Current AI-powered creativity support tools (AI-CSTs) primarily use text prompting to generate solution-oriented outputs. However, the potential value of multimodal prompting in designer-AI interaction, specifically the introduction of productive friction to encourage iteration and reflection, has not been fully explored. To address this, we developed SketchifAI, a prototype AI-CST, and evaluated it with design students. In a mixed-methods, within-participants study, we examined how different input modalities (text, sketch, and sketch-plus-tags) affected design students’ perceived ability to express their intent, their perception of creativity support, and their divergent thinking performance. Our preliminary findings suggest that the sketch modality tended to enhance fluency, with inconclusive evidence for differences in variety, originality, or quality compared to text modality. Yet, paradoxically, participants showed a strong preference for text prompting. We discuss how AI tools might be designed to reintroduce reflection-through-sketching, ensuring that designer-AI interaction supports, rather than erodes, essential design skills in students.

Therapeutic virtual reality (VR) can be a tool, platform or experience imaginary in the healthcare setting. Emotions and affective interaction are integral to the care needs and experiences in digital healthcare, yet remain under-investigated in therapeutic VR. We reflect on four cases involving therapeutic VR to critically examine the function and value of affective interaction. Through a synthesis of the cases, we identify how affective interaction can enhance or diminish healthcare outcomes and even cause potential harm. We draw five recommendations for the design and evaluation of therapeutic VR to challenge assumptions about: (1) knowledge holders and knowledge co-production in design, (2) hyper-visiblity of medical gaze and invisibility of affective experiences, (3) diverse utilities of VR, (4) weaving assessment of affective benefits and harms into evaluation of therapeutic VR, and (5) implementation of therapeutic VR in collaboration with caregivers.

Social activities in long-term care homes help promote residents’ wellbeing, but their effectiveness depends on residents’ engagement. To identify design opportunities for promoting meaningful engagement, we conducted an ethnographic study on organised activities in an Australian aged care home. We observed staff fostered engagement by initiating conversations, weaving residents’ backgrounds into interactions, and adapting activities to residents’ varying abilities. However, challenges included new staff members’ unfamiliarity with residents, multi-tasking, and insufficient support to engage excluded residents. Using a care ethics lens that includes relational, situated and empathetic features of care, we show that meaningful engagement is shaped by the ethical care practices embedded in staff-resident interactions and highlight opportunities for technologies to mitigate barriers hindering staff from providing ethical care in existing activities. These opportunities include: collecting and recording residents’ interests, providing conversation prompts, enhancing activity inclusiveness, and reducing language and cultural barriers.

• Older gardeners participated in co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated VR garden tours. • VR garden tours fostered a sense of connection and community through shared passions. • The tours enabled gardeners to showcase creativity and be inspired by others. • Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence, feeling as if they were “in the garden.” • A participatory VR storytelling framework outlines key roles and elements in the process. Virtual reality (VR) technology is being used in diverse ways to enable older adults to reminisce and connect. An underexplored area is the use of VR for creating and sharing personally meaningful stories. This paper examines the use of VR technology to help nine older adults share and experience others’ stories about their gardens. Through a co-design approach involving home visits, interviews, and a workshop, we examined older gardeners’ perceptions and experiences of co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated 3D garden tours captured with a VR camera. Our findings demonstrate that participants showcased the meaning, creativity, and expertise associated with their gardens and gardening practices through the VR garden tours. Viewing the garden tours created by others fostered a sense of connection among participants through shared passions and interests. Participants valued the authenticity and individuality of the tours, perceiving them as avenues for learning, inspiration, and motivation. Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence in the garden tours, particularly due to the spatial immersion, holistic perspectives, the first-person view, and the ability to exert control in the VR system. The study reveals opportunities to enhance the VR garden tour experience, including increasing sociality, improving usability and guidance, and building communities around the tours. Drawing from these insights, we develop a framework to guide future practices of conducting participatory VR storytelling with older adults. The framework outlines three critical roles involved in the process: Storyteller, Facilitator, and Audience. It also discusses five key elements that need to be considered: Intention, Narrative, Medium, Context, and Engagement.

Family caregivers of people living with dementia need easy-to-access strategies to manage changing care needs. Music therapy is valuable for supporting dementia care, but not always accessible. Technologies could potentially facilitate accessible, home-based music therapy support, but need to be carefully evaluated. We conducted an 8-week field trial of a prototype mobile application, MATCH, with caregivers and people living with dementia. MATCH contains training videos and suggested playlists showing how to use music for specific care needs. MATCH, and music streaming broadly, enabled caregivers to add new strategies to their care repertoire, addressing a range of care needs and enhancing the care relationship. To make MATCH work, however, caregivers needed to fit it into complex care environments and existing technologies. We argue that digital therapeutic tools need to be adopted by caregivers to fit their individual contexts, and this can challenge assumptions about how therapeutic tools will work in practice.

