Personal tracking technologies for family life, including speech tracking, have long been conceptualised in HCI as tools to support wellbeing and parenting at scale. However, speech tracking is inherently invasive because it captures intimate family interactions, and its ethical introduction and appropriation into everyday life remains uncertain. Using research through design, we examined family speech tracking by developing seven plausible design fictions grounded in parenting theory, and then conducting a 1-week technology probe study with 60 parents to understand their perceptions. Parents envisaged both positive and negative outcomes for family speech tracking, including concerns about diminishing authentic connection and potential misappropriation. Unlike existing parenting interventions, parents envisioned technologies supporting children’s intervention goals directly rather than focusing on parental skill development. We contribute seven evidence-informed speculative speech tracking concepts, empirical insights revealing concerns about diminishing authentic parent-child connection, and identification of technical, interactional, and systemic sociotechnical dilemmas.

Customisation can make health tracking on smartwatches more meaningful and engaging, yet children are rarely given the opportunity to shape the design of these wearables. To address this, as part of a technology probe, we developed a low-burden online customisation process for children with ADHD and their parents. This enabled 10 children (aged 8-11) with ADHD and a parent to rapidly customise a smartwatch application and smartphone SMS system to track their personal health data. The process had three main benefits: 1) it enabled real-time customisation of self-tracking technology probes which could be deployed with minimal development time; 2) it deepened our understanding of participants' self-tracking needs and preferences, including the importance of accessibility for children with ADHD; and 3) it enhanced children's short- and long-term engagement with the technology probe. We discuss these benefits, alongside the challenges encountered, and discuss how this approach can be applied in future studies.

Parental emotion coaching approaches that advocate for noticing and validating child emotions can greatly impact children's regulatory abilities. However, in daily life, parents often struggle to apply emotion coaching strategies that they access through parenting programmes or online help, suggesting a need for in situ support. This paper explores a potential new avenue for providing such support. We undertook conceptual work to develop a set of emotion-focused reflective questions that could increase parents’ attention to child emotions and delivered these as daily ecological momentary assessments (EMAs). We investigated the perceived impact of the approach through a 2-week online trial (n=33) and then co-designed child-facing component with parents through a 4-week asynchronous remote community study (n=15). Our paper contributes (1) conceptual insights on designing a potential novel intervention approach, (2) empirical insights on its acceptability and perceived impacts for parents, and (3) design implications for applying the approach to wider psychological constructs.

Engaging with people's lived experiences is foundational for HCI research and design. This paper introduces a novel narrative elicitation method to empower people to easily articulate 'micro-narratives' emerging from their lived experiences, irrespective of their writing ability or background. Our approach aims to enable at-scale collection of rich, co-created datasets that highlight target populations' voices with minimal participant burden, while precisely addressing specific research questions. To pilot this idea, and test its feasibility, we: (i) developed an AI-powered prototype, which leverages LLM-chaining to scaffold the cognitive steps necessary for users' narrative articulation; (ii) deployed it in three mixed-methods studies involving over 380 users; and (iii) consulted with established academics as well as C-level staff at (inter)national non-profits to map out potential applications. Both qualitative and quantitative findings show the acceptability and promise of the micro-narrative method, while also identifying the ethical and safeguarding considerations necessary for any at-scale deployments.

Understanding the situated challenges that people face when attempting to apply online parenting advice is crucial for building effective digital parenting supports. However, existing HCI methods do not enable researchers to capture the complete breadth of experience relevant to gathering experiential data on both behaviour change processes and lived experiences at scale. This article describes the full development process of adapting existing probe-like methods to capture data about these parenting experiences. We drew on a systematic review of existing probe-like methods and developed a digital probe through user-centred design involving parents. Our study included parent interviews (n = 15), online trials (n = 30, n = 200) and an evaluation of the probe alongside a UK National Health Service parenting intervention (n = 35). Our article contributes insights into how to adapt probes to collect rich parenting data, reveals the kinds of insights gathered and presents new considerations for designing digital parenting interventions that resonate with families.

Since their introduction, there has been wide discussion about how probes are used in human computer interaction (HCI) research. This variation can be problematic for researchers and designers who plan on using probes in the child computer interaction space, as it can be difficult to know which approach is best suited to address their design situation. In this review, we surveyed the ways that HCI researchers have used probes in studies with children and families. Based on 25 articles, we analysed the methodological decisions that researchers have taken in their empirical studies, relating to: a.) the goals for using the probes, b.) the probe itself, c.) participant involvement, and d.) the data and data use. Based on our methodological findings, we highlight four key tensions—including probes as sources of information versus creative input–and consider questions that can guide decision making for developing probes studies with children and families.

