Science communication revision requires writers to dynamically balance scientific exposition and narrative engagement - a process where writers often struggle with competing directions. Existing LLM-assisted tools help with co-writing, but offer limited support for navigating this iterative, multi-directional revision process. To address this gap, we designed Spatial Balancing, an exploratory revision environment that maps rhetorical goals and revision strategies onto a two-dimensional spatial canvas for experienced science communication creators with domain expertise but lacking formal professional training. By building a design space of communication strategies and embedding them into a spatial exploratory canvas, our system treats feedback as navigational cues rather than prescriptive judgments. Our findings show that this integrated revision environment helps writers stay focused on writing goals, reason about revision as trajectories, and explore alternatives, which supports greater metacognitive control and confidence without increasing workload. This work highlights the value of spatially externalized revision environments for supporting iterative, reflective thinking during LLM-assisted writing.

Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) is a narrative-driven VR experience that uses head-mounted displays with a 360-degree field of view. Previous research has explored different viewing modalities to enhance viewers' CVR experiences. This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine how different viewing modalities, including intervened rotation, avatar assistance, guidance cues, and perspective shifting, influence CVR experiences. The study has screened 3444 papers (published between January 1, 2013, and June 17, 2023). Of the 3444 papers, 45 were selected for systematic review, 13 of the 45 papers were selected for meta-analysis. We separately conducted random-effects meta-analysis and applied Robust Variance Estimation to examine CVR viewing modalities and user experience outcomes. Evidence from experiments was synthesized as differences between standardized mean differences (SMDs) of user experience of control group (''Swivel-Chair'' CVR) and experiment groups. To our surprise, we found inconsistencies in the effect sizes across different studies, even with the same viewing modalities. Moreover, we found that in these studies, terms such as ''presence,'' ''immersion,'' and ''narrative engagement'' were often used interchangeably. We concluded that the quality of previous studies on CVR experiences was compromised by several methodological issues, including irregular use of questionnaires, overreliance on self-developed questionnaires, and incomplete data reporting. This study contributes to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research by identifying gaps in CVR research and emphasizing the need for standardization of terminologies and methodologies to enhance the reliability and comparability of future CVR research.

Otome games (also known as romantic video games, or RVGs) are story-based video games that are designed for young women, simulating the experience of a romantic relationship. Players are invited to adopt the female avatar’s perspective in the story and date one or more of the male characters. Our empirical study focuses on the different types of social support among the players of the Chinese otome game Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice. We discovered that although the game was initially designed to be a consumer product aiming to profit from a largely marginalized and stigmatized group of gamers, i.e., young female gamers, the game has created a gaming community in which the players seek and provide each other with social support. We primarily use ethnographic methods, including participant observation and in-depth interviews. Our study contributes to HCI research on mediated social support in game.

Online communities support the well-being of their members by encouraging their social identity formation. In the context of an online community, online activism in the form of identity struggles can be particularly helpful for marginalized individuals or groups. Since May 2020, students from the 985 universities, an elite educational project in China, have been coming to an online community named "The Inviting Plan for 985 Fives" on Douban, an interest-based Social Network Site (SNS), to discuss their failure and dissatisfaction in life. Students who were once recognized for their academic excellence now identify as "fives" (or "garbage"). The present study examines how the Douban group, as a social network and collaborative system, supports the group members in their identity struggles in the context of increasingly fierce peer competition in China. We employ a qualitative approach, combining ethnographic methods such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews, with in-depth analysis of the top discussion threads. We discover that while peer competition and social stratification in contemporary China cause students at the top universities to feel anxious and lost, the online community they build collectively supports them to create a new social identity, the identity of "five," which is the basis of their online activism. Through this new identity, they seek unofficial democracy, civic participation, and possibilities of social change.