Migration and technology studies increasingly recognize the importance of incorporating migrant perspectives in design processes. Speculative design methods have emerged as powerful tools for imagining alternative futures, particularly when working with marginalized communities. However, there remains a gap in understanding how to effectively engage long-term settled migrants in participatory design processes that honor their experiences and imaginative capacities. Here we show how integrating feminist care principles with speculative design methods can create more inclusive and empathetic approaches to technology design with migrant communities. Through workshops applying the ''magic machines'' methodology, we demonstrate how participatory speculation enables migrants to articulate their experiences, anxieties, and hopes for technological futures. Our findings reveal the importance of considering diasporic minds and cross-border connectivity in future technologies. This work provides immediate opportunities for researchers and designers to develop more inclusive approaches to speculative design while challenging dominant narratives about technological futures in migrant communities.

This pictorial outlines findings from a field study part of an inclusive digital storytelling project, which aims to develop digital tools for migrant communities to share their lived cultural heritage (CH). The field study intended to discern migrants’ perceptions of cultural heritage through a one-week story-based photo challenge involving ten young adult migrants in Lisbon, Portugal. We analysed the data highlighting participant values and heritage meaning-making. We highlight the unfolding of cultural heritage thematics through their daily journeys in the hosting country's landscapes. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) strives to secure an inclusive and socially just impact for technology. With a focus on participants’ assets and values, results from this study point towards sensitising concepts contributing to facilitating the design of inclusive digital tools for telling of lived cultural heritage experiences of migrant communities.

As we engaged in designing digital interventions for intercultural dialogues around public cultural heritage sites, we saw an opportunity to surface multiple interpretations and points of view of history and shine a critical lens on current societal issues. To do so, we present the results of a collaborative auto-ethnography of alternative tours accompanied by intercultural guides, to explore sensory and embodied engagements with cultural heritage sites in a southern European capital. By focusing on the differences in how we experienced the heritage sites, we analyse the duality of discomfort, a common concept in HCI, in that it can both be deployed as a resource for designing systems that can transform people’s understanding of history or it can be a hindrance for engagement, having an unequal effect on individuals.

Current cultural policies are evolving from social inclusion (removing barriers and promoting equality for participation in culture) to social cohesion (fostering solid bonds between groups despite their differences). Digital interventions can create spaces that promote social inclusion and cohesion. In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of a cultural heritage and digital storytelling application supporting a participatory approach to culture and hosting society. We evaluate our intervention in three marginalized communities with different social-cultural contexts: migrant women in Barcelona, a community living in a priority neighbourhood in Paris and second and third-generation migrants in Lisbon. Through an analysis of their application use, our findings point at their needs and desires, highlighting how the app can support social inclusion as the first step towards cohesion, but that these are heterogeneous concepts susceptible to nuanced appropriations by the different communities.

Teenagers' engagement in museums is much talked about but little research has been done to understand their behavior and inform design. Findings from co-design sessions with teenagers suggested they value games and stories when thinking about enjoyable museum tours. Informed by these findings and working with a natural history museum, we designed: a story-based tour (Turning Point) and a game-based tour (Haunted Encounters), informed by similar content. The two strategies were evaluated with 78 teenagers (15-19 years old) visiting the museum as part of an educational school trip. We assessed teenagers' personality in class; qualitative and quantitative data on their engagement, experience, and usability of the apps were collected at the museum. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data show personality traits mapping into different behaviors. We offer implications for the design of museum apps targeted to teenagers, a group known as difficult to reach.

In this paper we present a study through which we intended to understand children's preference towards book formats, in particular digital or paper ones. To accomplish this, we created an original story (Ritinha) illustrated by two children. The traditional book format was composed by static images and text. The digital format had animated images, hyperlinks to navigate to different parts of the story and static text complemented by an audio narrative. We conducted a field study with 105 children in order to observe in which format children would prefer to read a book: if in paper or in digital format. The method used to accomplish this task was direct observation.

Crescendo is an ongoing project aimed to provide children with High Functioning Autism, their teachers and carers with a communication tool that bridges them. Crescendo guides carers in teaching and immersing their child in a virtual environment that mimics the real world, helping them to make sense of it and interact with objects and places in order to become self-reliant in atomized, step-by-step routines. Crescendo is a two-sided app design, one for carers and another for children. It provides both with tool for monitoring and incremental step-by-step learning.