How can we leverage taste expectations to create novel food-based experiences for children? Eating is an embodied process that jointly engages with multiple senses. Cross-sensory correspondences may offer educational and recreational opportunities to design interactive applications that encourage diversifying encounters with food. We present a study with 64 children (ages 10–11) who explored eight textured materials hidden inside mystery "food'' boxes and reported both their expected tastes and willingness to eat. Our findings provide evidence of touch–taste cross-sensory correspondences in children — sweetness with weak-hard-brittle and strong-soft-brittle materials, and saltiness with a weak-soft brittle material — and how these mappings influenced children's openness to unknown foods. These results provide empirical grounding for cross-sensory interaction design with children, demonstrating how texture could scaffold curiosity and learning. We outline design implications for cross-sensory food interfaces, non-edible public exhibits, and playful educational technologies that could broaden eating experiences and enable new forms of virtual food interaction.
XR technologies often presume hand-based interaction as universal, marginalizing people with limited mobility. In close collaboration with two disabled artists, we developed a mouth interface that reimagines XR interaction, foregrounding disabled practices. Rather than positioning as an accessibility “fix,” we stage the interface as an activist provocation against hand-centric design. Using a narrative-flip method, we asked early-stage HCI researchers to use the interface without context, later revealing its disability-led, activist origins. This before/after framing exposed how the participants imagined accessibility, shifting from awkwardness and discomfort to empathy and political reflection - yet sliding back into solutionist product thinking. Through analysis of participants’ reflections, enriched by our disabled collaborator’s feedback, we reveal how accessibility was framed as a fix, as political, and as agency. We argue that accessibility research in HCI can move beyond solutionist fixes: assistive technologies as provocations that disrupt able-bodied assumptions and expand how access is imagined.
Conservation organizations often invite the public to adopt endangered animals, but it is difficult to sustain engagement once the initial excitement fades. We explore an alternative to one-off immersive media by designing and studying an ambient digital companion that keeps adopters peripherally aware of their animal in everyday life. Drawing on a survey (N=162), interviews (N=18), and co-design with adopters and staff (N=10), we created WildCompanion, an iPhone widget and Apple Watch app that delivers short, vetted updates and photos. We deployed WildCompanion with adopters (N=22) for 30 days, combining logs, weekly questionnaires, and exit interviews. Our findings show how an ambient companion can become a calm, always-there presence that fits into routines, nurtures emotional connection, and prompts small conservation-related actions without causing notification fatigue. We contribute empirical insights and a design framework for ambient companions in conservation and related cause-driven domains. We discuss implications for future conservation technology research.
This paper investigates how virtual reality (VR) can foster empathy and ecological literacy for urban herpetofauna—reptiles and amphibians often overlooked in conservation. We present The Wetland Quest (TWQ), an immersive VR experience set in a Shanghai wetland that employs embodiment and scale-shift mechanics to situate users in the world of local species. In a mixed-methods study with 62 participants, TWQ significantly improved species literacy and attitudes toward herpetofauna, supported by large quantitative gains and qualitative themes of immersion, empathy, and reduced aversion. This work contributes to HCI and environmental communication by: (1) introducing TWQ as a design case of VR for underrepresented species; (2) providing empirical evidence that immersive perspective-taking can enhance literacy and pro-environmental attitudes; and (3) demonstrating a methodological protocol that combines knowledge tests, validated attitude scales, observations, and interviews, offering a transferable approach for future VR conservation research.
The 'Footsteps Illusion' shows that pitch-altering footstep sounds in real-time affects body perception, gait, and emotion: high versus low frequencies evoke a lighter versus heavier body. We tested whether this illusion extends beyond the lab, where environmental factors matter. Using a mixed-methods approach, twenty-eight participants used a minimal setup to synchronize with three prerecorded pitch-altered footstep soundtracks: Control, High-Frequency, and Low-Frequency. In Experiment 1, they walked a fixed path, with gait recordings, questionnaires, and body visualizations. In Experiment 2, they walked freely across campus routes with High/Low-Frequency soundtracks, followed by post-walk interviews using a novel spatial mapping tool linking body sensations to context. Results replicate the illusion outdoors, showing synchronization with prerecorded sounds as a viable alternative to real-time feedback, and revealing that contextual factors modulate illusion effects. We contribute insights and novel tools (prototype, spatial mapping method, and footstep soundbase) for studying multisensory body perception in everyday contexts.
In interpersonal interactions, individuals often exhibit avoidance behaviors toward others they find unpleasant, which can undermine the comfort of everyday social experiences. Existing human-computer interaction (HCI) research has primarily focused on promoting social connections, while support for avoidance-oriented social situations remains underexplored. To address this gap, we propose leveraging Diminished Reality (DR) technology to obscure perceptual cues of undesirable individuals. We designed and implemented a mixed reality prototype system and conducted experiments manipulating both the occlusion method and social distance. Results indicate that DR significantly reduces users' social anxiety and sense of social presence. Moreover, participants generally expressed positive attitudes toward usage intention and ethical considerations. This work extends HCI research on social comfort, shifting the focus from "facilitating connection" to "supporting avoidance".
Multisensory design principles are increasingly seen as central in the design of technologies for learning, communication, and affective regulation. Multisensory integration, the process by which we combine information from different senses, develops rapidly in the preschool years, shaping processes of perception and sense-making. In particular, this may impact cross-sensory correspondence, how perceptions in different sensory modalities influence one another, a key issue in multisensory design. To date, little is known about cross-sensory correspondences in preschool-aged children (2-4 years). We present a study with 26 preschoolers examining smell–touch–emotion correspondences through playful cross-sensory tasks. We found significant correspondences between sensory modalities and between sensory modalities and affective judgements. Further analysis revealed association strategies underpinning these mappings. We contribute empirical insights into cross-sensory correspondences in early childhood, design guidelines for creating sensory interfaces that align with how preschoolers integrate sensory input, and a replicable method for probing cross-sensory cognition in this age group.