Generative AI (GenAI) has been widely applied in UX design, yet its potential in the Journey Map (JM) creation process remains under-explored. We conducted a formative study (N = 24) to identify designers' needs for GenAI in JM creation, resulting in six design goals implemented (e.g., Acting as Different Stakeholders) in our tool, GeneyMAP. GeneyMAP streamlines the JM creation process, allowing designers to map interview data efficiently with flexibility, uncovering design opportunities through visual inspiration. A subsequent user study (N = 20) demonstrated that GeneyMAP, compared with the common tool, accelerated JM creation and fostered creativity mainly by providing diverse inspirations and facilitating progressive discussions. Our findings proved GeneyMAP‘s utility and effectiveness while challenges in maintaining control and trust in GenAI outputs were noted. Our research highlights the promising role of GenAI in refining JM creation practices and suggests implications for incorporating GenAI in JM and design workflows.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713479
The online art world is a double-edged sword: the Internet’s vibrant culture of open, cooperative art-sharing also attracts nonconsensual reuse and appropriation. Artists continually navigate supportive and challenging interactions on social platforms, including community-shifting disruptions; the reuse of creative work for training generative AI is only the latest such disruption. Research into creativity support tools (CSTs) often centers artifact-making, leaving the HCI community with few strategies to understand the downstream impacts CSTs can make on artifact-sharing. Seeking a framework that captures this, we develop the creativity supportive ecosystem through interviews with 20 online artists, and 8 data “stewards” with experience reusing creative data for training GenAI. We use the CSE to describe how creative communities perceive and respond to disruption, identifying opportunities to empower artists in their collective negotiations with disruptive technologies like GenAI: by centering artists as producers of value, identifying creative and alternative data practices, and empowering inter-community flexibility.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713734
Creating games involves frequent prototyping to quickly obtain feedback. In this paper, we explore the impact of removing a traditional game engine’s separation of scene and game logic that supports scalability to large projects and, instead, combine scene and game logic in a single view. In our tool, Pronto, designers connect game objects with visual representations of behavior to define game logic in the scene view, thus exposing any concern of the prototype to the designer within one click. To explore the implications of the trade-off between scalability and speed of access, we conducted a cognitive walkthrough and an explorative user study comparing prototyping in the Godot game engine and in Pronto. Godot’s separate views made it appear more structured and reliable to users, while Pronto’s scattered game logic accelerated editing and gave users the impression of progressing faster in their implementation.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714251
Design workshops are a popular approach to include older adults in the technology design process. However, formative design sessions with older adults have had unexpected outcomes such as the non-use of traditional design materials like craft-based prototyping supplies or disengagement from design activities. Analyzing the engagement of 32 older adults across two design workshops, this paper sheds insights on some of these outcomes. Contributing to a growing body of HCI research on understanding older adults' participation in design, we provide an understanding of how design materials can shape older adults' engagement in formative design activities. Our discussion furthers research on understanding who older adults design for and why, argues for a different understanding of creative expression, and offers considerations for choosing design materials.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713846
This paper reports on inquiry into the design decisions that shape how quality of life issues are reported and government service requests managed in a large and densely populated city in the northeastern US. In particular, we reflect on research data collected over 5 years investigating chronic noise disturbance. Our findings highlight the effects of design choices associated with centralized, single-issue reporting and formal, standardized measures. We discuss how these design choices have broader impacts with regard to trust and transparency relations, and provide alternative inspirations for infrastructuring ongoing design in use by drawing on a model of contributory technology that offers new insight into social computing and creative participation at scale. This research contributes to HCI understanding of design for service interactions that is applicable to digital civics researchers, and can be translated to other contexts.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713186
This paper explores the design and future potential of virtual funerals, enabling both in-person and remote participation, with options to digitally revisit and update the memorial site. While virtual funerals gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic and are often seen as temporary, the authors argue that they hold long-term value across different contexts. To investigate future funeral practices, we created a Design Fiction film depicting our concept of virtual funerals in Japan using Diegetic Prototypes–hypothetical technologies that envision a future in which these practices are normalized. Key themes include hybrid attendance, virtual memorial spaces, and technologies that bridge in-person, remote, and revisiting participants. The authors and a professional crew created the film collaboratively to illustrate these speculative elements. This paper details the film’s production, its design rationale, and the broader implications for how HCI design and technology could shape future mourning and memorialization practices.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713399