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is a critical emotion regulation skill that is strongly associated with mental well-being outcomes. While CR has been well theorized psychologically and many therapeutic approaches exist, CR remains one of the toughest skills to learn and develop. We explore the design space of using technologically-mediated CR supports through a dual approach. First, we draw on a content analysis of 30 therapeutic manuals combined with five clinician interviews to understand existing CR processes and challenges in therapeutic settings. Second, we compare the identified challenges with a scoping review of 42 HCI papers on technologically-mediated CR interventions. This allowed us to identify trends and gaps in a field where digital health innovations are critically needed; and suggest four design opportunities that warrant further exploration. Together, our work contributes theoretically-derived future research opportunities, and provides researchers with concrete guidance to explore these important design spaces.

Digital self-control tools (DSCTs) help people control their time and attention on digital devices, using interventions like distraction blocking or usage tracking. Most studies of DSCTs’ effectiveness have focused on whether a single intervention reduces time spent on a single device. In reality, people may require combinations of DSCTs to achieve more subjective goals across multiple devices. We studied how DSCTs can address individual needs of university students (n = 280), using a workshop where students reflect on their goals before exploring relevant tools. At 1-3 month follow-ups, 95% of respondents still used at least one type of DSCT, typically applied across multiple devices, and there was substantial variation in the tool combinations chosen. We observed a large increase in self-reported digital self-control, suggesting that providing a space to articulate goals and self-select appropriate DSCTs is a powerful way to support people who struggle to self-regulate digital device use.

How might emerging modalities (e.g., NLP) be leveraged to transform the provision of parenting support? To explore the role of AI technologies in supporting parenting behaviour—and child-well-being—we surveyed 92 parents to gather their perspectives on nine future-oriented scenarios. We used Design Fiction and Speed Dating to understand parents needs and preferences around the design of agent-based supports. We explore the perceived benefits of AI assistants (i.e., receiving objective feedback, managing emotions and personalised guidance) and the most voiced concerns (i.e., AI undermining parental authority, replacing human interactions, and promoting lazy parenting). Finally, we highlight a number of plausible design directions based on the scenarios that parents were positive about.

Many people prefer psychosocial interventions for mental health care or other concerns, but these interventions are often complex and unavailable in settings where people seek care. Intervention designers use technology to improve user experience or reach of interventions, and HCI researchers have made many contributions toward this goal. Both HCI and mental health researchers must navigate tensions between innovating on and adhering to the theories of change that guide intervention design. In this paper, we propose a framework that describes design briefs and evaluation approaches for HCI contributions at the scopes of capabilities, components, intervention systems, and intervention implementations. We show how theories of change (from mental health) can be translated into design briefs (in HCI), and that these translations can bridge and coordinate efforts across fields. It is our hope that this framework can support researchers in motivating, planning, conducting, and communicating work that advances psychosocial intervention design.

Awareness of internal sensations, or interoceptive awareness (IA) is a topic of interest spanning multiple disciplines. In psychology, several therapeutic frameworks which cultivate IA have emerged. Meanwhile, HCI designers have developed novel approaches to IA across diverse contexts and design goals. These HCI strategies may hold value for mental health, however, it’s unclear to what degree designerly IA techniques match or contrast with those used in therapeutic settings. We seek to address this gap in two parts. First, we offer a set of design opportunities based on IA practices used in HCI and findings from interviews with 22 counselors. Second, we share context-specific insights from a 5-week probe study involving 24 young women with nonclinical disordered eating behaviors, which are linked to interoceptive deficits. Together, the design opportunities and probe study findings provide guidance and highlight open questions regarding the design of technology-mediated IA support for mental health.

Early parenting is one of the strongest predictors of child well-being. Online social communities have shown promise in supporting parents across a range of contexts. However, we only have a limited understanding of how posters and commenters interact within a forum, or how well commenter responses can support complex parenting questions, such as attempts to change a child's behaviour or to apply new parenting approaches. We start addressing this gap by combining an empirical analysis of 1 year of parent posts from an exemplar online forum (Mumsnet) with literature on parenting interventions from psychology. In particular, we examine the types of question parents of 2-5 year olds seek help for around their children's behaviour, and the challenges with the support that they do (or do not) receive from the Mumsnet community. Combining empirical and theory-driven insights, we outline an 'information-to-application' gap that conceptually underpins the difficulties observed, and suggest plausible research directions that could address such design problems.

