Diminished Reality (DR) modifies or removes elements of the perceived environment. We explored DR for attention support through diary studies, interviews, and speculative co-design with 15 university students with ADHD. Participants described a persistent gap between intention and attention, and the use of externalization strategies that encounter fundamental limits in physical reality. In co-design, rather than reasoning from visual operations, participants articulated which properties of stimuli they needed to perceive versus filter, revealing cases where visual diminishment does not reliably map to attentional diminishment. We contribute rich descriptive data on the attentional challenges and DR preferences of students with ADHD, and propose Attentional Diminishment, a sensitizing concept that reframes DR for attention support from visual outcomes to attentional effects.

The sense of family connectedness may support positive outcomes including individual well-being, resilience, and healthy family functioning. However, as technologies advance, they often replace human-human interactions instead of nurturing them. In this work, we investigate how robot-facilitated communication tools might instead create new opportunities for family connection. We conducted two studies with families with children aged 5-12. We first explored the design space through in-home technology probe sessions with six families. These probes inspired us to explore two key interaction design dimensions: the robot’s behavior strategy (passive, reactive, proactive) and the mode of communication (synchronous, asynchronous). We then conducted a laboratory study with 20 families to examine how the two dimensions shaped parent-child interaction and connection. Our findings characterize how parents and children appropriated robot-mediated exchanges, the tensions they experienced around initiative, timing, and privacy, and the opportunities they envisioned for supporting everyday connectedness.

Emotion regulation (ER) is a dynamic process that often unfolds in social contexts. However, current digital ER tools predominantly rely on single-agent systems that lack the complexity of social dynamics. Swarm user interfaces present unique affordances for ER through their collective adaptability and expressive group behaviour. However, their potential in supporting ER remains underexplored. To investigate how swarm user interfaces can be designed to support ER, we conducted a series of speculative participatory design workshops with 15 participants through the Magic Machine Workshop method, where participants created and enacted interactive swarm-based artifacts with craft materials. The analysis led to diverse contexts of use, envisioned swarm framing, and interaction modes. Based on these findings, we synthesize eight interaction patterns that translate abstract user metaphors into robotic behaviors. We conclude by articulating design opportunities and challenges, positioning swarm interfaces as a novel medium for ER support.

We demonstrate a telepresence robot system that supports multiple users to visit a place together remotely. People create meanings in places through their personal and social experiences in the place. Interacting with places is essential for people to obtain new knowledge, build their social ties, and form personal identities. However, people may not always have access to places they want to go, in particular if they want to visit with other people and share the experience together. Telepresence robots have the promise to address this challenge by reducing the travel cost and easing the coordination effort among multiple visitors. We propose the design of a telepresence robot that allows multiple users to have shared experiences in remote places and enhances the bonding between people and the place.

Figure 1: In this paper, we present NarraGuide, an LLM-based narrative mobile robot that guides users to explore a remote physical place in real-time and uses dialogue to deliver rich location-based information to enhance the experience.