Community-based social programs, such as interest groups and outings, provide valuable ways for older adults to maintain social connectedness. To understand how technology can be designed to support older adults in such programs, we conducted a four-month field study with a local community centre, involving: (1) observations of social program sessions, (2) interviews with staff, and (3) co-design workshops with staff and program participants. We found that staff used technologies in a situated way to make social programs more inclusive for older adults. Technology promoted incidental social interactions and group learning, but also excluded participants from some activities. Participants believed that future technologies to support community-based social programs should be designed to enable efficient communication, promote flexible interactions, and maintain the flow of social activities. We argue that technology interventions in this setting should not become the focus of an activity but instead support social interactions triggered by existing activities.

Recent innovations in digital technology offer significant opportunities for older adults to engage in meaningful activities. To investigate older adults’ perceptions of using existing and emerging technologies for meaningful activities, we conducted three participatory design workshops and follow-up interviews with adults aged over 65. The workshops encompassed discussions on existing technologies for meaningful activities, demonstrations of emerging technologies such as VR, AR, and AI, and design activities including prototyping and storyboarding. Our findings show that while participants had diverse interpretations of meaningful activities, they sought to use technologies to support continuity in the pursuit of these activities. Specifically, participants highlighted the importance of safe aging at home, which provides a pathway for meaningful activities in later life. We further discuss participants’ discerning attitudes when assessing the use of different technologies for meaningful activities and several values and attributes they desire when envisioning future technologies, including simplicity, positivity, proactivity, and integration.

Video calls are increasingly being adopted to enable older adults living in long-term residential care (aged care homes) to remain socially connected with friends and family. However, care home residents often require extensive support to participate effectively in video calls. Despite growing interest in examining the work involved in facilitating technology use in care homes, the role of caregivers---comprising family members and staff---in facilitating video calls has received limited attention. Drawing on data from a study of family members' experiences in Australia, we analysed the essential work activities required to make video calls function in residential aged care. We show how video calling is underpinned by the development of relationships between families and staff, and how video calling requires considerable work in preparation, facilitation, and troubleshooting. We discuss how video calling systems for care homes might be designed to alleviate unwanted work, lowering the burden of call participation for residents, families, and care staff.

Welcome to this issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, which brings together contributions from the Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) community. This issue showcases innovations in research focused on mobile, wearable, and personal devices. Research in MHCI encompasses both technical innovations and social considerations. Mobile technologies accompany us throughout our daily lives: at home, at work, in traffic, and out in the wild. However, while mobile technologies provide the capacity for constant connectivity, they also pose risks of harm and unintended consequences. There has never been a more pressing time to debate and explore the meaning of digital culture, and to understand how mobile technologies can and should be used to connect us, our data, and mobile applications and services in meaningful ways - true to the conference theme of 'Connecting Cultures'.

Technology can be valuable for providing social and emotional enrichment for people living in residential aged care, but its use is difficult to sustain because of the complexity of the aged care environment. This paper aims to advance understanding of care environments to inform the sensitive design of technologies for social benefit in those settings. We conducted an ethnographic study in which the researcher assisted a care home's leisure and lifestyle team over four weeks. This included supporting the use of video-calling for social connectedness. A decrease in the use of video-calling and an absence of other technology for enrichment in the setting were observed. This paper identifies barriers to effective use of technology for enrichment and the interplay of cultural factors. For technology to best support residents and staff, we recommend key design considerations that target cultural, psychological and physical support and that ensure technologies, when used appropriately, better fit within the environment.

Restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected people's opportunities to engage in activities that are meaningful to their lives. In response to these constraints, many people, including older adults, turned to digital technologies as alternative ways to pursue meaningful activities. These technology-mediated activities, however, presented new challenges for older adults’ everyday use of technology. In this paper, we investigate how older adults used digital technologies for meaningful activities during COVID-19 restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults and analyzed the interview data through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). Our analysis shows that using digital technologies for meaningful activities can both support and undermine older people's three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We argue that future technologies should be designed to empower older adults’ content creation, engagement in personal interests, exploration of technology, effortful communication, and participation in beneficent activities.