Parenting practices have a profound effect on children's well-being and are a core target of several psychological interventions for child mental health. However, there is only limited understanding in HCI so far about how to design socio-technical systems that could support positive shifts in parent-child social practices in situ. This paper focuses on parental socialisation of emotion as an exemplar context in which to explore this question. We present a two-step study, combining theory-driven identification of plausible design directions with co-design workshops with 22 parents of children aged 6-10 years. Our data suggest the potential for technology-enabled systems that aim to facilitate positive changes in parent-child social practices in situ, and highlight a number of plausible design directions to explore in future work.

Prior research indicates that many adolescents struggle to use social media intentionally, with negative impacts on well-being. This presents an important but under-researched opportunity to improve youth well-being through interaction design. We developed Locus, a mobile application that shapes adolescents’ entry experiences into the social media apps on their phones by prompting them to reflect on their social media intentions before they open an app and at the end of the day. In designing Locus, we combined psychology theories—to identify design targets—with co-design approaches—to design around these targets for youth's lived experiences. Following co-design work with nine teens (Mage=15.7 years), we conducted an open trial field deployment (N = 54; Mage=16.2 years) to explore how Locus was used and experienced by adolescents during their daily lives. Results provide preliminary evidence that in-the-moment interventions for self-regulation skills can support adolescents’ intentional social media use.

Cognitive reappraisal is a critical emotion regulation skill required for youth mental health. While it has been well theorized psychologically and many therapeutic approaches exist, youth still struggle to develop these skills. We explore the design space of using virtual reality to create technologically-mediated cognitive reappraisal supports for youth. We developed four VR prototypes that we used as prompts for feedback in a ten-session co-design workshop with nine youth (aged 15-17). Our work contributes youth-derived directions for further research in the design space of VR and mental health; and highlights opportunities to use VR for cognitive reappraisal skills training by generating meaningful emotionally laden situations, supporting body-based experiential learning, and providing technology-mediated social connection.

There is a growing interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) to envision, design, and evaluate technology-enabled interventions that support users’ emotion regulation. This interest stems in part from increased recognition that the ability to regulate emotions is critical to mental health, and that a lack of effective emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic factor for mental illness. However, the potential to combine innovative HCI designs with the theoretical grounding and state-of-the-art interventions from psychology has yet to be fully realised. In this article, we synthesise HCI work on emotion regulation interventions and propose a three-part framework to guide technology designers in making: (i) theory-informed decisions about intervention targets; (ii) strategic decisions regarding the technology-enabled intervention mechanisms to be included in the system; and (iii) practical decisions around previous implementations of the selected intervention components. We show how this framework can both systematise HCI work to date and suggest a research agenda for future work.

The ability to manage emotions effectively is critical to healthy psychological and social development in youth. Prior work has focused on investigating the design of mental health technologies for this population, yet it is still unclear how to help them cope with emotionally difficult situations in-the-moment. In this paper, we aim to explore the appropriation, naturally emerging engagement patterns, and perceived psychological impact of an exemplar interactive tangible device intervention designed to provide in-situ support, when deployed with n=109 youth for 1.5 months. Our findings from semi-structured interviews and co-design workshops with a subset of participants (n=44 and n=25, respectively) suggest the potential of using technology-enabled objects to aid with down-regulation and self-compassion in moments of heightened emotion, to facilitate the practice of cognitive strategies, and to act as emotional companions. Lastly, we discuss design opportunities for integrating situated and embodied support in mental health interventions for youth.

Emotion-related parent-child interactions during early childhood play a crucial role in the development of emotion regulation, a fundamental life skill central to well-being. However, limited work in HCI has explored how technology could support parents in adopting supportive emotion socialisation practices. In this paper, we explore how an embodied, in-situ intervention in the form of a smart toy can impact emotion-related parent-child interactions in the home. We draw on (1) interviews with 29 parents of young children who had the smart toy for at least 1 month; (2) co-design workshops with 12 parents and 8 parenting course facilitators. We discuss how the smart toy impacted parent-child interactions around emotions for a subset of families, and draw on workshop data to explore how this could be designed for directly. Finally, we propose a set of design directions for technology-enabled systems aiming to elicit and scaffold specific parent-child interactions over time.

