In designing for dementia, the concept of person-centered care (PCC) effectively shifts attention away from deficit orientations. However, it predominantly focuses on the roles of humans in sustaining personhood, leaving the roles of nonhuman actors in care assemblages under-explored. To address this, we propose a theory–method package that extends PCC with posthumanist perspectives. We applied it in a six-month participatory design process to develop a conversational agent (CA) with four people living with dementia (PlwD), their relatives, and care workers. We report both the design process and analysis of conversations between the CA and one PlwD. Tracing the socio-material and ethical assemblages that emerged in these intra-actions, we identify moments of recognition, validation, holding, and facilitation. Situating these within broader discussions of care, process-oriented ethics, and posthuman design, we illustrate opportunities and limits to design for meaningful experiences of personhood between people with dementia, CAs, and other nonhuman actors.

In Human–Robot Interaction (HRI), vandalization of robots is predominantly framed as senseless or immoral behaviors, with mitigation efforts focused on system design improvements or user education. Drawing on sociological theories of vandalism, we examine three cases of robot destruction in public spaces: the burning of Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles (2025), the vandalism of a Knightscope K5 robot in San Francisco (2017), and the destruction of the hitchhiking robot hitchBOT in Philadelphia (2015). We argue that not all acts of robot vandalism are instances of "malicious" destruction. Rather, some can be understood as ideological or political vandalism - expressive or strategic acts embedded within broader social and political struggles. By situating these events in their urban and discursive contexts, our analysis moves beyond explanations grounded solely in individual psychology or system design, and invites a broader reflection within HRI on how robots as socio-technical artifacts become implicated in the politics of public space, power, and collective life.

Designing for dementia care is challenging due to its complexity, relational nature, and diverse needs.Meaningful design outcomes require bridging a deep understanding of dementia care and the experiences of people with dementia with technological possibilities and constraints.This paper explores hackathons for facilitating such translations in the design of robotic technologies.We conducted two hackathons -one with researchers and care professionals, and another with HCI Master's students -integrating ethnographic insights, theoretical framings, first-hand experiences, and designerly knowledge.Participants' reflections highlight how the format fostered open-ended exploration, interdisciplinary collaboration, and mutual learning through tailored inspiration materials and structured design processes.Evaluating the concepts using Kitwood's framework of person-centred care needs, we find that the hackathons generated meaningful concepts for human and non-human care relations.However, the outcomes also surface ethical considerations related to these relations, emphasising the need for further participatory design processes to refine and situate the outcomes.

In HCI there have been calls for diversity-driven research and insights into how this may be carried out in practice. One way of conducting diversity-driven HCI research is by doing participatory design. In this paper we contribute with lessons identified from organizing a PD workshop that enabled diverse ways of participating for our participants. The workshop design is based on insights from two years of doing diversity-driven PD with two middle school classes, which are particularly interesting settings to explore as diverse children spend substantial time together in a period of their development that is formative for their socialisation. We describe the workshop itself before reflecting on its structure and facilitation as well as the role of the physical space and the choice of design materials with the aim to distil insights and recommendations about what researchers can do to enable diverse pathways of participation in design processes.

As autonomous functional robots proliferate in public spaces, understanding their acceptance among diverse populations becomes crucial. Traditional models of technology acceptance focus on behavioral and cognitive factors, overlooking the socio-cultural and temporal scaffolding of human-robot interaction. To address this gap, we present two themes (Identity Matters, Community Matters) resulting from a qualitative analysis of ethnographic interviews (n = 20) with passersby and vendors who have experienced Starship delivery robots deployed in their communities. Situating the outcomes of our analysis in relation to existing technology acceptance models, we offer five lessons contributing to the efforts in understanding existence and usage-related acceptance of autonomous functional robots in public spaces.

Long-distance relationships (LDRs) have long been of interest in HCI research, and several strategies and designs for mediating intimacy have been proposed. This work-in-progress aims to explore and identify existing practices in experiencing intimacy in technology-mediated LDRs, to design artefacts that could mediate some of the related struggles, and to explore the prototypes with users. Based on the insights from seven in-depth semi-structured interviews and a creative task, we developed the concept of Qude, which entails two prototypes: a vibro-tactile wearable that enables a person to tap and send a rhythm to their partner; and a supporting app, through which users can assign meanings to the rhythms, thus creating an exclusive, tactile code. The paper concludes by reflecting on preliminary findings from four user explorations and the contextual analysis. We provide considerations for further iterations of Qude, as well as a discussion of possibilities for future designs.