Emotional closeness (EC) is central to family relationships, however in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) it is often regarded as self-evident, invoked through adjacent constructs such as connection or co-presence. This ambiguity is particularly limiting for remote relationships between young children (aged 4-8 years) and their older relatives, where developmental asymmetries and generational roles shape how EC unfolds. To clarify how EC is understood in this specific intergenerational context, we conducted a scoping review of 30 papers (2010 - 2025) examining how EC is defined, evaluated, and technologically mediated. Our analysis reveals three key patterns: reliance on self-report evaluations, a persistent interaction-closeness assumption, and under-exploration of embodied and cultural framings. We synthesise a multidimensional definition of EC comprising Affective Expression, Relational Practices, Embodied Presence, and Cultural Belonging. We conclude with implications for HCI, including the need for multimodal and longitudinal methods and technologies that support multi-dimensional, culturally grounded, and meaningful intergenerational connection.
Artifacts encode memories and shape how one is remembered after death. Older adults, given their life stage, are often engaged in intentional end-of-life planning, making their perspectives on curation for remembrance post-mortem valuable. While HCI has examined older adults' curation of memory artifacts (e.g., to support well-being), little is known about their curation preferences with the intent of shaping how one is remembered after death. Drawing on interviews with older adults, our work provides insights into how individuals think about remembrance after death, including who is remembered (subject) and who remembers (audience), and how physical, temporal, or relational traces captured in artifacts mediate remembrance. These findings offer design implications for legacy crafting systems to support remembrance that transcends the self, account for the intentional legacy crafting work for distinct audiences, and support hybrid artifacts that allow memories to move across physical and digital spaces.
In line with the shift toward dementia-friendly communities, HCI research is increasingly exploring holistic ways to support people living with dementia as active community members. However, less is known about how existing community networks influence technology design and effectiveness. This paper analyses Community-Based Participatory Design (CBPD) workshops conducted with individuals living with dementia, their spouses, and program coordinators through Wenger's Communities of Practice Framework. We demonstrate how participants' interactions created a community of practice through their: engagement in creating mutual meaning, alignment around a common purpose, and imagination in envisioning new possibilities for inclusion. Our findings highlight the agency of participants as they worked to create inclusive experiences for themselves and others. Our findings additionally demonstrated how community boundaries create systemic barriers that lead to non-participation. We argue Wenger’s framework offers a roadmap for designing technologies that foster person-to-person interdependence, helping to build more genuinely inclusive communities.
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in dementia care, yet most applications focus on recreation or cognitive stimulation rather than supporting the everyday activities that matter for independent living. To understand what makes VR practice feel realistic and useful for people with dementia (PwD), we conducted semi-structured interviews with PwD, caregivers, and therapists using visual probes grounded in daily living contexts. We examine how stakeholders define realism and usefulness in VR-based support for instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) and how these judgments relate to the concept of ecological validity. Our findings show that realistic IADL-based VR is characterized by environments and task flows that align with the cognitive and functional demands of real-world activities, while useful VR evokes behavior that meaningfully reflects everyday performance and supports rehabilitation practice. We translate these insights into design implications for at-home IADL-focused VR systems that emphasize functional fidelity, adaptability, and collaborative use, grounding real-world relevance in the lived routines and caregiving ecosystems of PwD.
E-commerce platforms increasingly deploy explainability features to address concerns about algorithmic opacity. However, most XAI research has focused on younger, tech-savvy users, leaving open questions about how older adults engage with these features in everyday shopping. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative study with 20 older adults aged 60+ who regularly use NAVER Shopping, one of South Korea's largest e-commerce platforms, examining their engagement with global (system-level) explanations, local (item-level) explanations, and a user-model dashboard. Our findings reveal that explainability does not operate uniformly. Many participants did not notice the explanation features during routine use or mistook them for advertisements. After guided interaction, global explanations elicited polarized responses: some participants deferred uncritically to algorithmic authority, whereas others dismissed the explanations as sophisticated marketing rhetoric. In contrast, local explanations grounded in users' behavior helped recalibrate skepticism, while a user-model dashboard exposed tensions between empowerment and surveillance. Based on these findings, we propose actionable design strategies for building inclusive and adaptive XAI systems for older adults.
The rapid digitalisation of public services has raised concerns about the exclusion of older adults. To examine this issue, we conducted a qualitative study in Shantou, China, exploring how older adults sustained participation in digital welfare. Despite limited direct interaction with digital systems, they wove digital engagement into daily life by mobilising personal, social, community, and institutional networks. By foregrounding this often-hidden human infrastructural labour, we expand understandings of what constitutes the “success” of digital welfare and the scope of digital engagement in later life. Building on these insights, we propose design recommendations for sociotechnical conditions that better support relational arrangements, making delegation smoother, lighter, and more legitimate. Finally, we introduce the notion of anticipatory infrastructure to capture how older adults prepare for inevitable breakdowns. The study contributes to HCI debates on inclusion by centring equity and collective capacities in sustainable digital welfare.
Deepfake scams, which use AI-generated audio or video to impersonate individuals, pose an increasing cybersecurity threat to older adults. Existing educational approaches present threats through generic examples, leaving learners to perceive scams as something that happens to others rather than to themselves. To address this gap, we conducted a formative study with five digital educators to identify design requirements, then developed DeepAware, a self-referential simulation platform that embeds participants' own faces and voices into deepfake scam scenarios. By making learners the target of simulated threats rather than passive observers, DeepAware aims to collapse the psychological distance between abstract warnings and personal vulnerability. A mixed-methods evaluation with 21 older adults found improvements in deepfake knowledge, threat perception, and coping confidence, though responses varied by prior familiarity. This work demonstrates the potential of self-referential simulation for cybersecurity education and offers design implications for future cybersecurity interventions.