Globally, about 40% of women and people assigned female at birth live under laws that restrict or prohibit access to safe abortion care. Even where abortion is legal, socio-cultural stigma and health inequities hinder timely, equitable access. Technologies have been developed to support abortion seekers and providers in overcoming barriers to information, safe abortion care, and support. However, research on abortion care technologies is fragmented, spanning medical and computing publications, and lacking a consolidated understanding. To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review of 92 studies, examining technological applications, contexts of use, research methods, ethical considerations, and pathways to impact. This analysis informs the HCI research agenda for abortion care, highlighting future directions, and fostering reflection on design, ethics, and meaningful impact. We call on HCI researchers to move beyond telemedicine and U.S.-centric perspectives, re-politicize abortion care technologies, and consider temporality in delivering timely abortion care amid broader sociopolitical constraints.

Online pregnancy loss communities can allow users to locate valuable support and information after experiencing a loss. However, platform users also face challenges in learning how to safely engage with the emotive content and diverse experiences present in these communities. This raises questions about how these online communities are currently moderated. However, the practices and experiences of online pregnancy loss community moderators have not yet been examined in past research. This study sought to examine how moderators currently work to protect and maintain online pregnancy loss communities, and to determine how community moderation could potentially be improved in these online spaces. To address these research aims, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with moderators of online pregnancy loss communities located across different online forums and social media platforms. A reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to analyse this interview data. Our findings show that moderators worked to foster supportive and inclusive communities by carefully removing inappropriate or insensitive posts, providing direct informational and emotional support to members, and creating separate online spaces to bring together members with specific experiences. While platform features and the support of charity organisations helped moderators to engage in these practices, we also identified factors which limited moderator performance. Reflecting on these findings, we discuss how many of the moderator practices specifically align with a trauma-informed approach, which could usefully inform the work of moderators in other online support contexts. We also outline research directions and sociotechnical implications for improving online pregnancy loss community moderation in the future.

Emerging evidence from other disciplines indicates that women's engagement with fitness content and communities on social media can have both positive and negative impacts, with particular concerns arising around misinformation, body image and privacy. To investigate this further, we conducted a three-step data collection process, including a qualitative survey (n=97), in depth interviews (n=17), and a process of shared looking (n=10) with our female participants. We then used thematic analysis to understand users' experiences navigating fitness content online. Our paper delineates three themes focusing on 1) Qualities and Characteristics of Trust, 2) Working with the Algorithm, and 3) Competence and Capacity for Control. Based on these findings, we present design considerations that might improve women's experience of navigating fitness content online.

Online social platforms can provide important benefits to users following pregnancy loss. However, while research to date has provided insights into the opportunities and challenges of online platform use after pregnancy loss, we have a limited understanding of how users actively work to navigate these environments in order to successfully share their experiences, seek support, and protect themselves online. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a comprehensive understanding of online platform engagement after pregnancy loss, by examining how users manage their experiences and make decisions across platforms. We recruited 92 participants who had experienced pregnancy loss, through a qualitative online survey and semi-structured interviews. A reflexive thematic analysis was then conducted. Our findings demonstrate how participants actively worked to locate relevant pregnancy loss content, to share such content only with desired audiences, and to find safe online pregnancy loss spaces. However, users also struggled to manage algorithm-driven content, upsetting audience reactions, and discomfort in online pregnancy loss spaces. As these challenges could lead to emotional distress and potential re-traumatisation among this population, this raises key concerns for their safety and wellbeing online. In response to this, we discuss the implications of our study for supporting safer online platform engagement within future CSCW research and practice, specifically from the perspective of trauma-informed care.

Cervical cancer screening has the potential to save lives, but it can also produce strong anxiety and self-stigma in those who are screened. Although there has been a recent turn towards women's health in design, the potential for design to ameliorate experiences of cervical screening remains underexplored. In this paper, we report on a design research study with 15 Irish women that qualitatively unpacked their attitudes towards screening, their social learning processes, mediated through technology, and how they live with and give meaning to health-related information related to the topic of cervical screening and which they procure online. Following this, we developed NALA, a product-service-system that aimed to 1) allow self-sampling for HPV via menstrual blood, and 2) provide information around the topic of HPV, cervical cancer, and screening. This paper presents NALA, a preliminary evaluation of the system, and concludes with provocations for continuing design research in the area of digital design for women's health.

CHI papers researching healthcare human-computer interaction (HCI) are increasingly reporting the use of “thematic analysis” (TA). TA refers to a range of flexible and evolving approaches for qualitative data analysis. Its increased use demonstrates a change in research practices, and with that the emergence of new local standards. We need to understand and reflect upon these emerging local practices, including departures from what is advocated as quality TA practice more generally. Toward this, we conducted a scoping review of a decade of CHI publications (2012 – 2021) that researched healthcare and termed their analysis approach “thematic analysis”; 78 papers reporting a total of 100 TAs were included. We contribute a description of 1) the contexts in which TA is being used, 2) the TA approaches being conducted, and 3) how TA is being reported. Drawing on this, we discuss opportunities to improve research practice when using TA in healthcare HCI.

