Large language models (LLMs) are common tools for learning, research, and productivity, yet their dense outputs disproportionately burden users who experience attention, working memory, and information-processing challenges. We present Adapt AI, a system that restructures LLM responses through content condensation, visual hierarchy, and an original/adapted toggle, intervening at the presentation layer rather than the model itself. Through semi-structured interviews with ten participants screened for self-reported cognitive-processing difficulties, all ten reported the adapted view was easier to read, and seven of ten spontaneously described it as making AI-generated content more accessible. We treat these preference results as exploratory: the study used no comparison group and is subject to demand characteristics. Our findings show that the value of Adapt AI lies not in shortening responses but in reorganizing them to support scanning, comprehension, and user agency, and that the appropriate level of restructuring depends on task context. We discuss how designing the presentation layer of AI outputs offers an underexplored pathway to making LLM-based tools more inclusive.

Digital platforms often require users to select from a limited set of options that may force them to misrepresent their gender identities and sexual orientation, which disproportionately affects the LGBTQ+ population. To provide digital product teams with a feasible industry-focused tool to ensure the inclusion of this population, we surveyed 151 participants, including 81 who identify as LGBTQ+; conducted five interviews with LGBTQ+ participants and 11 interviews with product managers in the technology industry; and analyzed the user account creation processes of 45 digital platforms commonly used or mentioned in survey responses to understand LGBTQ+ users’ wants, needs, and pain points in navigating user account sign-up. Participants recounted instances of microaggressions or micro-affirmations, and often had strong feelings about companies based on their account creation experience. Based on these results, we present a ‘Playbook’ of design recommendations, which is online at bit.ly/LGBTInclusive_UAGuide.

This paper examines the history of the learning theory "constructionism" and its most well-known implementation, Logo, to examine beliefs involving both "C's" in CSCW: computers and cooperation. Tracing the tumultuous history of one of the first examples of computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) allows us to question some present-day assumptions regarding the universal appeal of learning to program computers that undergirds popular CSCL initiatives today, including the Scratch programming environment and the "FabLab" makerspace movement. Furthermore, teasing out the individualistic and anti-authority threads in this project and its links to present day narratives of technology development exposes the deeply atomized and even oppositional notions of collaboration in these projects and others under the auspices of CSCW today that draw on early notions of 'hacker culture.' These notions tend to favor a limited view of work, learning, and practice-an invisible constraint that continues to inform how we build and evaluate CSCW technologies.

We present a microsociology of Minecraft play based on ethnographic observations of a 40-hour co-located Minecraft camp for 28 low-income and minority children in July 2015, supplemented by usage statistics and follow-up interviews. We consider the equity challenges presented by (1) Minecraft itself and the ecosystem supporting it; (2) the multiplayer server we used, which was founded on principles of "connected learning"; and (3) our own attempts to promote equity by providing scheduled access to the game in a computer lab. We were partially successful in overcoming players' at-home computer access limitations and improving their computer/technical literacy. Still, we found that language literacy, parental abilities and involvement, racial and gender identities, and diverging interests set our campers apart from others on the server. Overall, the in-game invisibility of our campers worked against the equity aims of connected learning and point to broader patterns of bias in games like Minecraft and other communities of/for children.

While some in the CSCW community have researched the values in technology design and engineering practices, the underlying ideologies that reinforce and protect those values remain under-explored. This paper seeks to address this gap by identifying a common ideological framework that appears across four engineering endeavors: the OLPC Project, the National Day of Civic Hacking, the Fixit Clinic, and the Stanford d.school. We found that all four of these communities utilized elements of religious practice to affirm their membership and shared vision. We describe the forms of worship we saw in these engineering worlds, their practices of evangelism, and the ways in which they addressed doubt. We also demonstrate the role mythologies play as ideologically charged narratives. Our discussion of these parallels illuminates the extent and consequences of quasi-religious practices in engineering worlds and illustrates the utility of using religion as a "lens" for understanding ideological commitments in engineering culture.

This paper explores issues that come up in practices of breakage and repair through two projects: the 'XO' laptops of One Laptop Per Child in Paraguay and public sites of facilitated repair in California, USA. Collectively drawing on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 156 interviews, and archival research, we find that breakdown and repair are not processes that designers can effectively script ahead of time; instead, they emerge in everyday practice. These practices are shaped by material, infrastructural, gendered, political, and socioeconomic factors -- such as manufacturing limitations, access to repair parts and expertise, and environmental convictions -- which designers often did not, and may not have been able to, anticipate. We call the material realities and practices of repair negotiated endurance, which is illustrated by four themes from our findings: the negotiated identification of breakdown, collaborative definitions of worth, the fraught nature of collaborative expertise, and the gendered stakes of repair.

