suggests different needs for the design of tools to support migraine tracking. We also find needs resulting from an individual's goals evolving over time, their varied personal experiences, and their communication and collaboration with providers. We discuss these goals and needs in terms of opportunities for personal informatics tools to facilitate learning to: 1) avoid common pitfalls; 2) support customization and flexibility; 3) account for burden, negativity, and lapsing; and 4) support management with uncertainty.

Many people appropriate social media and online communities in their pursuit of personal health goals, such as healthy eating or increased physical activity. However, people struggle with impression management, and with reaching the right audiences when they share health information on these platforms. Instagram, a popular photo-based social media platform, has attracted many people who post and share their food photos. We aim to inform the design of tools to support healthy behaviors by understanding how people appropriate Instagram to track and share food data, the benefits they obtain from doing so, and the challenges they encounter. We interviewed 16 women who consistently record and share what they eat on Instagram. Participants tracked to support themselves and others in their pursuit of healthy eating goals. They sought social support for their own tracking and healthy behaviors and strove to provide that support for others. People adapted their personal tracking practices to better receive and give this support. Applying these results to the design of health tracking tools has the potential to help people better access social support.

Workplace health and wellness programs are increasingly integrating personal health tracking technologies, such as Fitbit and Apple Watch. Many question whether these technologies truly support employees in their pursuit of better wellness levels, raising objections about workplace surveillance and further blurring of boundaries between work and personal life. We conducted a study to understand how tracking tools are adopted in wellness programs and employees' opinions about these programs. We find that employees are generally positive about incentivized health tracking in the workplace, as it helps raise awareness of activity levels. However, there is a gap between the intentions of the programs and individual experiences and health goals. This sometimes results in confusion and creates barriers to participation. Even if this gap can be addressed, health tracking in the workplace will not be for everyone; this has implications for the design of both workplace wellness programs and tracking technologies.

Patient-generated data can allow patients and providers to collaboratively develop accurate diagnoses and actionable treatment plans. Unfortunately, patients and providers often lack effective support to make use of such data. We examine patient-provider collaboration to interpret patient-generated data. We focus on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic illness in which particular foods can exacerbate symptoms. IBS management often requires patient-provider collaboration using a patient's food and symptom journal to identify the patient's triggers. We contribute interactive visualizations to support exploration of such journals, as well as an examination of patient-provider collaboration in interpreting the journals. Drawing upon individual and collaborative interviews with patients and providers, we find that collaborative review helps improve data comprehension and build mutual trust. We also find a desire to use tools like our interactive visualizations within and beyond clinic appointments. We discuss these findings and present guidance for the design of future tools.

Patient-generated data is increasingly common in chronic disease care management. Smartphone applications and wearable sensors help patients more easily collect health information. However, current commercial tools often do not effectively support patients and providers in collaboration surrounding these data. This paper examines patient expectations and current collaboration practices around patient-generated data. We survey 211 patients, interview 18 patients, and re-analyze a dataset of 21 provider interviews. We find that collaboration occurs in every stage of self-tracking and that patients and providers create boundary negotiating artifacts to support the collaboration. Building upon current practices with patient-generated data, we use these theories of patient and provider collaboration to analyze misunderstandings and privacy concerns as well as identify opportunities to better support these collaborations. We reflect on the social nature of patient-provider collaboration to suggest future development of the stage-based model of personal informatics and the theory of boundary negotiating artifacts.