Recent HCI research has addressed emerging approaches for public engagement. One such public-facing method which has gained popularity over the previous decade has been open design events, or hackathons. In this article, we report on DemVR, a hackathon event that invited designers, technologists, and students of these disciplines to design Virtual Reality (VR) environments for people with dementia and their care partners. While our event gained reasonable attraction from designers and developers, this article unpacks the challenges in representing and involving people with dementia in these events, which had multiple knock-on effects on participant's outputs. Our analysis presents insights into participants’ motivations, challenges participants faced when constructing their “absent user”, and the design features teams developed to address the social context of the user. We conclude the article by proposing a set of commitments for collaborative design events, community building through design, and reification in design.

Recent HCI research has suggested a move from individualistic models of digital care and wellbeing to considering the family unit as a locus of support in this area; however, little work has examined the complex, granular everyday experience of such relationships, and the role of gender, class, and care is underexplored. This study focuses on women's familial relationships through interviews with 6 Irish women about their relationships with their mothers, as well as ways in which they maintain the care of themselves and others within these relationships. Our thematic analysis of this data generated four themes: self-other care, leaky boundaries, changes over the lifecourse, and space and conflict – from which we ideated a series of design concepts, six of which are presented here with critiques from our participants. From this exploratory work, we delineate four directions for future HCI research into women's close relationships.

Engaging in participatory research in HCI raises numerous ethical complexities such as consent, researcher relationships, and participant compensation. Doing HCI work in the area of dementia amplifies these issues, and researchers in this area are modelling ethical stances to ensure researcher-participant relationships focus on meaningful engagement and care. This paper presents an insight into the kinds of ethical foci required when doing design research with people living with dementia and their carers. We interviewed 22 HCI researchers with experience working in dementia care contexts. Our qualitative analysis outlines subsequent lessons-learned, such as recognition of the participants, self-care, research impact, and subjectivity in ethical review boards. Furthermore, we found the complexity of navigating both "everyday" and more formal, institutional ethics in dementia research has implications beyond the context of working with people with dementia and outline key considerations for ethical practices in socially orientated HCI research.

We describe the design and use of ReFind, a handheld artefact made for people who are bereaved and are ready to re-explore their relationship to the deceased person. ReFind was made within a project seeking to develop new ways to curate and create digital media to support ongoingness - an active, dynamic component of continuing bonds. We draw on bereavement theory and care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. We present the design development of ReFind and the lived experience of the piece by the first author. We discuss our wider methodology which includes autobiographical design and reflections on if and how the piece supported ongoing connections, the challenges faced, and insights gained.

Whereas there have been significant improvements in the quality of care provided for people with dementia, limited attention to the importance for people with dementia being enabled to make positive social contributions within care home contexts can restrict their sense of agency. In this paper we describe the design and deployment of 'Printer Pals' a receipt-based print media device, which encourages social contribution and agency within a care home environment. The design followed a two-year ethnography, from which the need for highlighting participation and supporting agency for residents within the care home became clear. The residents use of Printer Pals mediated participation in a number of different ways, such as engaging with the technology itself, offering shared experiences and participating in co-constructive and meaningful ways, each of which is discussed. We conclude with a series of design consideration to support agentic and caring interactions through inclusive design practices.

Although designing interactive media experiences for people with dementia has become a growing interest in HCI, a strong focus on family members has rarely been recognised as worthy of design intervention. This paper presents a research through design (RTD) approach working closely with families living with dementia in order to create personalised media experiences. Three families took part in day trips, which they co-planned, with data collection during these days providing insights into their shared social experiences. Workshops were also held in order to personalise the experience of the media created during these days out. Our qualitative analysis outlines themes focusing on individuality, relationships, and accepting changed realities. Furthermore, we outline directions for future research focusing on designing for contested realities, the personhood of carers, and the ageing body and immersion.

Community radio can support the process of having a voice in one's community as a part of civic action, and promote community dialogue. However, older adults are underrepresented as producers of community radio shows in the UK, and face different challenges to their younger colleagues. By working within the radio production group of an existing organisation of older adults, we identify the motivations and challenges in supporting this type of civic participation in media in later life. Key challenges were identified, including audience engagement, content persistence and process sustainability. In response, we 1) supported the group's audience engagement using Facebook Live and a phone-in option, and 2) developed a digital production tool. Reporting on the continued use of the tool by the organisation, we discuss how tailored and non-intrusive processes mediated by digital technology can support older adults in delivering richer media experiences whilst serving their civic participatory interests.

