Dr. Scratch automatically scores computational thinking (CT) in Scratch. While promising, these metrics are seldom evaluated in classroom realities. To compensate, we engaged six STEM teachers and 395 middle school students in qualitative classroom research using Dr. Scratch CT4ALL to support game-based learning (GBL). Through observations, field notes, interviews, and quantitative insights, we show how teachers personalize CT rubrics for GBL and how students score with these rubrics, while also documenting their experiences with automated CT metrics. We find that Dr. Scratch’s feedback often goes unheeded, confirming apprehensions from prior work. When CT is a secondary learning goal, students focus on code issues rather than CT points, questioning the usefulness of Dr. Scratch in supporting students’ motivation to learn about CT in GBL. Based on these results, we discuss the need for human-centered design of CT metrics, offering lessons learned and perspectives to improve CT metrics for classroom use.

FemTech, including apps for fertility, menstruation, and menopause, increasingly shapes how users manage intimate aspects of their health. Yet these apps are often built on opaque commercial models, raising ethical concerns about consent, privacy, and misuse of sensitive health data. While prior work has documented these risks, less is known about how users perceive and negotiate commercial data practices in FemTech apps. We conducted an online survey with 187 participants, combining factorial vignettes with provotypes— interface prototypes designed to provoke reflection— to examine user boundaries and discomforts around FemTech data collection and commercial use. Participants drew sharp distinctions across data types, resisting peripheral data collection and pervasive tracking. Commercial practices were often judged conditionally: tolerated only when functionally relevant. Notably, our provotypes, even under exaggerated transparency, elicited more forgiving responses to commercial practices compared to brief text descriptions in the vignettes. We discuss implications for designing transparent, accountable, and user-aligned FemTech.

FemTech is an emerging industry offering products, software, and services to support women’s health and well-being. Within FemTech, mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are popular for managing menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause. Yet, these apps expose users to deceptive and misleading practices, which can be characterized as Dark Patterns in user experience (or dark UX). Dark UX in commercial FemTech mHealth apps is underexplored, leaving a critical gap in understanding how deceptive patterns manifest in intimate health contexts, the harms they cause, and how to address them. We crowd-source and thematically analyze user accounts of dark UX through user reviews from sixteen systematically selected FemTech mHealth apps. User-reported accounts of dark UX in FemTech mHealth apps reveal several problematic design patterns, which emphasize risks for minors and the need for more transparent design of FemTech mHealth apps. Based on our results, we outline recommendations for enhancing ethical UX design and furthering regulatory action in FemTech.

Increasing numbers of people represent themselves in legal disputes—known as pro se litigants. Many lack the skills, experience, or knowledge to navigate legal proceedings without a lawyer, resulting in limited access to justice. Serious games may provide an effective, interactive, and engaging way of educating pro se litigants about the law and enabling their access to justice. Through participatory design with legal experts and an authoring tool, we co-designed RePresent, a serious game that helps individuals with limited access to legal support prepare for pro se litigation. A total of 965 people played RePresent, and 149 provided feedback on their player experience. Results show that RePresent was engaging and valuable for learning about the law and pro se litigation. Our work highlights avenues for co-design methodologies with co-creative authoring tools that facilitate serious game design, contributing a potentially scalable solution to enable access to justice via co-authored serious games.

Assessing speech disorders in early childhood is challenging, and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) play a key role in addressing such a challenge. However, tools that support speech assessment are often not child-friendly, and SLPs struggle to keep young patients engaged. To compensate, we introduce ArticuMotion, a child-friendly app that supports the assessment of speech disorders while engaging children in gamified experiences. We use participatory design to co-create ArticuMotion with SLPs and test the resulting product in a user study with nine preschool children. ArticuMotion has promise as a gamified assessment for motor speech disorders and shows a potential avenue for designing clinical tools that are useful while being child-friendly.

Gamification and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly being explored for their potential to enhance mindful practices and well-being. We further explore the potential of gamification and VR for breath awareness and mindfulness, and contribute Stairway to Heaven, a VR artifact that combines gamification with respiratory sensor biofeedback to cultivate mindful awareness of breathing. In our mixed-method study with 21 participants, we evaluated the usability and effectiveness of our artifact in promoting breathing frequencies between 4 and 10 breaths per minute (BPM). We integrate breath-driven teleportation as a virtual locomotion technique (VLT) using respiratory biofeedback to gamify progression through a virtual wilderness. Additionally, we supplement our design with a mindfulness audio guide. The results of our user study showcase the potential of combining actionable gamification and VR, guided mindfulness, and breath-driven VLT to foster slow breathing self-regulation successfully.

Mixed-initiative co-creative storytelling games have existed for some time as a way to merge storytelling with play. However, modern mixed-initiative co-creative storytelling games predominantly prioritize story creation over gameplay mechanics, which might not resonate with all players. As such, there is untapped potential for creating mixed-initiative games with more complex mechanics in which players can engage with both co-creation and gameplay goals. To explore the potential of more prominent gameplay in mixed-initiative co-creative storytelling games, we created Snake Story, a variation of the classic Snake game featuring a human-AI co-writing element. To explore how players interact with the mixed-initiative game, we conducted a qualitative playtest with 11 participants. Analysis of both think-aloud and interview data revealed that players’ strategies and experiences were affected by their perception of Snake Story as either a collaborative tool, a traditional game, or a combination of both. Based on these findings, we present design considerations for future development in mixed-initiative co-creative gaming.

