Social support contributes to numerous health outcomes and overall well-being, and technology now facilitates many forms of support among both strangers and existing ties. Consequently, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) research has devoted significant attention to understanding and designing for social support. We conducted a systematic review of 183 papers to take stock of this work. We identified several dominant trends: studies frequently focus on social media and online communities, address health-related topics, and explore interactions among strangers who share an identity or experience; use survey and interview methodologies; and encompass user research without the design or deployment of a new system. Notably, most papers do not explicitly conceptualize social support and tend to frame it as uniformly positive. Our review indicates that, although technology increasingly mediates supportive interactions, HCI lacks consistent definitions of technologically mediated social support. We contribute a synthesis of conceptualizations, point out methodological patterns, and offer directions for strengthening future HCI research in this domain.
Stepping into a caregiving role for an aging loved one often means navigating conflicting demands of daily life. While prior Human--Computer Interaction (HCI) research has investigated tools to support the logistics of caregiving, less attention has been directed to boundaries: how caregivers manage them alongside other obligations. Through 15 semi-structured interviews with caregivers of older adults, we unpack caregivers' boundary negotiation, examining how caregivers use boundaries to manage multiple responsibilities and how uncertainty about their roles shapes boundary negotiation. Employing "boundary ambiguity" as an analytical lens, our findings reveal how caregivers use strategies of internal reframing---how they think about their roles---and external negotiation---how they interact with others---to manage their unstable, permeable, and elastic boundaries in everyday life. We discuss how inherent, ongoing boundary ambiguity shapes caregivers' experiences, concluding with design implications for digital technologies that enhance caregivers' agency and support boundary negotiations for caregivers and care recipients.
Personal tracking technologies for family life, including speech tracking, have long been conceptualised in HCI as tools to support wellbeing and parenting at scale. However, speech tracking is inherently invasive because it captures intimate family interactions, and its ethical introduction and appropriation into everyday life remains uncertain. Using research through design, we examined family speech tracking by developing seven plausible design fictions grounded in parenting theory, and then conducting a 1-week technology probe study with 60 parents to understand their perceptions. Parents envisaged both positive and negative outcomes for family speech tracking, including concerns about diminishing authentic connection and potential misappropriation. Unlike existing parenting interventions, parents envisioned technologies supporting children’s intervention goals directly rather than focusing on parental skill development. We contribute seven evidence-informed speculative speech tracking concepts, empirical insights revealing concerns about diminishing authentic parent-child connection, and identification of technical, interactional, and systemic sociotechnical dilemmas.
Childbirth is a significant life transition involving physical recovery, emotional adjustment, and caring for a newborn. This period exposes parents to postpartum challenges, including emotional difficulties, social isolation, and overwhelming adjustments that can lead to depression or anxiety.
Despite the prevalence of postpartum challenges, research and support systems remain insufficient. To explore how technology could address these challenges, we combined professional and lived perspectives. Through a mixed-methods approach with midwives, social workers, and affected parents, we conducted interviews (N=8), collected experience reports (N=52), and used these insights to inform four participatory workshops (N=15).
By using zines, self-curated booklets - for expression and reflection, participants articulated challenges, ideal circumstances, and imagined support tools. We identified five challenge areas that technology should address through a Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). Our work contributes empirically grounded perspectives on postpartum challenges, design recommendations for supportive technologies, and considerations for designing technologies during challenging life transitions.
Family caregivers of patients with chronic conditions take on many responsibilities, often at the expense of their own health. Previous studies have examined technological supports, such as information access and online social groups. While these approaches are promising, they primarily focus on easing the load of a single caregiver. Even when interventions are designed to support collaborative caregiving, they often overlook which tasks are shareable and what influences caregivers’ decisions to delegate. To address these gaps, we conducted activity-based qualitative interviews with 10 family caregivers of patients who underwent life-threatening medical procedures. Our findings show that collaboration occurs when tasks are shareable in practice, including tangible and logistical help, and when caregivers judge that the benefits of receiving support outweigh the work of seeking help. We propose that technologies should support caregivers in determining when collaboration is feasible by recognizing task types, addressing the trade-offs embedded in activation costs, and enabling both proactive and reactive assistance as situations evolve.
The number of HCI papers on care has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite growing interest in care both as an application domain for technology and as an ethical stance in research and design, our integrated understanding of the concept is limited. It remains unclear how various application areas of care relate to one another, to what extent their underlying assumptions align or contradict, and how they collectively shape HCI discourse on care. To address this, we present a meta-narrative review of 317 SIGCHI papers on care. We first outline the landscape of care in HCI. We then present six paradigmatic framings of care, and a conceptual map that positions these framings in relation to each other, their representative care–tech relations, and the temporal development of the field. We conclude by discussing the implications from the review, as well as gaps in the field and future directions.
This paper presents a qualitative study with 17 participants that uses video elicitations to investigate how conversational AI agents driven by large language models might support "shared care," or coordination of home-based care among family caregivers (FCs) and home care workers (HCWs) who care for the same care recipient (CR). Participants saw conversational AI as a promising tool that might help streamline communication, coordinate shift handovers, bridge language gaps, and support onboarding of new or substitute caregivers. That said, caregivers assumed AI agents would inevitably make mistakes and should thus be designed to signal uncertainty and make it easy to report errors. More broadly, participants discussed how AI agents designed for sensitive home care contexts will need to explicitly preserve the human essence of care, minimize extra data work that might distract from caregiving, and always complement---not replace---human judgment.