Nature has long been valued for its restorative impact on emotion and well-being, motivating many HCI systems to incorporate nature as a calming design material. However, cultural traditions such as Taoism frame nature not as passive, but as an active, symbolic force for emotional transformation. We present Zenergy, a mobile application that uses a large language model to generate personalized guided meditations grounded in Taoist nature imagery. Based on users’ emotional and contextual input, Zenergy leads them through a symbolic journey using natural metaphors such as wind to release burdens, rivers to restore flow, and sunlight to renew strength. A mixed-method field study (N = 27) showed that Zenergy enhanced users’ self-efficacy, emotional clarity, and spiritual connection. We introduce transformative nature imagery as a design lens for everyday empowerment, and offer strategies for embedding culturally grounded symbolism into interactive well-being technologies.

Urbanization increasingly separates people from nature, negatively affecting well-being. While prior work has explored technological interventions to foster human-nature interaction (HNI), embedding nature engagement into daily urban life remains challenging. We present GreenCompass, a social mobile application that recommends nearby micro-opportunities for nature encounters through context-aware scheduling, gamification, and adaptive tasks. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conducted a four-week mixed-methods field study with 40 participants split into two conditions: GreenCompass and a reminder-based baseline. Results showed that GreenCompass better improved nature relatedness, outdoor activity levels, well-being, perceived stress, and social connectedness. Our analysis identified four design themes: embedding nature into micro-moment integration, collective nature engagement, cultivating intrinsic bonds with nature, and system challenges. We further provide design implications to support everyday urban nature engagement. This work demonstrates how everyday mobile technology can help bridge the urban-nature divide and promote well-being.

Spiritual engagement is increasingly mediated by digital platforms, yet little is known about how this shift unfolds in non-Western contexts. In mainland China, individuals are turning to online social platforms like Douyin, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu to access spiritual content that blends religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions. In this paper, we present a mixed-methods study that combines a survey (N = 207) with in-depth interviews (N = 16) to examine how users engage with online spiritual content. The survey outlines general usage patterns across platforms, content types, and motivations, while the interviews reveal four key themes: the pragmatic use of spirituality to navigate emotional and material challenges; the flexible spiritual engagement; a cultural reconnection with spiritual heritage; and concerns over trust, authenticity, and regulation in the digital spiritual landscape. Based on these findings, we offer design implications for creating culturally grounded online spiritual experiences and contribute to HCI literature by advancing understanding of how sociotechnical systems can support spiritually meaningful engagement in diverse cultural contexts.

The pleasure that often comes with eating can be further enhanced with intelligent technology, as the field of human-food interaction suggests. However, knowledge on how to design such pleasure-supporting eating systems is limited. To begin filling this knowledge gap, we designed “GustosonicSense”, a novel gustosonic eating system that utilizes wireless earbuds for sensing different eating and drinking actions with a machine learning algorithm and trigger playful sounds as a way to facilitate pleasurable eating experiences. We present the findings from our design and a study that revealed how we can support the "stimulation", "hedonism", and "reflexivity" for playful human-food interactions. Ultimately, with our work, we aim to support interaction designers in facilitating playful experiences with food.

There is an increasing interest in combining interactive technology with food, leading to a new research area called human-food interaction. While food experiences are increasingly benefiting from interactive technology, for example in the form of food tracking apps, 3D-printed food and projections on dining tables, a more systematic advancement of the field is hindered because, so far, there is no comprehensive articulation of the grand challenges the field is facing. To further and consolidate conversations around this topic, we invited 21 HFI experts to a 5-day seminar. The goal was to review our own and prior work to identify the grand challenges in human-food interaction. The result is an articulation of 10 grand challenges in human-food interaction across 4 categories (technology, users, design and ethics). By presenting these grand challenges, we aim to help researchers move the human-food interaction research field forward.

Ingestible sensors have become smaller and more powerful and allow us to envisage new human-computer interactions and bodily play experiences inside our bodies. Users can swallow ingestible sensors, which facilitate interior body sensing functions that provide data on which play experiences can be built. We call bodily play that uses ingestible sensors as play technologies “ingestible play”, and we have adopted a research-through-design (RtD) approach to investigate three prototypes. For each prototype, we conducted a field study to understand the player experiences. Based upon these results and practical design experiences, we have developed a design framework for ingestible play. We hope this work can guide the future design of ingestible play; inspire the design of play technologies inside the human body to expand the current bodily play design space; and ultimately extend our understanding of how to design for the human body by considering the bodily experience of one’s interior body.

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is increasingly interested in supporting exertion experiences so more people can benefit from physical activity. So far, most systems have focused on sensing and presenting information to the user via screens to support the exertion experience. Interestingly, emerging technology can also act on the exerting user's body based on sensed information, granting researchers the potential to develop technology that not only “presents” but also “acts” on information throughout an integrated exertion experience. As a result, design opportunities surrounding computing machinery as contextually aware exertion partners are now available. However, there are currently no frameworks to guide the design of human–computer integration in an exertion context. To contribute to closing this gap, we designed three eBike systems to investigate different forms of integration with the exerting user and we studied the resulting user experiences. Based on the results of these three case studies, we present the first framework, including associated design tactics, to offer guidance on how to design human–computer integration in an exertion context.

