Gamified educational apps, widely used by children, are often celebrated for sustaining daily practice. Yet such engagement can conceal a problematic outcome: continued use that no longer supports meaningful learning but is difficult to pause or quit. This paper examines how retention-oriented gamification can harm children’s wellbeing and learning through exit dark patterns—design strategies that increase the cognitive and emotional costs of disengagement. Drawing on online interviews with North American parent–child dyads, we examine families’ daily use of a mainstream gamified language-learning app (Duolingo) as an emblematic case. Our findings introduce two analytic constructs: goal drift, in which engagement shifts from mastery-oriented learning to metric maintenance, and gamified obligation, characterized by guilt or disappointment associated with exiting. We further show how exit friction stabilizes engagement even as educational meaning wanes. We conclude with design implications for child-centered learning technologies, arguing for an “easy way out” as learning-supportive design.

Conservation organizations often invite the public to adopt endangered animals, but it is difficult to sustain engagement once the initial excitement fades. We explore an alternative to one-off immersive media by designing and studying an ambient digital companion that keeps adopters peripherally aware of their animal in everyday life. Drawing on a survey (N=162), interviews (N=18), and co-design with adopters and staff (N=10), we created WildCompanion, an iPhone widget and Apple Watch app that delivers short, vetted updates and photos. We deployed WildCompanion with adopters (N=22) for 30 days, combining logs, weekly questionnaires, and exit interviews. Our findings show how an ambient companion can become a calm, always-there presence that fits into routines, nurtures emotional connection, and prompts small conservation-related actions without causing notification fatigue. We contribute empirical insights and a design framework for ambient companions in conservation and related cause-driven domains. We discuss implications for future conservation technology research.

Gig workers increasingly rely on unofficial tools and peer networks to navigate opaque, algorithmic labor systems. This paper investigates the case of Avalon—a paid batch-filtering app used by Instacart shoppers—and its affiliated Telegram community. Drawing on a two-year mixed-methods study including a survey (N=178), interviews (N=20), and 51,764 Telegram messages, we examine how workers resist platform constraints through technological and relational practices. While prior research often frames such resistance as adversarial or economically driven, we apply a feminist HCI lens to highlight care, consent, and infrastructuring as central to workers’ strategies. We show how Instacart’s majority-female workforce builds informal systems to reveal hidden information, protect one another, and maintain dignity in precarious conditions. Our findings contribute empirical insights into gendered algorithmic labor, theoretical extensions of feminist infrastructuring, and design implications for worker-centered platforms that reflect relational labor values. We argue for platforms that honor refusal, transparency, and collective agency from below.

Homes overflow with children’s artwork, yet domestic technologies emphasize storage (continuity of record) rather than everyday encounters and shared decisions (continuity of relation). We report a mixed-methods study: a survey (N=327), interviews (n=32), and intergenerational co-design workshops with eight families. From eight tensions—visibility, witnessed goodbyes, bounded autonomy and fairness, material aura, meaningful afterlives, time and friction budgets, explainability, and household fit—we derive principles and instantiate four probes: Goodbye, Hello (brief, witnessed retirements that leave a light trace); Magic Frame (explainable resurfacing of digitized art in shared space); Co-Curator (joint parent and child selection with reasons); and New Journeys (named, local afterlives for retired pieces). In workshops, families rehearsed “kit in motion” sequences judged workable within constraints and able to reduce surprise and conflict. We contribute an empirical account of the preservation gap, a reframing from record to relation, a trace from themes to mechanisms, and implications for child-centered, household-fit preservation.

Children’s attention during shared reading is fragile, yet most child–robot reading systems are reactive: they wait for visible lapses before intervening. We present a physiology-driven pipeline that anticipates near-term disengagement and adjusts delivery before attention is lost. A wrist-worn sensor streams EDA and HRV; short-window features feed a lightweight classifier that estimates the probability of disengagement 5–10 s ahead. When the probability exceeds a threshold and guardrails are satisfied, a bounded adaptation policy triggers subtle, delivery-only changes—slower pacing, clause-aligned pauses, and light prosodic emphasis—without altering script content. In a within-subjects study with 36 children (ages 3–6) reading with a Luka robot, the adaptive condition reduced disengagement events by about half (IRR≈0.49), improved comprehension (≈+0.86 points, especially sequencing/inference questions), and was preferred by most children (≈61%). The results show that anticipatory, physiology-aware control can stabilize attention and yield measurable learning benefits while preserving transparency and safety via simple rules. We discuss design implications for low-overhead sensing, auditable policies, and child-appropriate guardrails, and we release implementation details to support reproducibility.

