How could AI enter a deeply value-laden realm of human lives? Drawing on key values and practices associated with praying identified through a diary study, we presented our participants with four speculative, conceptual value-sensitive AI systems to “assist” prayer practices. The conceptual designs served as provocations to co-reflect on how AI interventions might shape their praying experiences. Our findings suggest that a sense of authenticity (or a genuine connection to the divine) is a crucial value, while the mere presence of AI was often perceived as diminishing this authenticity, particularly when AI assumed too much agency in guiding prayer practices. Based on our findings, we argue for the importance of AI agent designs that recognize users’ agency in shaping their interaction with AI. We further explore how this may be possible by leveraging interpretive openness, perhaps through AI’s inexplicability as a resource for personal meaning-making, and by recognizing non-use of AI as a legitimate design choice.

The experience of leaving North Korea and navigating life as an undocumented person in China presents significant challenges for those seeking refuge in South Korea. This paper presents findings from an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic study with five newly arrived North Korean defector women in their first year in South Korea. We closely examine how digital technologies are intertwined with their everyday adaptation: how newcomers engage with digital systems, what frictions emerge, and how past experiences of living invisibly shape these interactions. This study contributes to the HCI community by (1) offering an empirically grounded, underrepresented account of early-stage digital resettlement among North Korean defectors; (2) conceptualizing first-time digital identity as a site of acute vulnerability shaped by past experiences and long histories of marginalization; and (3) proposing temporal, context-sensitive, self-reliance–oriented approaches to digital adaptation that supports vulnerable newcomers’ sociotechnical transition into a new society.

North Korean defector mothers raising children in South Korea face challenges in balancing disclosure of their past with protecting their children from discrimination and stigma. Drawing on interviews with 22 North Korean defector mothers, we examine how children’s exposure to polarized media on North Korea acts as an unexpected, external force that shapes prejudice toward mothers’ backgrounds. This sociotechnical influence, combined with a lack of meaningful storytelling resources, complicates mothers’ disclosure decisions and constrains narrative agency over their own identities. We contribute to HCI by (1) advancing an empirically grounded understanding of how digital technologies mediate stigmatized identity disclosure in families, reshaping mother-child dynamics and mothers’ identity negotiations; (2) proposing design directions for storytelling technologies that support narrative agency, silence, and emotionally safe, anonymous sharing of disclosure strategies among mothers with stigmatized histories; (3) foregrounding the lived experiences and familial dynamics of a highly underrepresented population navigating digitally saturated ecosystems.

As Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers increasingly conduct studies involving populations with stigmatised identities, more researchers must focus on creating conversational spaces where participants feel comfortable discussing their experiences. This study unpacks how and why HCI researchers engage in self-disclosure to facilitate such spaces. We share eight autoethnographic personal stories of key moments when we disclosed or concealed personal information in our HCI studies with diverse participant groups (people with dementia, victims of online romance scams, children with autism, and North Korean defectors). Through analysing these stories, we found that these decisions were shaped by various goals: creating a welcoming environment, demonstrating credibility, establishing common ground, reducing stigma, and directing the interview’s focus. The acts of disclosure or concealment affected the interactions with participants, the collected data, and the well-being of the researcher and participant. We argue that greater awareness, reflection, guidance, and sharing are needed regarding self-disclosure in HCI research and offer a reflexive guide to help researchers prepare for and reflect on their self-disclosure practices. By making these practices visible and open to discussion, we aim to make researcher-participant interactions in sensitive settings more ethical, effective, and transparent. • HCI researchers dynamically disclose/conceal personal information with stigmatised groups. • Researchers differ in the who/what/when/why(not)/how of their self-disclosure. • HCI lacks awareness, guidelines, and transparency for researcher self-disclosure. • Reflexivity around self-disclosure is needed for ethical and effective research.

In a world where digital technology is omnipresent, North Korea stands as an outlier, with most citizens uninformed about its existence. This study explores the experiences of North Korean defectors as they transition to a highly digitally connected society—South Korea. Through 21 semi-structured interviews, we initially investigate the critical needs and challenges they encounter during their transitions. Then, we examine the role of digital technology as they adapt to the highly connected digital environment of South Korea. Our findings highlight that social media serves as a double-edged sword, providing the freedom to construct a desired identity while accentuating the gap between their real and ideal selves. This empirical research offers insights into how an underrepresented population navigates the digital landscape during life transitions, shedding light on the drawbacks and ways to better address their needs.

At a time when diverse forms of automated visual feedback systems on speech are introduced to the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community, our research investigates the possible design spaces and design implications to consider when creating them. We utilised a Wizard of Oz prototype that recognises fillers during speech and sends out real-time feedback in the form of a flickering screen and a post-report with graphic charts. We let 27 participants use this prototype and interviewed them about their general experience of using such systems. Based on thematic analysis, we propose eight design implications to consider when designing an automated visual feedback system on speech. Additionally, we discuss the possible future for automated visual feedback systems on speech where they collaborate with fields such as personal informatics (quantified self), self-determination theory (SDT) and motivation, and other socio-ethnic areas

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in chatbots that play counseling roles in the psychological health field. Previous studies have proposed counseling chatbots; however, they have not examined the anthropomorphic characteristics of agents in detail. In counseling situations, the characteristics of counselors and counselees affect the counseling performance. This study proposes a counseling chatbot to perform an intake interview and classifies the anthropomorphic characteristics of the chatbot into three dimensions—gender, personality, and visual interface cue—to examine these characteristics’ effects on user self-disclosure and companionship. Moreover, we examine the differences caused by user characteristics. No independent effect was observed for the gender of the chatbot or personality dimensions; however, a visual interface cue adversely affected the self-disclosure and companionship of the participants, and interaction effects were observed according to the combination of anthropomorphic characteristics. Furthermore, we found that the preferred chatbot differed according to gender. These results are significant and show that visual interface cues should be applied carefully while designing counseling chatbots. The anthropomorphism of the chatbot needs to be adjusted according to the user characteristics.

