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29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces March 18–21, 2024, Greenville, SC, USA, Despite significant historical progress, discrimination and social stigma continue to impact the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals. The use of AI-generated virtual characters offers a unique opportunity to facilitate advocacy by engaging individuals in simulated conversations that can foster understanding, education, and empathy. This paper explores the potential of AI simulations to help individuals practice LGBTQIA+ advocacy, while also acknowledging the need for ethical considerations and addressing concerns about oversimplification or perpetuation of stereotypes. By combining technological innovation with a commitment to inclusivity, we aim to contribute to the ongoing struggle for equality in both the legal framework and the hearts and minds of the community. We present a study evaluating virtual characters driven by generative conversational AI simulating the social interactions surrounding “coming out of the closet”, a rite of passage associated with LGBTQIA+ communities. In our study, virtual characters embodied as queer individuals engage with users in a text-based conversation simulation paired with visual representations. We investigate how the interactions between the virtual characters and a user influence the user’s comfort, confidence, empathy and sympathy. The AI simulation includes distinct visual personas deployed in a series of conditions. We present findings from our deployments involving 307 users. Finally, we discuss the design implications of our work on the potential future of embodied, self-actuated and openly LGBTQIA+ intelligent agents.

© 2020 ACM. Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. however, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration.

© 2016 Authors. In this work we introduce an experimental methodology and open-sourced web application designed to promote behavior change and wellbeing within a workplace environment. Colleagues are paired together and asked to design a Behavioral Intervention Technology (BIT) uniquely customized to suit their partner's behavior change goal. We present the results of a preliminary evaluation of the experiment, and suggest ways to further improve and expand our experiment design., Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory. Advancing Wellbeing Initiative & consortium

© 2016 Authors. In this work we introduce an experimental methodology and open-sourced web application designed to promote behavior change and wellbeing within a workplace environment. Colleagues are paired together and asked to design a Behavioral Intervention Technology (BIT) uniquely customized to suit their partner's behavior change goal. We present the results of a preliminary evaluation of the experiment, and suggest ways to further improve and expand our experiment design.

© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). GalVR is a navigation interface that uses galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) during walking to cause users to turn from their planned trajectory. We explore GalVR for collaborative navigation in a two-player virtual reality (VR) game. The interface aords a novel game design that exploits the dierences in first and third person perspectives, allowing VR and non-VR users to share a play experience. By introducing interdependence arising from dissimilar points of view, players can uniquely contribute to the shared experience based on their roles. We detail the design of our asymmetrical game, Dark Room and present some insights from a pilot study. Trust emerged as the dening factor for successful play.

© 2020 Owner/Author. Having good mentors and role models is important for personal growth. However, they are not always available at the time of need. Some of our personal heroes have passed away leaving only their wisdom through writings and other artifacts. We present Wearable Wisdom, an intelligent, audio-based system for mediating wisdom and advice from mentors and personal heroes to a user. It does so by performing automated semantic analysis on the collected wisdom database and generating a simulated voice of a mentor sharing relevant wisdom and advice with the user. The results show that our platform is statistically superior in delivering relevant, yet abstract wisdom as well as providing more inspiration compared to control. We describe the implementation of the Wearable Wisdom system, report on a user study, and discuss potential applications of wisdom computation for supporting personal growth and motivation.

© 2016 ACM. The Experience Sampling Method is widely used for collecting self-report responses from people in natural settings. While most traditional approaches rely on using a phone to trigger prompts and record information, wearable devices now offer new opportunities that may improve this method. This research quantitatively and qualitatively studies the experience sampling process on head-worn and wrist-worn wearable devices, and compares them to the traditional "smartphone in the pocket." To enable this work, we designed and implemented a custom application to provide similar prompts across the three types of devices and evaluated it with 15 individuals for five days (75 days total), in the context of real-life stress measurement. We found significant differences in response times across devices, and captured tradeoffs in interaction types, screen size, and device familiarity that can affect both users' experience and the reports made by users.

© 2020 ACM. Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. however, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration.

© 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Virtual reality can help realize mediated social experiences where distance disappears and we interact as richly with those around the world as we do with those in the same room. The design of social virtual experiences presents a challenge for remotely located users with room-scale setups like those afforded by recent commodity virtual reality devices. Since users inhabit different physical spaces that may not be the same size, a mapping to a shared virtual space is needed for creating experiences that allow everyone to use real walking for locomotion. We designed three mapping techniques that enable users from diverse room-scale setups to interact together in virtual reality. Results from our user study (N = 26) show that our mapping techniques positively influence the perceived degree of togetherness and copresence while the size of each user's tracked space influences individual presence.

© 2020 Owner/Author. Enhancing the empathy of our human interactions has been the object of intensive psychological studies for decades. The emergence of affective computing has opened the door towards technologically-enabled solutions. Yet, existing techniques struggle to attain their desired impact, often being difficult and expensive to deliver, and disconnected from daily life. Project Us' goal is to help overcome these challenges through a pair of wearable devices (in this case wristbands) that aim to trigger an empathy-enhancing effect, when being worn by two people during day-to-day conversations. The small-sized, wireless devices sense each person's electrodermal activity, associated with their level of emotional arousal, and share it to the other partner (when a threshold is exceeded) through a discreet, haptic nudge, creating a real-time feedback loop. The user study performed with 18 participants (nine romantically engaged couples) revealed that most of them found the wristbands to increase their level of awareness of the partner's emotional experience. Their interaction was analyzed based on interviews (qualitatively), and natural language processing techniques (quantitatively).

© 2020 Owner/Author. Current augmentative communication technology has had limited success conveying the needs of some individuals with minimally verbal autism spectrum disorder (mvASD). Primary caregivers report being able to better understand these individuals' non-traditional utterances than those less familiar with the individual such as teachers and community members. We present an eight-month multi-phase case study for a translational platform, ECHOS, that uses primary caregivers' unique knowledge to enhance communicative and affective exchanges between mvASD individuals and the broader community. Through iterative development and participatory design, we discovered that physiological sensors were impractical for long-term use, on-body audio was content rich and easily accessible, and a custom in-the-moment labeling app was transformative in obtaining accurate labels from caregivers for machine learning advancements. This paper presents the design methodology, results, and reflections from our case study and provides insights into development with and for the special needs community.

© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). GalVR is a navigation interface that uses galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) during walking to cause users to turn from their planned trajectory. We explore GalVR for collaborative navigation in a two-player virtual reality (VR) game. The interface aords a novel game design that exploits the dierences in first and third person perspectives, allowing VR and non-VR users to share a play experience. By introducing interdependence arising from dissimilar points of view, players can uniquely contribute to the shared experience based on their roles. We detail the design of our asymmetrical game, Dark Room and present some insights from a pilot study. Trust emerged as the dening factor for successful play.