Much effort has been invested in designing digital systems that keep people ‘hooked’. By contrast, comparatively little is known about how designers can support people in re-gaining control. Online, however, hundreds of apps and browser extensions promise to help people self-regulate use of digital devices. Reviews and popularity metrics for these digital self-control tools (DSCTs) can indicate which design patterns are useful in the wild. Moreover, they reveal how platforms like Android and iOS differ in the ecosystems they enable for DSCTs, which has important implications for end users. We analysed reviews, installation numbers, and ratings for 334 DSCTs on the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores, investigating what user reviews reveal about usage contexts and key design challenges, and how functionality relates to popularity metrics. Our thematic analysis of 1,529 reviews (sampled from a data set of 53,978 distinct reviews scraped in March 2019) found that DSCTs are seen as highly important for focusing on less instantly rewarding tasks when digital distractions are easily available. Users seek DSCTs that adapt to their personal definitions of distraction, and provide support that is sufficient to change behaviour without feeling too coercive. Reviewers suggested combining design patterns to provide a level of support that is ‘just right’. This was mirrored in the ratings, where tools that combine different types of design patterns (e.g., website blocking and goal reminders) tended to receive higher ratings than those implementing a single type. We discuss implications for research and design, including how design patterns in DSCTs interact, and how psychological reactance to DSCTs can be reduced.

We present a Research-through-Design case study of the design and development of an intimate-space tangible device perhaps best understood as a socially assistive robot, aimed at scaffolding children’s efforts at emotional regulation. This case study covers the initial research device development, as well as knowledge transfer to a product development company toward translating the research into a workable commercial product that could also serve as a robust “research product” for field trials. Key contributions to the literature include: (1) sharing of lessons learned from the knowledge transfer process that can be useful to others interested in developing robust products (whether commercial or research) that preserve design values, while allowing for large scale deployment and research; (2) articulation of a design space in HCI/HRI (Human Robot Interaction) of intimate space socially assistive robots , with the current artifact as a central exemplar, contextualized alongside other related HRI artifacts.

Research increasingly shows that technology can improve access to mental health interventions. However, unaccompanied migrant youth (UMY) still struggle in accessing appropriate mental health resources in spite of their high need for mental health support. Through co-design workshops, and using the lens of the social-ecological model of resilience, we explored the social-ecological factors that support or hinder UMY’s use of mental health apps as resources. We identified the strong influence of the macro-system (i.e. resettlement policies) on the bio-and micro-systems, which in turn limits participants’ abilities to use the apps. Our findings highlight the factors specific to each social-ecological system—including personal experiences, technological infrastructure and social environment—that need to be accounted for when designing technological mental health resources for UMY. This contributes: a rich description of the interplay of mental health apps with social-ecological systems in which UMY are embedded; and the corresponding design considerations.

Online settings have been suggested as viable sites for youth to develop social, emotional, and technical skills that can positively shape their behavior online. However, little work has been done to understand how online governance structures might support (or hinder) such learning. Using mixed-methods research, we report findings from a 2-year, in-the-wild study of 8–13 year olds on a custom multiplayer Minecraft server. The two-part study focuses on the design of youth-centered models of community governance drawn from evidence-based offline practices in the prevention and learning sciences. Preliminary results point to a set of socio-technical design approaches shaping player behavior while also supporting youth interest in Minecraft-like online environments. More broadly, the findings suggest an alternative vision of youth’s capacity for ownership and control of mechanisms shaping the culture and climate of their online communities: managing player behavior while challenging current norms around adult control and surveillance of youth activity.

The increasingly widespread use of 'smart' devices has raised multifarious ethical concerns regarding their use in domestic spaces. Previous work examining such ethical dimensions has typically either involved empirical studies of concerns raised by specific devices and use contexts, or alternatively expounded on abstract concepts like autonomy, privacy or trust in relation to 'smart homes' in general. This paper attempts to bridge these approaches by asking what features of smart devices users consider as rendering them 'smart' and how these relate to ethical concerns. Through a multimethod investigation including surveys with smart device users (n=120) and semi-structured interviews (n=15), we identify and describe eight types of smartness and explore how they engender a variety of ethical concerns including privacy, autonomy, and disruption of the social order. We argue that this middle ground, between concerns arising from particular devices and more abstract ethical concepts, can better anticipate potential ethical concerns regarding smart devices.