Social programs run by community organizations provide an important outlet for social connectedness among older adults. However, these programs were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. In this study, we aimed to understand how community organizations used digital technologies to continue running social programs online for older adults during COVID-19. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 staff members from local councils, libraries, community groups and care providers. We found that the use of technology benefited organizations by revealing new program delivery opportunities, and by strengthening their social bonds with older adults. However, organizations experienced challenges when transitioning social programs online. Some organizations lacked financial and human resources to support online programs; staff needed to upskill themselves and put significant effort into transferring older adults online; and it was difficult to replicate in-person experiences in online settings. Staff developed ad-hoc strategies to help older adults participate by providing extra guidance and training to increase digital literacy, and by offering accessible technical support. We discuss the significance of continuing online social programs beyond the pandemic and the importance of scaffolding to enable the online participation of older people in social programs. We outline design considerations for technology-mediated social programs run by community organizations.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) is being used as an enriching experience for people living in residential aged care, or nursing homes, where care staff play a critical role supporting clients to use VR. In HCI research concerned with technology use in aged care, however, the role of formal caregivers has received limited attention. We conducted interviews with 11 caregivers working in care homes that have implemented VR as part of the social program offered to residents. Our findings highlight tensions between the opportunities created by the immersive VR experience and the risks and challenges full immersion presents for people in aged care. In this paper, we draw on an ethics of care framework to make visible the care practices involved in facilitating VR in aged care homes, highlighting the care required to ensure that older adults experience benefits when using immersive VR, while risks and challenges are carefully managed.

Social robots have the potential to augment the care provided to older adults in residential aged care homes. However, social robots can only be valuable in aged care if care staff successfully incorporate them into their ongoing care practices beyond a limited research period. This study examines the benefits and challenges of using different types of social robots in real-world practices from care staff perspectives. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven staff members who have first-hand experience of employing robots in their work. Our findings highlight the entangled relationships among the actors in the older adult/carer/robot triad. We discuss the role of robots in supporting a mutually beneficial relationship between care staff and older adults, and how robopets and humanoid robots impact care staff in different ways. Finally, we offer recommendations for the future deployment of robots. We argue that sustainable deployment of robots in care practice might involve recognizing and promoting positive impacts for both human parties in the triad, and that the practice of using robots needs to align with the needs and interests of both caregivers and care recipients.

Restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have limited opportunities for older people to participate in face-to-face organised social activities. Many organisations moved these activities online, but little is known about older adults' experiences of participating in those activities. This paper reports an investigation of older adults' experiences of participating in social activities that they used to attend in-person, but which were moved online because of strict lockdown restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults living independently (alone or with others). Findings from a reflexive thematic analysis show that online social activities were important during the pandemic for not only staying connected to other people but also helping older adults stay engaged in meaningful activities, including arts, sports, cultural, and civic events. Online activities provided older adults with opportunities to connect with like-minded people; share care, encouragement, and support; participate in civic agendas; learn knowledge and develop new skills; and experience entertainment, distraction, and mental stimulation. Our participants had diverse perceptions of the transition from in-person to online social activities. Based on the findings, we present a taxonomy of multi-layered meaningful activities for older adults' digital social participation and highlight implications for future technology design.

While HCI researchers have begun designing personalised VR experiences for older adults, there has been limited research examining the use of social VR - where users interact via avatars in a virtual environment. Avatar-mediated communication (AMC) is a crucial component of the social VR experience, but older users’ experience with AMC is poorly understood. We conducted a five-month study with 16 older adults evaluating a co-designed social VR prototype. Results show that AMC in social VR was seen as medium that supported introverted users to express themselves and was viewed as offering advantages when discussing sensitive topics. Our study provides new insights into how older adults view AMC in social VR as a communication medium and we contribute six design reflections, based on our results, that highlight the steps that can be taken to ensure that AMC in social VR can meet the communication needs of older users.

Abstract Aged care monitoring devices (ACMDs) enable older adults to live independently at home. But to do so, ACMDs collect and share older adults’ personal information with others, potentially raising privacy concerns. This paper presents a detailed account of the different privacy problems in ACMDs that concern older adults. We report findings from interviews and a focus group conducted with older adults who are ageing in place. Using Daniel Solove’s privacy taxonomy to categorize privacy concerns, our analysis suggests that older adults are concerned about the potential for ACMDs to give rise to six problems: surveillance, secondary use of data, breach of confidentiality, disclosure, decisional interference and disturbing others. Other findings indicate that participants are worried about their ability to impose control over collection and management of their personal details and are willing to only accept privacy trade-offs during emergencies. We provide recommendations for ACMD developers and future directions to address findings from this research.

