LATEST PUBLICATIONS

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  • Bridging the Digital Divide: Relational Autonomy, Care and Trust in Community Service Desks
  • Ana Cristina Pires, Camila Hergatacorzian, Ana O Henriques, et al. 2025. Bridging the Digital Divide: Relational Autonomy, Care and Trust in Community Service Desks. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Communities & Technologies, Association for Computing Machinery, 250–264. http://doi.org/10.1145/3742800.3742840
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  As governments adopt digital-by-default public services, vulnerable populations risk growing exclusion from essential civic support. This paper examines Balcão do Bairro (BB), a community-based service in Portugal that supports marginalised groups navigate the digital bureaucracy. Drawing on a four-month qualitative study—including ethnographic observation and interviews with service desk technicians and neighbours—we explore BB’s role as a middle-out relational infrastructure bridging institutional gaps. Our findings reveal a model grounded in relational autonomy, trust, care, and empowerment, enabling long-term community engagement and effective mediation of bureaucratic hurdles. Despite its impact, BB struggles with fragmented communication tools, informal knowledge management, and funding pressures tied to inadequate performance metrics. We identify four design opportunities rooted in BB’s practices, such as trust and care to strengthen relational engagement, formal feedback loops to inform policy, shared knowledge systems, and storytelling tools to capture BB’s impact. This work contributes to HCI and Digital Civics by challenging transactional service models and foregrounding the value of relational autonomy, care and sustained trust-building in digital inclusion efforts.
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  • Creat’AI: Using Tangible Storytelling to Teach AI to Children
  • Carolina Marçal, Ana Carolina Baptista, Hugo Nicolau, Pedro F. Campos, and Ana Cristina Pires. 2025. Creat’AI: Using Tangible Storytelling to Teach AI to Children. In Proceedings of the 24th Interaction Design and Children. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 955–960. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/3713043.3731513
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  The widespread presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the growing use of AI agents raise concerns about potential biases, privacy risks, and exposure to inappropriate content, underscoring the need to educate children about AI. To address this issue, we organized a collaborative workshop with four experts to brainstorm activities to teach AI to children. As a result, we developed Creat’AI — a GenAI-powered tangible prototype that co-creates original stories with children. We evaluated Creat’AI in a school with 17 children from the 1st grade. Our preliminary findings show that children were engaged in the activities and understood AI’s capability to generate original content, and changed their previous perception of AI and recognized that AI-generated content can be inaccurate. These results highlight the prototype’s potential in promoting AI literacy, contributing to the responsible and informed use of AI by young children.
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  • A Feminist Care Ethics Toolkit for Community-Based Design: Bridging Theory and Practice Honourable Mention
  • Ana O Henriques, Anna R. L. Carter, Beatriz Severes, et al. 2025. A Feminist Care Ethics Toolkit for Community-Based Design: Bridging Theory and Practice. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713950
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Existing ethics frameworks for participatory engagement in HCI often overlook the nuanced ethical challenges of dynamic community-based contexts given the latter’s relational nature. We hope to bridge this gap by grounding feminist care ethics in actionable tools for community-based projects to enhance ethical engagement in these settings. Prior research advocates for adaptable, context-sensitive ethics in participatory research, informed by feminist care ethics. To address this need, we developed and iteratively refined a toolkit embodying the underlying principles of feminist care ethics through workshops with participants working in academic and non-academic community-based settings. Our findings suggest that the toolkit fosters ethical reflection aligned with the feminist care ethics ethos while facilitating meaningful experiences for participants. This work contributes to the field by offering a practical design artefact that not only embodies feminist care ethics but also supports researchers and communities in navigating complex ethical landscapes in participatory engagements, together or independently.