The HCI community has a rich history of finding new ways to engage people with data beyond the screen. With our work, we aim to expand the scope of how interaction design can engage people, arguing that “eating data” has the potential to allow people to experience “data as delight”. With reference to prior work and our design research findings, we discuss the advantages and the challenges of this approach to integrating data and food. We then identify four themes to guide the design of engagements with data through food: food form, food commensality, food ephemerality, and emotional response to food. Within these design themes, we articulate twelve insights for interaction designers to use when working on serving data as delight.

Interest in combining interactive play and the human body, using “bodily play” systems, is increasing. While these systems primarily prioritize a player's control over their bodily actions, we see intriguing possibilities in the pursuit of “limited control over the body” as an intriguing design resource for bodily play systems. In this paper, we use three of our bodily play systems to illustrate how designers can engage with limited control over the body by varying the player's degree of indirect control (for instance, via other bodily activity and external triggers). We also propose four strategies for employing limited control over the body: Exploration, Reflection, Learning and Embracement. We hope our own work and the strategies developed from it will assist designers to employ limited control over the body, ultimately helping people benefit from engaging their bodies through play.

Imaging capsules are ingestible sensors that capture the video of one's gastrointestinal tract for medical diagnosis. We believe that the capsule's experiential perspective is often overlooked by associated medical applications. This work explores the design of this experiential perspective through combining imaging capsules with digital play. We designed a playful wearable system called "InsideOut", where users play with the real-time video of their gastrointestinal tract captured by an imaging capsule. Based on an in-the-wild study, we derived four themes articulating the play experiences and discussed key design implications to guide future playful designs using imaging capsules. Our research highlights the opportunity of using medical imaging technologies to enable intriguing bodily play experiences. Furthermore, such experiences can deepen the players' engagement with and understanding of their bodies, ultimately contributing to a more playful and humanized health care agenda.

Prior psychology studies have shown that eating ice cream increases happiness, while human-computer interaction work has shown that interactive technology can enrich the eating experience. We explore the opportunity to combine these two through WeScream!, a playful social gustosonic system we designed-social gustosonic referring to the link between the acts of eating and listening as part of a social multisensory experience. WeScream! consists of two interdependent ice-cream cones that allow users to interact with musical sounds generated through the act of eating ice cream together. We report on an in-the-wild study that highlights how our system facilitated a "hard fun" experience through eating together, increased participants' awareness of relatedness, and drew shared attention to the ice cream's taste via increased face-to-face interaction. Drawing on these study insights, we also present three design tactics to guide designers in designing future social gustosonic experiences. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to a playful future of social eating experiences, supporting people in enjoying eating together.

There is an increasing trend in utilizing interactive technology for bodily integrations, such as additional limbs and ingestibles. Prior work on bodily integrated systems mostly examined them from a productivity perspective. In this article, we suggest examining this trend also from an experiential, playful perspective, as we believe that these systems offer novel opportunities to engage the human body through play. Hence, we propose that there is an opportunity to design "bodily integrated play". By relating to our own and other's work, we present an initial set of design strategies for bodily integrated play, aiming to inform designers on how they can engage with such systems to facilitate playful experiences, so that ultimately, people will profit from bodily play's many physical and mental wellbeing benefits even in a future where machine and human converge.

Bodily play systems are becoming increasingly prevalent, with research aiming to understand the associated player experience. We argue that a more nuanced lexicon describing "bodily play experience" can be beneficial to drive the field forward. We provide game designers with two German words to communicate two different aspects of experience: "Erfahrung", referring to experience where one is actively engaged in and gains knowledge from; and "Erlebnis", referring to a tacit experience often translated as "lived experience". We use these words to articulate a suite of design strategies for bodily play experiences by referring to past design work. We conclude by discussing these two aspects of experience in conjunction with two previously established perspectives on the human body. We believe this more nuanced lexicon can provide a clearer understanding for designers about bodily play allowing them to guide players in gaining the many benefits from such experiences.

There is an increasing trend in HCI to combine eating and technology. We highlight the potential of interactive technology to support an experiential perspective on eating, in particular, how interactive technology can support experiencing eating as play. To understanding this, we reflect on four playful interactive eating systems we designed and two other works to articulate five strategies: make eating challenging, break cultural norms, design across eating stages, reduce eating autonomy, and playfully extend the social aspect. For each, we also include practical implementation options to provide designers with initial guidance on how they can begin to support experiencing eating as play. Ultimately, with our work, we aim to facilitate a future where eating is more playful.

Ingestible sensors are pill-like sensors that people swallow mainly for medical purposes. We propose that ingestible sensors also offer unique opportunities to facilitate intriguing bodily experiences in a playful manner. To explore this, we present "HeatCraft", a two-player system that translates the user's body temperature measured by an ingestible sensor to localized thermal stimuli delivered through a waist belt equipped with heating pads. We conducted a study with 16 participants. The study revealed three design themes (Integration of body and technology, Integration of internal body and outside world, and Integration of play and life) along with some open challenges. In summary, this work contributes knowledge to the future design of playful experiences with ingestible sensors.