Commercial pregnancy apps are becoming popular in mobile health and integral to individuals' health management ecosystems. For that, they can complement medical advice and be conveniently used for ubiquitous tracking of pregnancy. Besides their functional and medical purpose, they may elicit subjective, personal, and intimate experiences that are equally relevant to users. Yet, these qualitative aspects of experiencing pregnancy apps remain under-researched. An inquiry into those qualitative aspects may help advance the design of pregnancy apps for improved user embodiment, engagement, and experience. Here, we qualitatively inquire about experiences with six popular pregnancy apps through 4,000+ online reviews. Our findings reveal that pregnancy apps are more than mere trackers and can impact pregnancy experiences, either positively or negatively, based on their design features. Further, reviews pointed to a neglect of family, friends, and relatives in the apps' design, which users found often problematic. To counter these shortcomings, we outline avenues for improving the design of pregnancy apps beyond usability and medical outcomes and call for enhancing their user experience through more sensitive, user-centered, and inclusive design.

Mental health issues have risen recently, precipitating the need to discover newer and more effective therapy solutions. Human-computer interaction (HCI) research has shown promise for helping advance mental health therapies through interactive experiences. Here, we further explore the usefulness of game-based approaches for mental health therapy, particularly coping with the symptoms of anxiety. For this, we co-design a serious game with a psychotherapist using StudyCrafter. Then, we tested our game with 30 participants who frequently experienced anxiety. We used clinically validated testing protocols and anxiety measurement tools (i.e., Randomized Control Trial (RCT) and General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) inventory, respectively) for evaluation. Results showed that participants who played our game reported lowered levels of anxiety compared to participants who did not play the game. We contribute a preliminary understanding of how serious games can be useful in the context of mental health treatment and outline possible future directions.

Queerness can help redefine interactive technologies and re-conceptualize their design beyond cisheteronormativity. Recently, games have emerged as promising avenues for exploring queerness. In this research-through-design (RtD) effort, we advance queer explorations in games by leveraging queer temporality to evoke and explore feelings of alienation and isolation in a horror game called You're Going To Be Late. We further engage with queer individuals who playtest our game and participate in focus groups to discuss how queer they felt our game was and what they regard as queer game mechanics. Participants had varying experiences while playing our game, ranging from serendipity and wonder to alienation and confusion. The focus groups described queer game mechanics as queer modes of play and often tapped into gender representation. Finally, we show how including and amplifying queer voices in discursive efforts around interactive technology design has implications for transformative and critical reflections that can broadly benefit game design and HCI research.

COVID-19 has heavily impacted our lives. To date, the ongoing pandemic continues to cause dramatic societal changes and raises shared sentiments of uncertainty for our future. As such, however, COVID-19 provides opportunities to explore futures through speculative research. Here, we gamify the story completion method (SCM) to explore futures post-COVID and ask 37 participants to play a day in the life of Sal in a post-COVID future. The game asks participants to describe what Sal sees, hears, or does throughout a day based on multiple story stems. Our analysis reveals narratives of post-COVID futures as business as usual, back to basics, or everyday chaos. Notably, these narratives raise concerns about privacy loss and increased militarization, but also envision futures post-COVID that reclaim stronger bond with nature and family. We discuss the lessons learned from gamifying the SCM and the temporal implications of performing speculative research during evolving dramatic events.

Esports are rapidly growing within academia. In HCI, earlier work explored how problematic behaviors emerging from gender biases (e.g., toxicity) negatively impact female participation in esports. Here, we further explore gender biases in esports by interviewing 19 self-identified female and male professional gamers and event organizers. We inquire our interviewees about personal experiences with gender biases in esports and their perspective on how these biases impact participation, inclusivity, and career prospects. Our interviewees see gender biases in esports as a consequence of stereotypical gender roles in gaming tout-court (e.g., girls do not like violence, boys are competitive by nature). The rationale for separating male and female in esports, however, seems rooted in the need for female gamers to create role-models and grow in self-confidence. We scrutinize the considerations emerging from our interviews under a Feminist HCI lens and discuss how HCI research can help design equitable environments in esports.

Game design is increasingly used in modern education to foster Computational Thinking (CT). Yet, it is unclear how and if the game genre of student-designed games impact CT and programming. We explore how game genre impacts CT development and programming routines in Scratch games designed by 8th-grade students using a metrics-based approach (i.e., Dr. Scratch). Our findings show that designing particular games (e.g., action, storytelling) impact CT and programming development. We observe, for instance, that CT skills develop and consolidate fast, after which students can focus on aspects more specific to game design. Based on the results, we suggest that researchers and educators in constructionist learning consider the impact of game genre when designing game-based curricula for the learning of programming and CT.