Research into companion robots for older adults, including those who are socially isolated and lonely, continues to grow. Although some insight into older adults' preferences for various robotic types and functionality is emerging, we lack research examining how these robots fulfil or challenge a range of values and aspirations individuals have in later life. This study examines the attitudes and perspectives of 16 older adults (aged 65+) living independently but alone in their own homes, who were interviewed and shown videos depicting three distinctive companion robots: a talking assistant; a roving toylike vehicle; and a robotic dog. This approach illuminated values, preferences, and needs amongst older people that are vital for understanding the potential of companion robots. In comparing the robots, participants expressed concerns about the impact of different companion robots on their abilities and skills, their sense of autonomy and control over their lives, and the maintenance of several kinds of dignity. These results inform user-centered design and use of companion robots for older people living alone and independently.

In this paper, we present a foundation for understanding the elements that enable people with visual impairment to engage with digital games. This is defined by the gamer's relation- ships with information and with elements of control provided by the game, and is mediated through in-game metaphors and affordances when gamers interact as users or creators. This work complements previous research exploring the points of view of gamers with visual impairment by focusing on the games they play and prioritising the relationships between the key enablers of access to digital games. Using the framework to examine existing and missing components will enable de- signers to consider broader aspects of accessibility in game design.

Social virtual reality (social VR) is an emerging technology that has the potential to support unique social experiences for groups of older adults. In this paper we explore the use of social VR to support group reminiscence, an activity that has been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of older adults. We developed School Days, a bespoke social VR application that enables groups of geographically dispersed older adults to meet in a virtual environment to reminisce about their school experiences. We conducted a user study over the course of 5 months with 16 participants aged 70--81 to evaluate how School Days supported reminiscence. In this paper, we focus on how the use of reminiscence scaffolding features in School Days impacted on the older adults' ability to participate more fully in the reminiscence activities. Our results illustrate the value of social VR for connecting older adults over distance, and contribute new knowledge of how virtual environments can be designed to scaffold reminiscence; how techniques such as 3D conversation starters and individual artefacts can be used to scaffold reminiscence; and how pre-recorded holographic stories (Avacasts) can be used to introduce new perspectives and prompt self-reflection. We contribute five design reflections aimed at guiding the design of future reminiscence tools in social VR.

There is growing interest in technologies that allow older adults to socialise across geographic boundaries. An emerging technology in this space is social virtual reality (VR). In this paper we report on a series of participatory design workshops that involved extended in-depth collaboration with 22 older adults (aged 70-81), that aimed to understand their views on the types of social VR experiences that they saw as being of value to older adults. This process culminated in a reminiscence-based social VR concept. Our study identifies: participants' ideas about the types of social VR experiences they found appealing; the potential for social VR as a powerful reminiscence tool; how social VR might be used as a tool to challenge ageing stereotypes and promote healthy ageing. Reflecting on the design process, we discuss how the diverse participant groups and the complexities involved in mediating between designers, the technical team, and participants could inform future design work.

Previous research on games for people with visual impairment (PVI) has focused on co-designing or evaluating specific games - mostly under controlled conditions. In this research, we follow a game-agnostic, "in-the-wild" approach, investigating the habits, opinions and concerns of PVI regarding digital games. To explore these issues, we conducted an online survey and follow-up interviews with gamers with VI (GVI). Dominant themes from our analysis include the particular appeal of digital games to GVI, the importance of social trajectories and histories of gameplay, the need to balance complexity and accessibility in both games targeted to PVI and mainstream games, opinions about the state of the gaming industry, and accessibility concerns around new and emerging technologies such as VR and AR. Our study gives voice to an underrepresented group in the gaming community. Understanding the practices, experiences and motivations of GVI provides a valuable foundation for informing development of more inclusive games.

A growing body of research is examining the way that virtual reality (VR) technology might enrich the lives of older adults. However, no studies have yet examined how this technology---combining head mounted displays, motion tracking, avatars, and virtual environments---might contribute to older adult wellbeing by facilitating greater social participation (social VR). To address this gap, we conducted three workshops in which 25 older adults aged 70 to 81 explored the utility of social VR as a medium for communicating with other older adults. Participants first created embodied avatars that were controlled through natural gestures, and subsequently used these avatars in two high-fidelity social VR prototypes. Findings from the workshops provide insight into older adults' design motivations when creating embodied avatars for social VR; their acceptance of social VR as a communication tool; and their views on how social VR might play a beneficial role in their lives. Outcomes from the workshops also illustrate the critical importance our participants placed onbehavioural anthropomorphism ---the embodied avatars' ability to speak, move, and act in a human-like manner--- alongsidetranslational factors, which encapsulate issues relating to the way physical movements are mapped to the embodied avatar and the way in which errors in these mappings may invoke ageing stereotypes. Findings demonstrate the critical role that these characteristics might play in the success of future social VR applications targeting older users. We translate our findings into a set of design considerations for developing social VR systems for older adults, and we reflect on how our participants' experiences can inform future research on social virtual reality.