This article presents a qualitative driving simulator study designed to understand the experience of giving up control to automated processes in semiautonomous driving systems. The study employed an experience prototyping methodology, with 12 drivers (4 female) completing 2 sessions in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Condition A simulated a normally functioning car, while Condition B simulated a semiautonomous system that monitors driver behavior and takes evasive action when danger is detected. The simulator experience was used to ground wider discussion of automation and the experience of driving, which was explored through a semistructured interview. Results identify design challenges for autonomous driving systems; the loss of user agency and confidence, and handling the change between manual and automated control. Opportunities were identified; in augmenting rather than removing human abilities, and in providing new learning opportunities for drivers.

Despite indications that recreational virtual reality (VR) experiences could be beneficial for people with dementia, this area remains unexplored in contrast to the body of work on neurological rehabilitation through VR in dementia. With recreational VR applications coming to the market for dementia, we must consider how VR experiences for people with dementia can be sensitively designed to provide comfortable and enriching experiences. Working with seven participants from a local dementia care charity, we outline some of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the design and use of VR experiences with people with dementia and their carers through an inductive thematic analysis. We also provide a series of future directions for work in VR and dementia: 1) careful physical design, 2) making room for sharing, 3) utilizing all senses, 4) personalization, and 5) ensuring the active inclusion of the person with dementia.

Despite the divisive nature of abortion within the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where access to safe, legal abortion is severely restricted, effecting legislative reform demands widespread public support. In light of a building pro-choice counter-voice, this work contributes to a growing body of HCI research that takes an activist approach to design. We report findings from four design workshops with 31 pro-choice stakeholders across Ireland in which we positioned an exploratory protosite, HerStoryTold, to engender critical conversations around the use of sensitive abortion narratives as a tool for engagement. Our analysis shows how digital storytelling can help reject false narratives and raise awareness of the realities of abortion laws. It suggests design directions to curate narratives that provoke empathy, foster polyvocality, and ultimately expand the engaged community. Furthermore, this research calls for designers to actively support community mobilization through providing 'stepping stones' to activism.

One of the many challenges of becoming a parent is the shift in one's social life. As HCI researchers have begun to investigate the intersection of sociotechnical system design and parenthood, they have also sought to understand how parents' social lives can be best supported. We build on these strands of research through a qualitative study with new parents regarding the role of digital technologies in their social lives as they transition to parenthood. We demonstrate how sociotechnical systems are entangled in the ways new parents manage their relationships, build (or resist building) new friendships and ad hoc support systems, and navigate the vulnerabilities of parenthood. We discuss how systems designed for new parents can better support the vulnerabilities they internalize, the diverse friendships they desire, and the logistical challenges they experience. We conclude with recommendations for future design and research in this area.

We explore the role of digital media in supporting intergenerational interactions between people with dementia and young people. Though meaningful social interaction is integral to quality of life in dementia, initiating conversation with a person with dementia can be challenging, especially for younger people who may lack knowledge of someone's life history. This can be further compounded without a nuanced understanding of the nature of dementia, along with an unfamiliarity in leading and maintaining conversation. We designed a mobile application - Ticket to Talk - to support intergenerational interactions by encouraging young people to collect media relevant to individuals with dementia to use in conversations with people with dementia. We evaluated Ticket to Talk through trials with two families, a care home, and groups of older people. We highlight difficulties in using technologies such as this as a conversational tool, the value of digital media in supporting intergenerational interactions, and the potential to positively shape people with dementia's agency in social settings.

This paper analyses sexual health workers' 'talk' around their introduction of a digital platform to enhance a regionally managed condom distribution scheme for young people. In examining the discursive resources workers used in framing the sexual health service, their service users and digital technology, we argue that problematic ideologies around young people and sexuality were exercised and reproduced. Workers positioned themselves as the gatekeepers of young people's sexual health, who were in turn constructed as 'mischievous' and 'misguided', with technology having a corruptive role over what was considered to be 'healthy' and 'normal' sexual relationships. We suggest our findings indicate severe challenges in developing community-commissioned platforms alongside service providers, and questions how plausible user participation can be in attempting to conduct collaborative, participatory and engaged work in this context.

In this paper we explore the opportunities, challenges and best practices around designing technologies for those affected by self-harm. Our work contributes to a growing HCI literature on mental health and wellbeing, as well as understandings of how to imbue appropriate value-sensitivity within the digital design process in these contexts. The first phase of our study was centred upon a hackathon during which teams of designers were asked to conceptualise and prototype digital products or services for those affected by self-harm. We discuss how value-sensitive actions and activities, including engagements with those with lived experiences of self-harm, were used to scaffold the conventional hackathon format in such a challenging context. Our approach was then extended through a series of critical engagements with clinicians and charity workers who provided appraisal of the prototypes and designs. Through analysis of these engagements we expose a number of design challenges for future HCI work that considers self-harm; moreover we offer insight into the role of stakeholder critiques in extending and rethinking hackathons as a design method in sensitive contexts.

