Mo Houtti

dblp:326/8731 · DBLP profile ↗
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7ranked-venue papers
5as first author
7since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0003-0902-0940ORCID · corroborated

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing · 7 · 5 first-author · 7 since 2021Databases, data management, data science and information retrieval · 1 · 1 first-author · 1 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 1 · 1 first-author · 1 since 2021
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2026 Who Is At Risk? Examining the Prevalence of Digital-Safety Attacks and Contextual Risk Factors in the United States
abstract
A growing body of qualitative research has identified contextual risk factors that elevate people’s chances of experiencing digital-safety attacks. However, the lack of quantitative data on the population-level distribution of these risk factors prevents policymakers and tech companies from developing targeted, evidence-based interventions to improve digital safety. To address this gap, we surveyed 5,001 adults in the United States to analyze: (1) the frequency of and relationship between digital-safety attacks (e.g., scams, harassment, account hacking), and (2) how these attacks align with 10 contextual risk factors. Nearly half of our respondents identify as resource constrained, which significantly correlates with higher likelihood of experiencing four common attacks. We also present qualitative insights to expand our understanding of the factors beyond the existing literature (e.g., “prominence” included high-visibility roles in local communities). This study provides the first large-scale quantitative analysis correlating digital-safety attacks with contextual risk factors and demographics.
Sharon Heung, Claire Weizenegger, Mo Houtti, Sunny Consolvo, Patrick Gage Kelley, Tara Matthews, Renee Shelby, Kurt Thomas, Ashley Marie Walker
CHI3
2026 Opportunities and Barriers for AI Feedback on Meeting Inclusion in Socioorganizational Teams
abstract
Inclusion is important for meeting effectiveness, which is in turn central to organizational functioning. One way of improving inclusion in meetings is through feedback, but social dynamics make giving feedback difficult. We propose that AI agents can facilitate feedback exchange by being psychologically safer recipients, and we test this through a meeting system with an AI agent feedback mediator. When delivering feedback, the agent uses the Induced Hypocrisy Procedure, a social psychological technique that prompts behavior change by highlighting value-behavior inconsistencies. In a within-subjects lab study (n = 28), the agent made speaking times more balanced and improved meeting quality. However, a field study at a small consulting firm (n = 10) revealed organizational barriers that led to its use for personal reflection rather than feedback exchange. We contribute a novel sociotechnical system for feedback exchange in groups, and empirical findings demonstrating the importance of considering organizational barriers in designing AI tools for organizations.
Mo Houtti, Moyan Zhou, Daniel Runningen, Surabhi Sunil, Leor Porat, Harmanpreet Kaur, Loren G. Terveen, Stevie Chancellor
CHI1
2025 Observe, Ask, Intervene: Designing AI Agents for More Inclusive Meetings
abstract
Video conferencing meetings are more effective when they are inclusive, but inclusion often hinges on meeting leaders' and/or co-facilitators' practices. AI systems can be designed to improve meeting inclusion at scale by moderating negative meeting behaviors and supporting meeting leaders. We explored this design space by conducting $9$ user-centered ideation sessions, instantiating design insights in a prototype ``virtual co-host'' system, and testing the system in a formative exploratory lab study ($n=68$ across $12$ groups, $18$ interviews). We found that ideation session participants wanted AI agents to ask questions before intervening, which we formalized as the ``Observe, Ask, Intervene'' (OAI) framework. Participants who used our prototype preferred OAI over fully autonomous intervention, but rationalized away the virtual co-host's critical feedback. From these findings, we derive guidelines for designing AI agents to influence behavior and mediate group work. We also contribute methodological and design guidelines specific to mitigating inequitable meeting participation.