Older adults are increasingly engaging in online activities, including games, with other people. Many online environments require the user to create some form of self-representation, ranging from a simple user name through to a full body avatar. These self-representations not only enable access to online activities, but also provide an opportunity for expressing both the real and ideal identity. We wanted to better understand the impacts of later life on the construction of self-representations when playing online games. Our study used gameplay observations and semi-structured interviews with 10 older adult gamers aged from 65 to 95 years. We found they designed their player self-representations to project aspects of their lost (former) self and to embrace their present older selves. This engagement with self-representations as a form of self-expression suggests that designers need to consider older gamers, and their diverse preferences, when creating tools for customizable self-representations in online games.

This pictorial aims to demonstrate the power of video for fostering creative personal storytelling among people who normally have limited opportunities to share their experiences. We discuss two video stories, created in collaboration with participants in a project that aimed to enable housebound people to share their stories within the local community. We present screenshots from the stories, with commentary explaining how each image encapsulated the storyteller's life experiences. These show how imagery, combined with narrative, can evocatively communicate the experiences of people who are housebound, potentially fostering empathy among others within the community. Visual storytelling can therefore be a valuable tool for promoting empathy among researchers and designers. In this pictorial, we demonstrate that visual storytelling provides a powerful way for people to share their experiences and for researchers to work with and get to know participants in marginalized communities.

This article reflects on the process of conducting a project that involved creating digital stories with people who are predominately housebound, and sharing the stories on a public display at a community event. The project aimed to ‘give voice’ to people who are normally invisible in their community, and to explore the role of digital technologies in helping to foster social inclusion for people who are housebound. We explore how the meaning of the stories was co-constructed by multiple stakeholders and interrogate the aim of ‘giving voice,’ which was complicated by the mediating role we played in crafting and sharing the stories. We reflect on how notions of participation had to be negotiated in light of our participants’ experiences and abilities. By reflecting on how participation and construction of meaning were configured in this project, we contribute to ongoing discussion about the relationship between designers/researchers and participants in participatory and sensitive human–computer interaction (HCI).

This paper considers what we can learn from the experiences of people who choose not to participate in technology-based social interventions. We conducted ethnographically-informed field studies with socially isolated older adults, who used and evaluated a new iPad application designed to help build new social connections. In this paper we reflect on how the values and assumptions guiding the technological intervention were not always shared by those participating in the evaluation. Drawing on our field notes and interviews with the older adults who chose to discontinue participation, we use personas to illustrate the complexities and tensions involved in individual decisions to not participate. This analysis contributes to HCI research calling for a more critical perspective on technological interventions. We provide detailed examples highlighting the complex circumstances of our non-participants' lives, present a framework that outlines the socio-technical context of non-participation, and use our findings to promote reflective practice in HCI research that aims to address complex social issues.

In this paper we examine the use of a novel social technology to support the provision of formal aged care services to clients who live in their own homes. Social technologies offer enormous potential for enhancing aged care, but research on their use in aged care has largely focused on institutional or informal care settings, rather than formal care in the home. Meanwhile, technologies for aging in place typically focus on monitoring and security, rather than psychosocial support. We conducted a field study in which aged care managers used a photo and message-sharing tool to communicate with clients living in their own homes. Our findings demonstrate that visual and social forms of communication are valuable for supporting psychosocial care-giving, but there are barriers to effectively adopting new communication tools in this setting. Time constraints inhibited care managers' use of the technology, which was also influenced by their efforts to carefully maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives.

Older adults are normally characterized as consumers, rather than producers, of digital content. Current research concerning the design of technologies for older adults typically focuses on providing access to digital resources. Access is important, but is often insufficient, especially when establishing new social relationships. This paper investigates the nature and role of digital content that has been created by older adults, for the purpose of forging new relationships. We present a unique field study in which seven older adults (aged 71-92 years), who did not know each other, used a prototype iPad application (Enmesh) to create and share photographs and messages. The findings demonstrate that older adults, even those in the \'1c"oldest old\'1d" age group, embraced opportunities to express themselves creatively through digital content production. We show that self-expression and social engagement with peers can be realized when socio-technical systems are suitably designed to allow older adults to create and share their own digital content.

No Full Text