Beyond being the world's largest social network, Facebook is for many also one of its greatest sources of digital distraction. For students, problematic use has been associated with negative effects on academic achievement and general wellbeing. To understand what strategies could help users regain control, we investigated how simple interventions to the Facebook UI affect behaviour and perceived control. We assigned 58 university students to one of three interventions: goal reminders, removed newsfeed, or white background (control). We logged use for 6 weeks, applied interventions in the middle weeks, and administered fortnightly surveys. Both goal reminders and removed newsfeed helped participants stay on task and avoid distraction. However, goal reminders were often annoying, and removing the newsfeed made some fear missing out on information. Our findings point to future interventions such as controls for adjusting types and amount of available information, and flexible blocking which matches individual definitions of 'distraction'.

Unaccompanied migrant youth, fleeing to a new country without their parents, are exposed to mental health risks. Resilience interventions mitigate such risks, but access can be hindered by systemic and personal barriers. While much work has recently addressed designing technology to promote mental health, none has focused on the needs of these populations. This paper presents the results of interviews with 18 professional/ volunteer support workers and 5 unaccompanied migrant youths, followed by three design workshops. The results point to the diverse systems that can facilitate youths' resilience development. The relationship between the youth and volunteers acting as mentors is particularly important for increasing resilience but comes with challenges. This suggests the relevance of a social-ecological model of resilience with a focus on designing technology to support the mentors in order to help them better support the youth. We conclude by mapping out the design space for mentor support.

Online multiplayer games like Minecraft, gaining increasing popularity among present-day youth, include rich contexts for social interactions but are also rife with interpersonal conflict among players. Research shows that a variety of socio-technical mechanisms (e.g., server rules, chat filters, use of in-game controls to ban players, etc.) aim to limit and/or eliminate social conflict in games like Minecraft. However, avoiding social conflict need not necessarily always be a useful approach. Broadly defined in CSCW literature as a phenomenon that may arise even amidst mutual cooperation, social conflict can yield positive outcomes depending on how it is managed (e.g., [Easterbrook et al.,1993]). In fact, the aforementioned approaches to avoid conflict may not be helpful as they do not help youth understand how to address similar interpersonal differences that may occur in other social settings. Furthermore, prior research has established the value of developing conflict-resolution skills during early adolescence within safe settings, such as school/after-school wellness and prevention interventions (e.g.,[Shure, 1982], [Aber et al., 1998]), for later success in any given interpersonal relationship. While games like Minecraft offer authentic contexts for encountering social conflict, little work thus far has explored how to help youth develop conflict-resolution skills by design interventions within online interest-driven settings. Drawing from prior literature in CSCW, youth wellness and prevention programs, we translated offline evidence-based strategies into the design of an online, after-school program that was run within a moderated Minecraft server. The online program, titled Survival Lab, was designed to promote problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills in youth (ages 8-14 years). We conducted a field study for six months (30 youth participants, four college-age moderators, and one high-school volunteer aged 15 years) using in-game observations and digital trace ethnographic approaches. Our study data reveals that participating youth created community norms and developed insightful solutions to conflicts in Survival Lab. Our research offers three key takeaways. Firstly, online social games like Minecraft lend themselves as feasible settings for the translation of offline evidence-based design strategies in promoting the development of conflict-resolution and other social competencies among youth. Secondly, the design features that support structured and unstructured play while enabling freedom of choice for youth to engage as teams and/or individuals are viable for collective or community-level outcomes. Third and finally, moderators, as caring adults and near-peer mentors, play a vital role in facilitating the development of conflict-resolution skills and interest-driven learning among youth. We discuss the implications of our research for translating offline design to online play-based settings as sites and conclude with recommendations for future work.

Many people struggle to control their use of digital devices. However, our understanding of the design mechanisms that support user self-control remains limited. In this paper, we make two contributions to HCI research in this space: first, we analyse 367 apps and browser extensions from the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores to identify common core design features and intervention strategies afforded by current tools for digital self-control. Second, we adapt and apply an integrative dual systems model of self-regulation as a framework for organising and evaluating the design features found. Our analysis aims to help the design of better tools in two ways: (i) by identifying how, through a well-established model of self-regulation, current tools overlap and differ in how they support self-control; and (ii) by using the model to reveal underexplored cognitive mechanisms that could aid the design of new tools.