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  • Towards Neuroqueer Spatial Justice: A Critical Literature Review of Public Space Technologies for Neurodivergent Populations Honourable Mention
  • Patricia Piedade, Anna R. L. Carter, Rui Prada, and Hugo Nicolau. 2025. Towards Neuroqueer Spatial Justice: A Critical Literature Review of Public Space Technologies for Neurodivergent Populations. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713539
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Access to public spaces is of the utmost importance for social cohesion, inclusion, and civic engagement. Nevertheless, a large majority of public spaces remain incredibly uncomfortable environments for neurodivergent individuals due to, for instance, the unpredictability of such spaces and the sensory stimuli within them. Smart City technologies present an exciting opportunity to improve the accessibility and enjoyment of the spaces where they are deployed by, for instance, offering users the ability to customise a space to their specific sensory needs. However, the research topic of public space technologies for neurodivergent individuals remains scattered and sparsely documented. This critical review analyses the existing domains of inquiry, contributing a theoretical framework based on Spatial Justice and Neuroqueer Technoscience and suggests future research avenues informed by this framework. We advocate for the participatory co-creation of a neurodivergent-affirming landscape of public space technologies that both support neurodivergent needs and promote neurodivergent joy.
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  • Access InContext: Futuring Accessible Prototyping Tools and Methods
  • Patricia Piedade, Peter A Hayton, Cynthia L Bennett, et al. 2025. Access InContext: Futuring Accessible Prototyping Tools and Methods. Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3706716
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  The popularity of accessibility research has grown recently, improving digital inclusion for people with disabilities. However, researchers, including those who have disabilities, have attempted to include people with disabilities in all aspects of design, and they have identified a myriad of practical accessibility barriers posed by tools and methods leveraged by human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers during prototyping. To build a more inclusive technological landscape, we must question the effectiveness of existing prototyping tools and methods, repurpose/retrofit existing resources, and build new tools and methods to support the participation of both researchers and people with disabilities within the prototyping design process of novel technologies. This full-day workshop at CHI 2025 will provide a platform for HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to discuss barriers and opportunities for creating accessible prototyping and promote hands-on ideation and fabrication exercises aimed at futuring accessible prototyping.
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  • Awareness in Collaborative Mixed-Visual Ability Tangible Programming Activities
  • Filipa Rocha, Hugo Simão, João Nogueira, Isabel Neto, Tiago Guerreiro, and Hugo Nicolau. 2025. Awareness in Collaborative Mixed-Visual Ability Tangible Programming Activities. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713610
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  In the context of computational thinking tasks, which often require problem-solving and critical thinking skills, awareness of a partner’s actions can play a significant role in fostering a balanced collaboration. Understanding how awareness influences mixed-visual ability group collaboration in a tangible environment can provide insights into inclusive design for learning environments. To address this issue, we ran a user study where 6 mixed-visual ability pairs engaged in a tangible programming activity. The study had three experimental conditions, representing 3 different levels of awareness. Our findings reveal that while pre-existing power dynamics heavily influenced collaboration, workspace awareness feedback was essential in fostering engagement and improving communication for both children. This paper highlights the need for designing inclusive collaborative programming systems that account for workspace awareness and individual abilities, offering insights into more effective and balanced collaborative environments.
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  • Digital Technologies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: a Systematic Review, Critical Reflections, and Future Research Directions
  • Jing Zhao, Isabel Neto, Ana Cristina Pires, Catarina Tomé-Pires, and Hugo Nicolau. 2025. Digital Technologies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: a Systematic Review, Critical Reflections, and Future Research Directions. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714241
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Digital technologies in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) have the potential to support the development and well-being of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children. Yet, there has yet to be a systematic review of the field. A shared understanding of current research is needed to develop a future vision. In this review, we analyzed 42 papers from the ACM Digital Library and the top 20 HCI Conferences and Journals, spanning the past 24 years, to investigate the trends, methods, and the level of inclusion of DHH children. Our review reveals that sign language learning platforms dominate the current technological effort. Moreover, children are not yet fully involved in the design process of these technologies and are mostly considered users and testers.We also capture a gap in integrating Deaf culture and child development in prior research. We conclude by critically examining literature gaps and offering guidance for future research.