Social robots like Lovot are costly and capability-limited—more plush companion than helper—yet many remain in homes long after novelty should fade. We report a six-month, multi-sited qualitative study of 24 households (42 adults, 18 children) that independently purchased Lovot. Using onboarding/exit interviews, weekly diaries (text/photo/audio), bi-weekly check-ins, 88 hours of in-home observation, 750+ maintenance-log events, and triangulation with 152 public owner accounts, we trace how families make expensive, weak robots “stick.” We identify five dynamics: (1) ritual anchoring (greetings, bedtime, study-break “sessions” paced by short activity cycles); (2) expectation repair (glitches reframed as quirks; role shift from helper to mascot); (3) distributed care work (charging, cleaning, troubleshooting as shared household labor and responsibility pedagogy); (4) vulnerability–empathy loops (micro-failures elicit guidance, touch, and renewed interest); and (5) policy tethers (subscriptions, suspension, and memory continuity folded into moral narratives of care). We synthesize these into a Paradox of Weak Robots: limited function and high cost can coexist with durable attachment when weakness is staged, legible, and ritualizable. Contributions include: (i) a longitudinal, in-the-wild account of a purchased companion robot; (ii) a process model explaining persistence of “weak robots” in family homes; and (iii) design guidelines for affect-first companions: ritual-first roadmaps, legible limits, low-friction shared care, calibrated vulnerability, and humane business models (suspension-by-default, memory continuity, second-life pathways).

This study examined how different reading modes-human reader, reading robot, and reading pen-impact young children's engagement and comprehension. By analyzing physiological measures such as Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) alongside comprehension performance, we aimed to assess the effectiveness of each mode and explore the potential of robots as educational tools. Positioned between the interactive human reader and the passive reading pen, the reading robot not only sustained engagement for the longest duration but also achieved the highest comprehension scores. The robot effectively balanced emotional arousal and stress levels, facilitating enhanced cognitive processing and information retention. Additionally, a positive correlation was found between family technology use and both engagement and comprehension with the robot. These findings suggest that interactive technology can enhance early childhood learning by bridging the gap between human interaction and traditional learning tools.

Coordinating schedules in double-income households is an ongoing challenge, as traditional calendar tools often fail to meet the needs of families juggling professional and domestic responsibilities. This mixed-methods study investigates the barriers to adopting shared digital calendars and explores how guided onboarding and participatory design can improve their effectiveness for family use. We conducted surveys with 277 participants, interviews with 40 individuals, a one-month calendar adoption intervention with 30 couples, and a design workshop with 12 couples. Our findings reveal persistent obstacles-including privacy concerns, uneven engagement, and limited customization-as well as the potential of targeted support and user-driven design to overcome them. Participants expressed a desire for more flexible privacy controls, role-sensitive features, and smarter coordination support. Thematic analysis across all phases highlights how families negotiate boundaries, share invisible scheduling labor, and creatively adapt tools to fit their routines. We conclude with implications for designing family-centric coordination technologies that balance structure, agency, and trust in everyday scheduling.

Fun and social affiliation are good predictors of long-term intention to use game-based interventions including those for motivating physical activity, yet current player matching algorithms are poor at facilitating social connectedness. In this paper, we report on the results of a study investigating how different player traits are associated with interest in social features of an exercise game for improving player experience through better player matching using common and complementary characteristics. Twelve conceptual scenarios were illustrated using storyboards and data was collected from 196 respondents who rated their attitudes and preferences towards gamification elements. Correlational results showed that all scenarios, except for cutting corners, were perceived as persuasive, enjoyable, engaging and are likely to increase future exercise intention for players who score high on Philanthropist- and Socialiser-oriented traits. Results also showed that many players favour the altruistic donation feature. Furthermore, qualitative results underscore that it is the player's partner that matters more than the players’ personalities. We conclude with practical recommendations for designing more personalised exercise games that can include more socially engaging game mechanics in the future.

In several countries, social robots are increasingly accessible within homes, particularly in those with pre-school-aged children. However, research on social robots has mostly been conducted in laboratory or classroom settings, and their long-term use has received little attention. Additionally, while there is a growing body of literature on CRI in a variety of domains such as education and health, less is known about the interactions between children and social robots in home settings during daily activities. Conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, this article describes a longitudinal mixed-method study that examines children's interactions with their home reading companion robot - Luka. Focusing on parental perspectives, we examined how children interact with robots over time and revealed that a social robot with reading as its primary function has the potential to both attract parental buyers and engage children in long-term use of the robot's diverse features. We offer recommendations for social robot designers and product developers targeting younger users.

In this research, using storyboard implementation, we investigate the relationship between social game elements and the Hexad user type model for motivating exercise and play. The goal is to see if and how different gamer types are associated with interest in social features and if they can be used as the basis for player compatibility matching (similar or complementary). Participants (N = 60) rated the level of perceived persuasiveness, enjoyment, social engagement, and intention for future play on 8 social elements for step-based asynchronous exergames. Preliminary results show a significant positive relationship between social game elements and player types. Correlational analyses demonstrated that the gamification elements “Sharing Knowledge”, “Supportive Updates”, “Rotating Leadership” and “Leaderboard” were most strongly related to the “Philanthropist” player type. We conclude with recommendations for designing personalized multiplayer mobile exergames.

Gamification and exergames in particular have been broadly employed in health and fitness as an attempt to promote exercise and more active life styles. Motivated by popularity and availability of wearable activity trackers, we present the design and findings of a study on the motivational effects of using activity tracker-based games to promote daily exercise. Furthermore, we have investigated user behaviors, usage patterns, engagement, and parameters that affect them. An exergame was developed with an accompanying wearable device, for which different variations of application updates were pushed out periodically over a 70-day period. The results of this long-term study show that the usage of wearable activity trackers during exercise, even when gamified for increased entertainment, sees a consistent decline over time. This decline, however, is observed to be reversible with periodic updates to the game. This work, we believe, can make a significant contribution to solving the user retention problem of wearable-based exergames.