Abstract In this study, we investigated how to design a usable augmented reality (AR) profile conversation assistant focusing on how and which information leads to enhanced conversation experience and satisfaction. We drew on usability practices including user need interviews, information disposition sessions and an experiment comparing the conversation experiences between AR profile usage and non-usage. We provide insights into how to design a user interface that can enhance users' conversation experience and satisfaction compared to existing interfaces, especially in terms of type, quantity and placement of information on the AR profile. The three main design insights are to (1) limit the topics to personal information, recent events, preferences and hobbies; (2) use a text-based card format with emojis and make a clear distinction between preferred and not preferred topics through font size and placement difference; and (3) limit the number of information provision pages to less than four pages; however, we were not able to resolve the problem of the guilt and artificiality users feel in acquiring information about others from the AR profile. Thus, to resolve this problem, we suggest shifting our paradigm from a techno-solutionist perspective to breaking the illusion of the omnipotence of technology.

Mental health problems are prevalent issues in modern society. While psychological counseling has been a traditional solution, it faces such barriers as negative societal perceptions and limited accessibility. To overcome these, researchers have explored remote counseling via video/voice calls. Despite its advantages of accessibility, convenience, and anonymity, the lack of personal interaction continues to be a drawback. This study investigates the feasibility of using an augmented reality (AR) mask in remote counseling and whether it could increase the level of self-disclosure-which is often used to measure the effectiveness of counseling-while maintaining anonymity. We conducted a controlled experiment and a qualitative user study to assess the effects of AR masks on counselees' level of self-disclosure during remote counseling. The results suggest that AR masks can increase this level more effectively for people with a low disposition for self-disclosure.

In human–computer interaction (HCI) research, relational agents (RAs) are increasingly used to improve social support for vulnerable groups including people exposed to stigmas, alienation, and isolation. However, technical support for tuberculosis (TB) patients, one such vulnerable group, remains insufficient due to the nature of the infectious disease and difficulties in accessing the homeless community. To derive design considerations for developing RAs targeting homeless TB patients, we conducted an empirical study on the patients. Data were collected through participatory observations and interviews and were processed using deductive thematic analysis. The patients’ environmental and behavioral characteristics were classified, which showed that understanding these factors in the design of an RA is important because the patients’ perception, attitudes, and expectations towards the agent are shaped by (and also shape) their environmental and behavioral characteristics, which consequently affect the nature of relationships formed between them. Therefore, we drew the following design considerations: (1) protection of privacy is a prerequisite to the use of an RA for homeless TB patients and can be addressed from both short-term (technical) and long-term (sociotechnical) perspectives; (2) the homeless group emphasized affective support from the agent, suggesting that relationships per se are already valuable to people who have been socially isolated and stigmatized; (3) consideration of the past memories in selecting social cues can facilitate the exchange of affective expressions in user–agent interaction; and (4) an RA should clarify to its interlocuters its identity as a machine to avoid confusing people with low technological literacy.

Although suicide among older adults is increasing in severity in the aging among South Koreans, older adult depression and anxiety, which are two crucial factors affecting suicide in this population, are not adequately addressed by the status quo. Existing products and services emphasize physical needs; however, they still lack a user-oriented approach. Moreover, offers for mental health care are costly and exclude potential users from the development process, thus inhibiting older adults from having better access to such services. To address this problem, we designed and developed a mental health care chatbot, Yeonheebot, to decrease anxiety and depression among older adults. Yeonheebot initiates conversations regarding daily care for the well-being of older adults and provides features related to their interests as initiatives for using the mental health care chatbot. To examine whether a short-term, yet repeating conversation with the agent could help reduce anxiety and depression among older adults, we conducted a 2-week field study with 25 users. The results indicate that the constant use of Yeonheebot decreased the levels of anxiety and depression by 36% and 18%, respectively. Our research implies that simple and repeated interactions could help Korean older adults cope with anxiety and depression.

Recently, Social network games (SNGs) are gaining popularity. As various types of SNGs are expected to spread, empirical research on the usability of SNGs is necessary. This study investigates whether the influences of gift-giving types on social capital are significant depending on the relation types between users. In addition, the influences of social capital on the continuous usage intention were observed. The relationships are divided into “friends” and “neighbors.” The types of gift-giving are divided into “in-game gift-giving,” in which gifts are exchanged within the game, and “out-of-game gift-giving,” in which gifts are delivered outside the game, for example, through SNS personal messages. We conducted a survey targeting SNG users and found out that most of the social capital was significantly influenced by the gift-giving attitude. To supplement the results from the quantitative research, we conducted interviews to observe whether the results of the survey agreed with respondents’ actual perceptions.