Accessibility of digital services needs to be improved, in particular for users with cognitive and learning disabilities. Our focus is on digital design patterns that have the potential to increase comprehension for users with low cognitive and reading skills by combining short and simple text with effective design. We conducted a case study with 43 easy-to-read (ETR) users and 12 university students in a control group in which users select a theater play, find a date, and order tickets. In a participatory design process with four co-researchers and a User Experience (UX) expert, we created test material with high ecological validity. Subsequent testing collected quantitative and qualitative data to provide a clear picture of the context of use, the differences in success of the three variants, and the challenges of a multi-step ordering process. Our contributions are an enhanced participatory design process involving UX experts, insights into ETR users' context of use, and proposals for cogni-tively accessible design patterns for ticket selection, appointments, and an exemplary simplified ordering process that can be applied to similar digital services. * First author This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. CHI '26,

Health misinformation, defined as health-oriented information that contradicts empirically supported scientific findings, has become a significant concern on social media platforms. In response, platforms have implemented diverse design solutions to block such misinformation or alert users about its potential inaccuracies. However, there is limited knowledge about users’ perceptions of this specific type of misinformation and the actions that are necessary from both the platforms and the users themselves to mitigate its proliferation. This paper explores social media users’ (n = 22) perceptions of health misinformation. On the basis of our data, we identify specific types of health misinformation and align them with user-suggested countermeasures. We point to the critical demands for anti-misinformation solutions for health topics, emphasizing the transparency of information sources, immediate presentation of information, and clarity. Building on these findings, we propose a series of design recommendations to aid the future development of solutions aimed at counteracting misinformation.

As designers and researchers, it is our duty to ensure information accessibility for all, irrespective of cognitive abilities. Currently, Easy-to-Read (ETR) is commonly used to simplify text for individuals with cognitive impairments. Although design aspects of text comprehensibility have recently gained attention, digital design patterns remain relatively unexplored. Our understanding of how ETR users interact with digital media, and how to design specifically for their needs, is still limited. Our study involved observing 20 German ETR users engaging with a digital PDF and a website designed in a participatory process. We collected data on their access to digital media, personal use and workarounds, and their interaction with digital design patterns. Tasks on the smartphone were completed mostly successfully, while only 50% could navigate a digital PDF. In both cases, visual cues played a significant role. Our findings contribute recommendations for beneficial digital design patterns and future research.

What will people experience when drones become common in home environments? How will their functions and distances impact human experiences? To explore the potential usage of indoor drones, we conducted a mixed-methods study (N=60) on the reported perceptions of a small flying robot. We employed a factorial experimental design, involving four intended drone functions (camera, education, pet, unknown) at two distances (near, far). Our findings suggest that intended functions significantly influence participants’ perceptions. Among the functions examined, participants found the camera useful but annoying, and the pet useless but pleasant. The education emerged as the most favored function, while the unknown function was the least preferred one. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for designing positive interactions between humans and indoor drones, considering aspects such as context, transparency, privacy, technical factors, and personalization.

Persuasive tactics intend to encourage users to open advertising emails. However, these tactics can overwhelm users, which makes them frustrated and leads to lower open rates. This paper intends to understand which persuasive tactics are used and how they are perceived by users. We first developed a categorization of inbox-level persuasive tactics in permission-based advertising emails. We then asked participants to interact with an email inbox prototype, combined with interviews (N=32), to investigate their opinions towards advertising emails and underlying persuasive tactics. Our qualitative findings reveal poor user experience with advertising emails, which was related to feeling surveilled by companies, forced subscription, high prior knowledge about persuasive tactics, and a desire for more agency. We also found that using certain persuasive tactics on the inbox level is perceived as ethically inappropriate. Based on these insights, we provide design recommendations to improve advertising communication and make such emails more valuable to users.

When flying robots are used in close-range interaction with humans, the noise they generate, also called consequential sound, is a critical parameter for user acceptance. We conjecture that there is a benefit in adding natural sounds to noisy domestic drones. To test our hypothesis experimentally, we carried out a mixed-methods research study (N = 56) on reported user perception of a sonified domestic flying robot with three sound conditions at three distances. The natural sounds studied were, respectively, added to the robot’s inherent noises during flying; namely, a bird song and a rain sound, plus a control condition of no added sound. The distances studied were set according to proxemics; namely, near , middle , and far . Our results show that adding bird song or rain sound affects the participants’ perceptions, and the proxemic distances play a nonnegligible role. For instance, we found that participants liked the bird condition the most when the drone was at far , while they disliked the same sound the most when at near . We also found that participants’ perceptions strongly depended on their associations and interpretations deriving from previous experience. We derived six concrete design recommendations.