We introduce SoTA, a multi-device interactive artwork on artificial intelligence (AI). It visualises 118 neural network architectures as artistic objects that can be experienced at an immersive scale, allowing audiences to select, explore, and navigate different models interactively. The installation is also characterised by an intentional narrative shift that moves from open-ended exploration to abstract visualisation. We exhibited SoTA in a public art museum and conducted an in-situ study with 33 participants to investigate how aesthetic experiences foster affective and critical reflection, complementing technical explanation in public AI engagement. Our findings reveal how aesthetic environments create emotional conditions that foster deeper inquiry, leading to enhanced understanding, productive ambivalence, and ultimately personal, philosophical, and societal reflection on AI. We conclude by discussing the opportunities of artistic exhibitions for public AI engagement and suggest three concrete design strategies grounded in our design and evaluation of SoTA.

This paper introduces Technology Redux, a new methodological approach in HCI that seeks to reenact past technological experiences in today’s everyday life, critically reflect on the roles and impacts of present technologies, and provoke new perspectives on future directions of technological development. Building on reflections from, BeeperRedux, a case study that recreated the 1990s beeper as a smartphone application, we present four practical strategies for enacting Technology Redux: (1) reproducing experiences beyond replicating past technologies, (2) balancing friction for provocation and everyday integration, (3) integrating personal narratives as research resources, and (4) surfacing the sociocultural and infrastructural contexts. We argue that this methodology uniquely integrates the perspectives and strengths of the historicist approach, speculative design, and research products, introducing a critical and actionable research practice for HCI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is deepening human social experiences within online spaces in increasingly layered ways. Amid these shifts, we designed AmongOthers, an online community populated with 800 AI agents, and rethought human–AI social interactions. Eight participants engaged with AmongOthers for four weeks. For the first two weeks, they were told the community was exclusively for immigrants and international students, after which we disclosed that most users were AI agents. Participants shared periodic reflections and later joined interviews. Initially, AmongOthers was described as warm and respectful. However, after disclosure, participants diverged in their attitudes toward AI in online social communities, ranging from embracing and denying to imagining it only as a conditional possibility. We discuss these tensions in human perceptions of AI and highlight the risks of framing AI as failed replicas or preferable proxies. We finally suggest rethinking AI as distinct social entities in their own right.

To expand the discourse on non-utilitarian values in HCI and Design, this pictorial explores the concept of Life-Synchronized Products (LSPs), domestic technologies that align lifecycles with users. Through a co-design workshop, we developed property dimensions for products whose lifetime is associated with users. We defined LSP from properties in the dimension and exemplify LSP through ‘LO (Life-synchronized Oven),’ an oven that lives along with its user and ceases to exist upon death. LO features a visual interface, Thread of Life, reflecting lifetime and meaningful events, demonstrating physical and intelligent growth, expressing thoughts and emotions, and leaving no trace after termination. Expert interviews with our research artifacts including a semi-functional prototype, service website, and design fiction video revealed that LO can transcend traditional utilitarian roles to become “life companions” that foster existential reflection. We discuss the technical, business, and socio-ethical challenges of LSPs and implications for HCI and design research.

Peer Reviewed

Peer Reviewed

As families increasingly live apart due to reasons such as education, employment, or personal independence, they rely on computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools to stay connected. While tools like audio and video calls help bridge the distance, they often fall short in fostering social presence. This study explores how telepresence robots, with their physicality and mobility, may enhance social presence in remote family communication. We hypothesize that telepresence robots will increase perceived social presence compared to current CMC tools. To test this, we conducted a within-subjects study with eight families, deploying telepresence robots in their homes for two weeks. The results show that among the five factors encompassed by social presence—perceived presence, psychological closeness, seamless communication, and conversational involvement—four were significantly increased after using telepresence robots, while communication privacy showed no effect.

An increasing number of everyday products are being designed to possess qualities such as intelligence, consciousness, and emotion. However, there is a need for more understanding on how to design for these properties of mind. To address this, we present the design of Areca, an air purifier that keeps a diary. This paper outlines our design process, focusing on how the diary generation process gives Areca properties of mind and how its appearance and interaction design support this concept. Through exhibiting Areca in a design exhibition, we gathered people's initial reactions and perceptions to further evaluate the effectiveness of our design intentions. Finally, based on these experiences, we engage in discussions on the design of products having minds.

The creativity support tools can enhance the hands-on multidisciplinary learning experience by drawing interest in the process of creating the outcome. We present AutomataStage, an AR-mediated creativity support tool for hands-on multidisciplinary learning. AutomataStage utilizes a video see-through interface to support the creation of Interactive Automata. The combination of building blocks and low-cost materials increases the expressiveness. The generative design method and one-to-one guide support the idea development process. It also provides a hardware see-through feature with which inside parts and circuits can be seen and an operational see-through feature that shows the operation in real-time. The visual programming method with a state transition diagram supports the iterative process during the creation process. A user study shows that AutomataStage enabled the students to create diverse Interactive Automata within 40-minute sessions. By creating Interactive Automata, the participants could learn the basic concepts of components. See-through features allowed active exploration with interest while integrating the components. We discuss the implications of hands-on tools with interactive and kinetic content beyond multidisciplinary learning.

Mechanical hijacking of physical interfaces is a cost-eff method for providing an Internet of Things (IoT) experience. However, existing mechanical hijacking devices (MHD) have limited applicability and usability. This pictorial introduces a research through design project on IoTIZER, which is easy to use and versatile MHD. We report on a design process from identifying a design space, conducting an iterative design and prototyping. We present the final design's hardware, software, usage scenario and implementation details. We also share lessons from a user study with eight households. The potential value of IoTIZER were appreciated as a versatile MHD. We discuss improvement areas of IoTIZER and implications for creating an IoT environment while preserving the existing conventions.

The test cost and yield improvement of embedded memories have become very important as memory capacity and density have grown. For embedded memories, built-in redundancy analysis (BIRA) is widely used to improve yield by replacing faulty cells with a 2-D redundancy architecture. However, the most important factor in BIRA is the reduction of hardware overhead while keeping optimal repair rate. Most BIRA approaches require extra hardware overhead in order to store and analyze faults in the memory. These approaches do not utilize spare memories during the redundancy analysis (RA) procedure. However, the proposed BIRA minimizes area overhead by utilizing a part of the spare memory as an address mapping table (AMT). Since storing the faulty memory addresses take most of the extra hardware overhead, the reduced logical addresses produced by the AMT are used to reduce the extra hardware overhead. In addition, the reduced addresses are stored in content-addressable memories (CAMs) and used in the RA procedure. The proposed BIRA can achieve an optimal repair rate by using an exhaustive search RA algorithm. The proposed RA algorithm compares the repair solution candidates with all the fault addresses stored in the proposed CAMs to guarantee an exhaustive search. The experimental results show that the proposed BIRA requires a smaller area overhead than that of the previous state-of-the-art BIRA with an optimal repair rate.

Faulty cell repair with redundancy can improve memory yield. In particular, built-in redundancy analysis (BIRA) is widely used to enhance the yield of embedded memories. We propose an efficient BIRA algorithm to achieve the optimal repair rate with a very short analysis time and low hardware cost. The proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the number of backtracks in the exhaustive search algorithm: it uses early termination based on the number of orthogonal faulty cells and fault classification in fault collection. Experimental results show that the proposed BIRA methodology can achieve optimal repair rate with low hardware overhead and short analysis time, as compared to previous BIRA methods.