In this paper, we present "Care and Connect", a mobile application created through the App Movement platform that aims to identify and rate public places (e.g., parks, shops, cafes) on their 'dementia-friendliness' - their suitability for people with dementia and their carers. Care and Connect saw significant support in its early stages on the online platform, yet failed to engage participants in its design phase and deployment. To unpick this, we contribute an account of its initial use in the community, and then describe findings from research engagements with carers and people with dementia. These workshops used Care and Connect to structure discussions of participants' own experiences of dementia-friendliness, and uncovered themes of 1) trust, 2) exclusion versus inclusion, 3) duration and quality of time, and 4) empathy becoming action. Using this evidence, we advance an account of online community commissioning as a process which needs to understand not only the general issues ongoing in communities facing significant life challenges, but also the particularity of community members' experiences.

Experience-Centred Design (ECD) has been applied in numerous HCI projects to call attention to the particular and dialogical nature of people's experiences with technology. In this paper, we report on ECD within the context of publicly-funded, long-stay residential dementia care, where the approach helped to highlight aspects of participants' felt experience, and informed sensitive and meaningful design responses. This study contributes an extended understanding of the quality of experience and the means of making sense in dementia, as well as unpicking the potential of ECD to support enriched experience and contextual meaning-making for people with dementia. Finally, we delineate what it is about Experience-Centred Design that differentiates the approach from other often-used approaches in designing in dementia contexts: 1) explorative thinking, 2) working within 'cuttings-out of time and space', 3) careful yet expressive methodology and documentation, and 4) working together to imagine futures. We end with considerations of how the contributions of this research may extend to other experience-centred projects in challenging settings.

Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) are widely available on devices such as smartphones. However, most people do not use them regularly. Previous research has studied the experiences of frequent IPA users. Using qualitative methods we explore the experience of infrequent users: people who have tried IPAs, but choose not to use them regularly. Unsurprisingly infrequent users share some of the experiences of frequent users, e.g. frustration at limitations on fully hands-free interaction. Significant points of contrast and previously unidentified concerns also emerge. Cultural norms and social embarrassment take on added significance for infrequent users. Humanness of IPAs sparked comparisons with human assistants, juxtaposing their limitations. Most importantly, significant concerns emerged around privacy, monetization, data permanency and transparency. Drawing on these findings we discuss key challenges, including: designing for interruptability; reconsideration of the human metaphor; issues of trust and data ownership. Addressing these challenges may lead to more widespread IPA use.

The built environment remains a persistent accessibility challenge for people with mobility impairments. Whilst platforms to report these inaccessible locations exist, the underlying documentation processes are verbose, time-consuming and fail to effectively communicate the barrier at hand. We propose WheelieMap, a platform which uses the motion of manual wheelchair users to support the identification and documentation of potentially problematic locations. WheelieMap captures and segments device video footage and GPS as evidence of the problematic space, which can then be shared with both other people with disabilities and the relevant authorities. We document the use of the WheelieMap prototype by both manual wheelchair users and planning experts through semi-structured interviews. The qualitative findings revealed this approach to be the most viable route for documenting inaccessibility, compared to the existing alternatives. We also offer guidance on how to design and develop similar community driven reporting and annotation systems in the accessibility setting.

This paper presents an ethnographic study exploring the role of props and music in dementia care in order to engage participants and inform design. Our findings extend current understandings of participation to reveal that a more nuanced view of participation is required when designing in the dementia context. Our work suggests that participation in music sessions for people with dementia is about touch and intimacy, connection via movement, shifting roles, materiality and using props to disengage. We discuss these themes, their implications for Experience-Centered Design and offer a set of future directions in designing for and with people with dementia that underpin the participation of people with dementia in a meaningful and enriching way.

This paper describes everyday technologies in use in a long-term dementia care ward, and ways in which these technologies facilitated creative expression for residents within. Drawing on ethnographic research focusing on participation in creative activities for people with dementia living in care, the paper details how residents engaged with technologies (such as television) in a passive way (spending hours sitting in front of the TV without engaging with others around them), and in an active way (singing and dancing to music played via stereo and record player). Findings from this research emphasise the importance for interaction design for dementia in appreciating the role of active creative participation in sustaining personhood in dementia. Given a lack of both time and resources in publicly-funded care homes, we also highlight the value of opportunistic design in the field.