Children under 11 are often regarded as too young to comprehend the implications of online privacy. Perhaps as a result, little research has focused on younger kids' risk recognition and coping. Such knowledge is, however, critical for designing efficient safeguarding mechanisms for this age group. Through 12 focus group studies with 29 children aged 6-10 from UK schools, we examined how children described privacy risks related to their use of tablet computers and what information was used by them to identify threats. We found that children could identify and articulate certain privacy risks well, such as information oversharing or revealing real identities online; however, they had less awareness with respect to other risks, such as online tracking or game promotions. Our findings offer promising directions for supporting children's awareness of cyber risks and the ability to protect themselves online.

Multiplayer online games, such as Minecraft, have the potential to be powerful sites for youth learning, but can be plagued by inter-personal conflicts. This brings the need for online moderation. However, only very little is known about the practices through which such moderation happens, or how socio-technical systems could be designed to enable 'safe' learning spaces online. To start addressing this gap, our research examines the existing mediation practices within a moderated Minecraft server for children aged 8-13. As part of our 14 months long engagement, we triangulate data from participant observation, interviews, and analysis of server logs. We demonstrate how---in trying to 'keep peace'---the online moderators monopolised the conflict resolution process, essentially preventing the children from actively working with and learning from the experiences of conflict. In response to these findings, we present an alternative framework for online conflict mediation, suggesting ways in which existing conflict resolution techniques originating in Prevention Science could be re-interpreted for online multiplayer settings

The ability to constructively resolve interpersonal conflicts is a crucial set of social skills people need to effectively work and live well together. Is it possible to design social robots to support the early development of children's interpersonal conflict resolution skills? To investigate this question, 64 (32 pairs of) children ages 3-6 years engaged in a 50-minute play session consisting of 5 activities facilitated by the robot Keepon. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions. In the mediation condition, Keepon directed the play session flow by indicating when and which activity to switch to, and whenever possible, signaled the onset of object possession conflicts that occurred between the pair and offered prompts for constructive conflict resolution. In the control condition, Keepon only facilitated and directed the play session and did not intervene during children's conflicts. Results show that children were more likely to resolve conflicts constructively in the mediation condition than in the control condition, and that a key function for a robot mediator within the conflict process is to successfully flag the conflict onset. Drawing from these findings, we discuss design recommendation for a robot mediator.

Interventions that help children develop protective factors against mental health disorders are an inherently social endeavour, relying on a number of actors from within the family as well as the school context. Little work thus far in CSCW and HCI has examined the potential of technology to support or enhance such interventions. This paper provides the first steps to unpacking this socio-technical design space, focusing on emotional regulation (ER) as a specific instance of a protective factor. We combine a user-centred approach to understanding lived experiences of families (interviews, design workshops) with an expert-led understanding of what makes interventions psychologically effective. Our findings suggest the potential of technology to enable a shift in how prevention interventions are designed and delivered: empowering children and parents through a new model of 'child-led, situated interventions', where participants learn through actionable support directly within family life, as opposed to didactic in-person workshops and a subsequent 'skills application'. This conceptual model was then instantiated in a technology probe, which was deployed with 14 families. The promising field study findings provide an initial proof-of-concept validation of the proposed approach.

Designing for reflection is becoming an increasingly important part of many HCI systems in a wide range of application domains. However, there is a gap in our understanding of how the process of reflection can be supported through technology. In fact, an implicit assumption in the majority of existing work is that, just by providing access to well-selected data, in-depth reflection can and will occur. To counter this view, we draw on Schön's notion of reflective practicum and apply it as a sensitising concept to identify the complex interplay of factors that support transformative reflection in the context of two social-emotional learning (SEL) studies. The results highlight the need to carefully scaffold the process of reflection, rather than simply assume that the capability to reflect is a broadly available trait to be 'triggered' through data. Building on this analysis, we develop a conceptual framework that extends the concept of the reflective practicum towards identifying appropriate roles of technology to support transformative reflection. While our case is within the context of SEL, we argue that a deeper understanding of these opportunities can also benefit designing for reflection in other areas.