Mo Houtti, Moyan Zhou, Loren G. Terveen, Stevie Chancellor
CHI1
2024 Leveraging Recommender Systems to Reduce Content Gaps on Peer Production Platforms
abstract
Peer production platforms like Wikipedia commonly suffer from content gaps. Prior research suggests recommender systems can help solve this problem, by guiding editors towards underrepresented topics. However, it remains unclear whether this approach would result in less relevant recommendations, leading to reduced overall engagement with recommended items. To answer this question, we first conducted offline analyses (Study 1) on SuggestBot, a task-routing recommender system for Wikipedia, then did a three-month controlled experiment (Study 2). Our results show that presenting users with articles from underrepresented topics increased the proportion of work done on those articles without significantly reducing overall recommendation uptake. We discuss the implications of our results, including how ignoring the article discovery process can artificially narrow recommendations on peer production platforms.
Mo Houtti, Isaac L. Johnson, Morten Warncke-Wang, Loren G. Terveen
ICWSM1
2023 "All of the White People Went First": How Video Conferencing Consolidates Control and Exacerbates Workplace Bias
abstract
Workplace bias creates negative psychological outcomes for employees, permeating the larger organization. Workplace meetings are frequent, making them a key context where bias may occur. Video conferencing (VC) is an increasingly common medium for workplace meetings; we therefore investigated how VC tools contribute to increasing or reducing bias in meetings. Through a semi-structured interview study with 22 professionals, we found that VC features push meeting leaders to exercise control over various meeting parameters, giving leaders an outsized role in affecting bias. We demonstrate this with respect to four core VC features---user tiles, raise hand, text-based chat, and meeting recording---and recommend employing at least one of two mechanisms for mitigating bias in VC meetings---1) transferring control from meeting leaders to technical systems or other attendees and 2) helping meeting leaders better exercise the control they do wield.
Mo Houtti, Moyan Zhou, Loren G. Terveen, Stevie Chancellor
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.1
2022 "We Need a Woman in Music": Exploring Wikipedia's Values on Article Priority
abstract
Wikipedia---like most peer production communities---suffers from a basic problem: the amount of work that needs to be done (articles to be created and improved) exceeds the available resources (editor effort). Recommender systems have been deployed to address this problem, but they have tended to recommend work tasks that match individuals' personal interests, ignoring more global community values. In English Wikipedia, discussion about Vital articles constitutes a proxy for community values about the types of articles that are most important, and should therefore be prioritized for improvement. We first analyzed these discussions, finding that an article's priority is considered a function of 1) its inherent importance and 2) its effects on Wikipedia's global composition. One important example of the second consideration is balance, including along the dimensions of gender and geography. We then conducted a quantitative analysis evaluating how four different article prioritization methods---two from prior research---would affect Wikipedia's overall balance on these two dimensions; we found significant differences among the methods. We discuss the implications of our results, including particularly how they can guide the design of recommender systems that take into account community values, not just individuals' interests.
Mo Houtti, Isaac L. Johnson, Joel Cepeda, Soumya Khandelwal, Aviral Bhatnagar, Loren G. Terveen
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.1
2022 Working for the Invisible Machines or Pumping Information into an Empty Void? An Exploration of Wikidata Contributors' Motivations
abstract
Structured data peer production (SDPP) platforms like Wikidata play an important role in knowledge production. Compared to traditional peer production platforms like Wikipedia, Wikidata data is more structured and intended to be used by machines, not (directly) by people; end-user interactions with Wikidata often happen through intermediary "invisible machines." Given this distinction, we wanted to understand Wikidata contributor motivations and how they are affected by usage invisibility caused by the machine intermediaries. Through an inductive thematic analysis of 15 interviews, we find that: (i) Wikidata editors take on two archetypes---Architects who define the ontological infrastructure of Wikidata, and Masons who build the database through data entry and editing; (ii) the structured nature of Wikidata reveals novel editor motivations, such as an innate drive for organizational work; (iii) most Wikidata editors have little understanding of how their contributions are used, which may demotivate some. We synthesize these insights to help guide the future design of SDPP platforms in supporting the engagement of different types of editors.
Charles Chuankai Zhang, Mo Houtti, C. Estelle Smith, Ruoyan Kong, Loren G. Terveen
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.2