Sex Robots are no longer science fiction and may soon be-come widespread. While much discussion has developed in academia on their moral and social impact, sex robots have yet to be examined from a critical design perspective and are under-explored in HCI. We use the Story Completion Method(SCM) to explore commonplace assumptions around futures with sex robots and discuss those from a critical design perspective. Thirty five participants completed a story stem of a human encountering a sex robot or vice-versa. Through thematic analysis, we show narratives of consumerist relation-ships between humans and sex robots, stories that describe sex robots as highly-efficient sex workers that (out)perform humans in routinal sex activities, and narratives that explore sex robots as empathetic and sentient beings. Our participant-created stories both reinforce and challenge established norms of sex robots and raise questions that concern responsible design and ethics in HCI. Finally, we show opportunities and limitations of using multiple-perspective story stems in SCM

Game design is emerging in contemporary education, especially in constructionist curricula for student-centered and discovery learning. While previous work focused on assessing how complementary skills (e.g., computational thinking) develop through game design, few have attempted to assess the very games designed by students. Here, we show preliminary results on using the Triadic Game Design (TGD) model to assess the elements that may constitute a ”balanced” student-designed game in the context of constructionist learning. Our results show that TGD is viable to carry out such assessment. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our approach and propose directions for future work.

Deformable interfaces are emerging in HCI and prototypes show potential for non-rigid interactions. Previous reviews looked at deformation as a material property of shape-changing interfaces and concentrated on output. As such,deformable input was under-discussed. We distinguish deformable from shape-changing interfaces to concentrate on input. We survey 131 papers on deformable interfaces and review their key design elements (e.g., shape, material) based on how they support input. Our survey shows that deformable input was often used to augment or replace rigid input, particularly on elastic and flexible displays. However, when shapes and materials guide interactions, deformable input was used to explore new HCI paradigms, where gestures are potentially endless, and input become analogy to sculpting, metaphor to non-verbal communication, and expressive controls are enhanced. Our review provides designers and practitioners with a baseline for designing deformable interfaces and input methodically. We conclude by highlighting under-explored areas and identify research goals to tackle in future work with deformable interfaces.

Computational thinking (CT) is key to digital literacy and helps develop problem-solving skills, which are fundamental in modern school. As game design shows potential for teaching CT, metrics like Dr. Scratch emerge that help scholars systematically assess the CT of student-designed games, particularly with Scratch. Compared to other CT metrics, Dr. Scratch scores the CT of Scratch projects automatically and can be used to describe CT development. However, previous research using Dr. Scratch summatively assessed CT, but did not look at CT development. We use Dr. Scratch to assess the CT development of Scratch games designed by 8th-grade students in STEM curricula. We show how CT proficiency in student-designed games develops differently in each CT dimension, where parallelism, synchronization, and logic develop proficiently, while developing abstraction seems hard. We discuss insights into game-based CT development for STEM, and suggest improvements for metric-based CT assessment.

Shape-changing interfaces allow designers to create user interfaces that physically change shape. However, presently, we lack studies of how such interfaces are designed, as well as what high-level strategies, such as metaphors and affordances, designers use. This paper presents an analysis of sketches made by 21 participants designing either a shape-changing radio or a shape-changing mobile phone. The results exhibit a range of interesting design elements, and the analysis points to a need to further develop or revise existing vocabularies for sketching and analyzing movement. The sketches show a prevalent use of metaphors, say, for communicating volume though big-is-on and small-is-off, as well as a lack of conventions. Furthermore, the affordances used were curiously asymmetrical compared to those offered by non-shape-changing interfaces. We conclude by offering implications on how our results can influence future research on shape-changing interfaces.

Deformable interfaces offer new possibilities for gestures, some of which have been shown effective in controlled laboratory studies. Little work, however, has attempted to match deformable interfaces to a demanding domain and evaluate them out of the lab. We investigate how musicians use deformable interfaces to perform electronic music. We invited musicians to three workshops, where they explored 10 deformable objects and generated ideas on how to use these objects to perform music. Based on the results from the workshops, we implemented sensors in the five preferred objects and programmed them for controlling sounds. Next, we ran a performance study where six musicians performed music with these objects at their studios. Our results show that (1) musicians systematically map deformations to certain musical parameters, (2) musicians use deformable interfaces especially to filter and modulate sounds, and (3) musicians think that deformable interfaces embody the parameters that they control. We discuss what these results mean to research in deformable interfaces.

Elastic, deformable displays allow users to give input by pinching, pushing, folding, and twisting the display. However, little is known about what gestures users prefer or how they will use elasticity and deformability as input. We report a guessability study where 17 participants performed gestures to solve 29 tasks, including selection, navigation, and 3D modeling. Based on the resulting 493 gestures, we describe a user-defined gesture set for elastic, deformable displays. We show how participants used depth and elasticity of the display to simulate deformation, rotation, and displacement of objects. In addition, we show how the use of desktop computers as well as multi-touch interaction affected users' choice of gestures. Finally, we discuss some unique uses of elasticity and deformability in gestures.