The development of strong social and emotional skills is central to personal wellbeing. Increasingly, these skills are being taught in schools through well researched curricula. Such social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula are most effective if reinforced by parents, thus transferring the skills into everyday contexts. Traditional SEL programs have however had limited success in engaging parents, and we argue that technology might be able to help bridge this school-home divide. Through interviews with SEL experts we identified central design considerations for technology and SEL content: the reliance on experiential learning and the need to scaffold the parents in scaffolding the interaction for their children. This informed the design of a technology probe comprising a magnet card and online SEL activities, deployed in a school and via Mturk. The results provide a nuanced understanding of how technology-based interventions could bridge the school-home gap in real-world settings and support at-home reinforcement of children's social-emotional skills.

Social and emotional skills are crucial for all aspects of our everyday life. However, understanding how digital technology can facilitate the development and learning of such skills is yet an under-researched area in HCI. To start addressing this gap, this paper reports on a series of interviews and design workshops with the leading researchers and developers of 'Social and Emotional Learning' (SEL) curricula. SEL is a subfield of educational psychology with a long history of teaching such skills, and a range of evidence based curricula that are widely deployed in primary and secondary schools. We identify the shared challenges across existing curricula that digital technology might help address: the support for out-of-session learning, scaffolding for parental engagement, and feedback for the curricula developers. We argue how this presents an opportunity for mutually beneficial collaborations, with the potential for significant real-world impact of novel HCI systems, and can inform HCI work on supporting social and emotional skills development in other domains.

Well-developed interpersonal skills are crucial for all social interactions. However, understanding how interpersonal skills are taught or learned, and how technology can play a part in this, is yet an under-researched area in CSCW and HCI research. To start addressing this gap, our research explores the learning processes of counselling students, for whom developing interpersonal skills forms a fundamental part of their university education. We followed an iterative process to gain an in-depth understanding of a specific counselling program in the UK, combining interviews and low-fidelity technology prompts. Overall, 26 participants comprising tutors, students and expert counsellors took part. Our findings first provide insights into the highly collaborative and social learning process of the students. We highlight the complexity of interpersonal reflection as a crucial process for developing counselling skills, and identify the challenges to learning that students face. Second, we build on this understanding to draw out empirically grounded design considerations around opportunities for technology innovation in this setting.

Supporting social interactions is a long-term focus for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). However, understanding how social and emotional skills are learned, and how this process can be supported by technology, is an important but underresearched area in HCI so far. To address this gap, we review existing approaches to social and emotions skills learning (SEL) in other fields, with a specific focus on SEL in education, in which a large number of evidence-based programs is widely deployed. In doing so, the primary aim of this article is to provide a foundation and set an agenda for future research on the design of technology that would support, and help teach, social and emotional skills. We identify the key challenges to successful learning shared by SEL programs in education—such as embedding skills learned in class also into everyday situations, promoting reflection, and providing additional opportunities for practice—and outline how these could be addressed by digital technology. Overall, our key argument is that much existing HCI work could be used in support of social and emotional skills learning in education, and possibly other domains, but that the topic has not been explored so far. We also highlight how the focus on supporting SEL would bring novel opportunities and challenges for HCI, as well as provide a basis for a strong HCI research agenda in this space.

Advances in biosensing make it possible to include heart rate monitoring in applications and several studies have suggested that heart rate communication has potential for improving social connectedness. However, it is not known how people understand heart rate feedback, or what issues need to be taken into account when designing technologies including heart rate feedback. To explore this, we created a heart rate communication probe that was used in two qualitative in-lab studies and a two-week field trial in participants' homes. Results show that heart rate feedback is a strong connectedness cue that affects the interaction in various ways, depending on a number of interrelated factors. In particular, we found two distinct categories of effects: heart rate as information and heart rate as connection. We propose two mechanisms that could explain these observations and draw out the implications they have for future use of heartbeat communication to support social connectedness or other aspects of social interaction.

We present a videoconferencing tool, GColl, which aims to support collaboration among remote groups of participants. GColl supports mutual gaze as well as partial gaze awareness for all participants, while still retaining a modest technical requirements: a camera and an echo-canceling microphone at

Videoconferencing has emerged as a popular method of remote communication. The design of a videoconferencing environment strongly influences the communication efficiency and user satisfaction. Various studies on perceived effects of videoconferencing environments and their parameters have been done, however, they primarily focused on dyadic conversation. This paper describes an exploratory study on the effects on remote groups communication. Beginning with the standard environment, a videoconferencing design has been developed iteratively according to information obtained from the experimental group. Two new videoconferencing environment designs are introduced to suit the group conversation needs better and bring the group videoconference closer to face-to-face communication.