Dreams contribute to cognitive and emotional health, yet tools for everyday dream engagement remain largely underexplored outside clinical settings. In this paper, we introduce LumaDreams, a mobile application designed to foster daily empowerment through positive dream transformation using generative AI. Informed by meaning-making theories, LumaDreams enables users to journal dreams through sketches and text, which are then transformed into positive images and stories for users to revisit and reflect on. We conducted a mixed-method study with 14 participants over 14 days. Our findings show that LumaDreams strengthened participants’ daily empowerment through cognitive and emotional shifts that arise from the positive meaning-making process. Qualitative insights further revealed how users’ perceptions and trust of AI-driven dream transformation were shaped through their interactions. In conclusion, we propose an inspiring approach that enables users to co-create positive meanings in dream experiences with generative AI, promoting cognitive and emotional shifts, fostering positive mindsets, and ultimately strengthening daily empowerment.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713495
This paper describes a qualitative study that interrogates the types of technology-facilitated coercive control faced by survivors of human trafficking and uncovers potential interventions to aid survivors’ recovery. Via semi-structured interviews with 21 participants, including trafficking survivors and professional advocates, we show how traffickers use technology as a lever for control, engaging in surveillance, blackmail, impersonation, and harassment as they compel survivors to stay in the trafficking situation. In recovery, digital footprints keep survivors tethered to their trafficking experience, impacting their digital autonomy, economic mobility, and feelings of safety. Nevertheless, technology can also be a valuable tool for survivors’ recovery, connecting them to essential resources and support systems. We discuss the need for interventions and services that account for the specificity of the trafficking context to help survivors attain digital safety and autonomy, including the potential to adapt existing tech safety services designed for other contexts to human trafficking.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713544
Human-Computer Interaction practitioners have been proposing best practices in user interface design for decades. However, generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) brings additional design considerations and currently lacks sufficient user guidance regarding affordances, inputs, and outputs. In this context, we developed a recommender system to promote responsible AI (RAI) practices while people prompt GenAI systems. We detail 10 interviews with IT professionals, the resulting recommender system developed, and 20 user sessions with IT professionals interacting with our prompt recommendations. Results indicate that responsible prompting recommendations have the potential to support novice prompt engineers and raise awareness about RAI in prompting-time. They also suggest that recommendations should simultaneously maximize both a prompt’s similarity to a user’s input as well as a diversity of associated social values provided. These findings contribute to RAI by offering practical ways to provide user guidance and enrich human-GenAI interaction via prompt recommendations.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713365
Digital capturing of memorable personal items is a key way to archive personal memories. Although current digitization methods (e.g., photos, videos, 3D scanning) can replicate the physical appearance of an item, they often cannot preserve its real-world interactivity. We present Interactive Digital Item (IDI), a concept of reconstructing both the physical appearance and, more importantly, the interactivity of an item. We first conducted a formative study to understand users' expectations of IDI, identifying key physical interactivity features, including geometry, interfaces, and embedded content of items. Informed by these findings, we developed InteRecon, an AR prototype enabling personal reconstruction functions for IDI creation. An exploratory study was conducted to assess the feasibility of using InteRecon and explore the potential of IDI to enrich personal memory archives. Results show that InteRecon is feasible for IDI creation, and the concept of IDI brings new opportunities for augmenting personal memory archives.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713882
Virtue ethics is a philosophical tradition that emphasizes the cultivation of virtues in achieving the common good. It has been suggested to be an effective framework for envisioning more ethical technology, yet previous work on virtue ethics and technology design has remained at theoretical recommendations. Therefore, we propose an approach for identifying user experience design patterns that embody particular virtues to more concretely articulate virtuous technology designs. As a proof of concept for our approach, we documented seven design patterns for social media that uphold the virtues of Catholic Social Teaching. We interviewed 24 technology researchers and industry practitioners to evaluate these patterns. We found that overall the patterns enact the virtues they were identified to embody; our participants valued that the patterns fostered intentional conversations and personal connections. We pave a path for technology professionals to incorporate diverse virtue traditions into the development of technologies that support human flourishing.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713546
Recovery from adverse incidents, such as accidents or cyber attacks, is a cornerstone of cyber resilience. Backups are essential in facilitating systems recovery. We have limited understanding of how devices for personal use are backed up, and of how data loss and recovery occur, including which factors might be helpful to afford resilience. To gain insights, we surveyed almost representative (in age and gender) samples of German, UK and USA populations, 1423 in total. Almost half of the participants (656, 46%) experienced at least one data loss incident. Whereas 42% of 656 participants recovered using backups, over half of them had outdated or incomplete backups. High levels of stress were reported, especially by those recovering without backups or with problematic backups. In the full sample, 86% of participants created full or partial backups of at least one of their devices, the most important trigger being prior data loss experiences.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714202
We explore the metaphorical "daily memory pill" concept – a brief pictorial lifelog recap aimed at reviving and preserving memories. Leveraging psychological strategies, we explore the potential of such summaries to boost autobiographical memory. We developed an automated lifelogging memory prosthesis and a research protocol (Automated Memory Validation ``AMV'') for conducting privacy-aware, in-situ evaluations. We conducted a real-world lifelogging experiment for a month (n=11). We also designed a browser ``Pixel Memories’’ for browsing one-week worth of lifelogs. The results suggest that daily timelapse summaries, while not yielding significant memory augmentation effects, also do not lead to memory degradation. Participants' confidence in recalled content remains unaltered, but the study highlights the challenge of users' overestimation of memory accuracy. Our core contributions, the AMV protocol and "Pixel Memories" browser, advance our understanding of memory augmentations and offer a privacy-preserving method for evaluating future ubicomp systems.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714145