As Extended Reality (XR) transitions from specialized domains into domestic settings, industry narratives envision a future of seamless, ubiquitous integration. Yet these imaginaries, largely shaped by Western contexts, often overlook the complex social organization and material constraints of diverse households. To address this gap, we examined how individuals in Singapore interpret XR in everyday life. Using value scenarios as sociotechnical imaginaries, we conducted a survey (N = 206) and interviews (N = 22). We identify two layers of mental models: (1) perceived immersion and (2) XR’s roles in domestic life. Through these models, participants conceptualized XR as a situational fix for overcoming spatial, temporal, or relational constraints, or as an enabling medium for connection, expression, and wellbeing. We argue for a shift from functional optimization to relational maintenance, and propose design considerations for XR as an episodic, situational utility that supports the home.

Can self-tracking technology be designed to help us learn how our everyday activities align with our values? Existing personal informatics systems can help track time use, but rarely explicitly connect time use with personal abstract values. We designed, built, and deployed eValuATE, a personal informatics system that helps individuals reconstruct their everyday activities, annotate those activities with their values, and visualize relationships between their activities and values. Fifteen participants used the system in a think-aloud study, a 2-4 week deployment, and a closing interview. The system helped participants refine their own values, understand how those values were supported through their daily activities, view their time use differently, and in many cases change their behavior to better align with their values. We discuss design considerations for self-tracking abstract values, motivate a shift towards short term life studies over perpetual self-tracking, and present a multi-level reflection model for personal informatics system design.

Tangible artifacts and embodied experiences are central to religious and spiritual (R/S) practices, and many HCI researchers and interaction designers highlight the importance of materiality and physicality in design. In this review paper, we bring these perspectives together and examine 44 examples of R/S tangible interactive artifacts (TIAs) from academia, art, industry, and R/S communities to understand their specifics and guide future HCI research and design. We analyze these artifacts and map out a design space for R/S TIAs by matching identified characteristics of R/S TIAs with a framework from the study of material religion. The descriptive and generative R/S TIA Design Space covers insights into bodies, things, places, practices, and backgrounds. This paper offers a novel contribution to HCI research on the value and importance of tangibility and embodiment in technology-mediated practices in R/S contexts and serves as a source for future R/S TIA creation and research.

A grand challenge for computing is to better understand fundamental human needs and their satisfaction. In this work, we design a personal informatics technology probe that scaffolds reflection on how time-use satisfies Max-Neef’s fundamental needs of being, having, doing, and interacting via self-aspects, relationships and organizations, activities, and environments. Through a combination of a think-aloud study (N = 10) and a week-long in situ deployment (N = 7), participants used the probe to complete self- aspect elicitation and Day Reconstruction Method tasks. Participants then interacted with network visualizations of their daily lives, and discovered insights about their lives. During the study, we collected a dataset of 662 activities annotated with need satisfaction ratings. Despite challenges in operationalizing a theory of need through direct elicitation from individuals, personal informatics systems show potential as a participatory and individually meaningful approach for understanding need satisfaction in everyday life.

We present the research area of personal dream informatics: studying the self-information systems that support dream engagement and communication between the dreaming self and the wakeful self. Through a survey study of 281 individuals primarily recruited from an online community dedicated to dreaming, we develop a dream-information systems view of dreaming and dream tracking as a type of self-information system. While dream-information systems are characterized by diverse tracking processes, motivations, and outcomes, they are universally constrained by the ephemeral dreamset—the short period of time between waking up and rapid memory loss of dream experiences. By developing a system dynamics model of dreaming we highlight feedback loops that serve as high leverage points for technology designers, and suggest a variety of design considerations for crafting technology that best supports dream recall, dream tracking, and dreamwork for nightmare relief and personal development.

Personal health informatics are increasingly used in the long-term management of bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses. These systems help individuals and members of their support networks track and stabilize important social rhythms. In this study, we presented mental health professionals with nine design concepts for personal informatics systems to support interpersonal and social rhythm therapy. These designs, derived from prior empirical findings about patients’ data practices, utilize social interfaces to support the social ecologies critical to relational recovery in bipolar disorder. Designs included features for sharing data in dynamic social support systems, custom variables, commenting, co-tracking, and data-driven action plans. Qualitative analysis of clinicians’ feedback yielded design recommendations for mental health informatics, such as supporting all cognitive states of the multiplicative patient and the interactions between these states and patient–clinician interfaces. Diversity in clinical practice also necessitates application flexibility and careful integration with existing workflows.