This paper discusses three concepts that govern technosocial practices among university students with iPhones. First is the social expectation of constant connection that requires multitasking to achieve. Second is the resulting technosocial pecking order of who gets interrupted or ignored for whom. Third is the way that many students push back against these demands with techno-resistance, deliberately curtailing constant connection to reduce the negative effects of multitasking, in spite of the risk of social censure. These concepts are developed from interviews with 57 students, 30 hours of field observations, and a survey of 177 students on Stanford campus, which in particular explored iPhone use. This research concludes that so-called "digital natives" must still navigate familiar social dynamics and personal desires, both online and off. Providing a detailed description of how students from across campus make sense of iPhones in their everyday technosocial assemblages, this research suggests opportunities for more socially and cognitively sensitive design of smartphone features.

This ethnographic study of 22 diverse families in the San Francisco Bay Area provides a holistic account of parents' attitudes about their children's use of technology. We found that parents from different socioeconomic classes have different values and practices around technology use, and that those values and practices reflect structural differences in their everyday lives. Calling attention to class differences in technology use challenges the prevailing practice in human-computer interaction of designing for those similar to oneself, which often privileges middle-class values and practices. By discussing the differences between these two groups and the advantages of researching both, this research highlights the benefits of explicitly engaging with socioeconomic status as a category of analysis in design.

In this paper, we explore the benefits of videochat for families and the corresponding work that home users engage in to make a video call run smoothly. We explore the varieties of social work required, including coordination work, presentation work, behavioral work, and scaffolding work, as well as the technical work necessary. We outline the benefits families enjoy for doing this work and discuss the ways in which families use videochat to reinforce their identity as a family and reinforce their family values, in effect making - as in creating - love. We conclude with recommendations for improving videochat and for designing with family values in mind more generally.

What is the future of digital imaging? Mobile imaging technologies have been changing rapidly and will continue to do so. We explore new developments in cameraphone photography with the goal of improving the design of the next generation of mobile imaging devices. We equipped 26 diverse participants with cameraphones, photo uploading and sharing software, and access to online photo-accounts for 3–5 months. This study allowed us to identify emerging practices in mobile photoware. We report on new and continuing practices across the lifespan of photos in this new imaging environment, including image capture, upload, annotation, archiving, sharing, and viewing. Based on these results, we develop design criteria and implications for designers and makers of mobile devices, mobile imaging and sharing software, and desktop and online photo software.

We interviewed and observed families in their homes to understand how they communicate across generations and across distances. The phone is still the most common way for keeping children in touch with distant relatives. However, many children can't talk on the phone by themselves until 7 or 8 years old. This paper examines the challenges children have with phone conversations, and looks at how families are currently working around these issues. These findings can help inform the design of future family communications technologies.

Why do people tag? Users have mostly avoided annotating media such as photos -- both in desktop and mobile environments -- despite the many potential uses for annotations, including recall and retrieval. We investigate the incentives for annotation in Flickr, a popular web-based photo-sharing system, and ZoneTag, a cameraphone photo capture and annotation tool that uploads images to Flickr. In Flickr, annotation (as textual tags) serves both personal and social purposes, increasing incentives for tagging and resulting in a relatively high number of annotations. ZoneTag, in turn, makes it easier to tag cameraphone photos that are uploaded to Flickr by allowing annotation and suggesting relevant tags immediately after capture.

PhotoArcs is a framework for flexible creation of timeline displays of photographs, photo-narratives, and consistent, collaboratively-created metadata. The interface aims to enable easy and fun manipulation and sharing of digital photographs and stories, organized around chronological arcs of photographs, to encourage remote sharing and interaction. We describe the design of the interface and how the design has changed across three iterations. We also report on the results of an exploratory lowfidelity usability study with five participants and an expert evaluation and critique with eleven user experience researchers, and outline future directions for the PhotoArcs project.

We present a technique for evaluating the usability and effectiveness of ambient displays. Ambient displays are abstract and aesthetic peripheral displays portraying non-critical information on the periphery of a user's attention. Although many innovative displays have been published, little existing work has focused on their evaluation, in part because evaluation of ambient displays is difficult and costly. We adapted a low-cost evaluation technique, heuristic evaluation, for use with ambient displays. With the help of ambient display designers, we defined a modified set of heuristics. We compared the performance of Nielsen's heuristics and our heuristics on two ambient displays. Evaluators using our heuristics found more, severe problems than evaluators using Nielsen's heuristics. Additionally, when using our heuristics, 3-5 evaluators were able to identify 40--60% of known usability issues. This implies that heuristic evaluation is an effective technique for identifying usability issues with ambient displays.