LATEST PUBLICATIONS

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  • Clicking on Users’ Behalf: How Intermediaries Enable Engagement with Digital Services
  • Camila Hergatacorzian, Nils Ehrenberg, Ana Cristina Pires, and Hugo Nicolau. 2026. Clicking on Users’ Behalf: How Intermediaries Enable Engagement with Digital Services. In Proc. EUSSET Conf. on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. EUSSET, Siegen. http://doi.org/10.48340/ecscw2026_071
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Under the premises of efficiency and cost savings, service providers are increasingly going digital. As a consequence, underserved groups experience digital services as an additional barrier to participating in society. To overcome those barriers, many rely on often-invisible support networks, including family or friends, as well as governmental organisations and NGOs. In this article, we draw on qualitative studies of two NGOs, one based in Helsinki and the other in Lisbon, to reflect on the work they do to support people who use digital services. Our findings show that intermediaries support them in at least three interrelated ways. First, through complementary practices such as teaching and advising, configuring spaces to lower engagement thresholds, and translating complex information. Second, by participating on behalf of users, for instance, when contacting service providers or acting as proxies in design processes. Third, by sustaining the efficiency of digital services through invisible work. We contribute to research on digital inclusion by showing how intermediaries shape both access to and users’ agency in digital services.
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  • Slide.Bingo: From Passive Attendance to Active Listening Through AI-Generated Bingo Best Demo
  • Kyle Montague, Dan Jackson, Pamela Briggs, et al. 2026. Slide.Bingo: From Passive Attendance to Active Listening Through AI-Generated Bingo. Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3799376
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Conference attendance is predominantly passive: audiences sit, listen, and hope to absorb information. Yet, active learning research demonstrates that participation outperforms passive reception. We present Slide.Bingo, an interactive system that uses generative AI to transform presentation content into personalised bingo cards, aiming to give each attendee a task to perform and specific targets to attend to during sessions. The bingo format provides sustained engagement, directed attention, and social presence through real-time awareness of other players. Designed for conference-scale deployment, the system supports two card policies: an Individual Card Policy for paper/panel sessions and a Shared Card Policy for demo/poster sessions. Presenters can customize their content and add custom statements for key takeaways. At CHI 2026, attendees can use Slide.Bingo as their conference schedule app, experiencing Slide.Bingo across the programme. Visitors to our interactivity booth will be able to interact with a demo presentation or customize Slide.Bingo content for their own papers.
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  • SL4Fun: A Collaborative Game for Hearing and Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Children for Bilingual Classrooms
  • Matilde Tocha, André Rodrigues, Isabel Neto, and Hugo Nicolau. 2026. SL4Fun: A Collaborative Game for Hearing and Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Children for Bilingual Classrooms. Proceedings of the 28th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3797867.3829008
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Educational tools for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) children have largely focused on individual learning experiences, often overlooking the collaborative opportunities that are essential for inclusive education. In this paper, we present SL4Fun, a collaborative co-located play for DHH and Mixed-Hearing (MH) pairs, designed to support bilingual content in Sign Language (SL) and Spoken Language (SpL). SL4Fun was developed through a 5-month iterative process involving multiple stakeholders, including teachers, interpreters, and children. We evaluated SL4Fun with 24 children (12 pairs) across preschool and primary school levels, including both DHH and MH groups. Results show that SL4Fun design choices prompted game engagement and co-located collaboration. In particular, having spatial dependency and resource sharing gameplay mechanics led to structured coordination and collective responsibility. In parallel, asymmetries in linguistic and technical skills of children prompted varied collaboration strategies between pairs. Based on our findings, we propose design implications for developing inclusive educational technologies that leverage collaborative bilingual content in DHH and MH groups.
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  • Leaving the Field: Working with Teachers to Integrate Computational Thinking in Mixed-Visual Ability Classrooms’ Activities
  • Filipa Rocha, Beatriz Nogueira, Isabel Neto, Tiago Guerreiro, and Hugo Nicolau. 2026. Leaving the Field: Working with Teachers to Integrate Computational Thinking in Mixed-Visual Ability Classrooms’ Activities. Proceedings of the 28th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3797867.3828972
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Following a long-term design research engagement to develop an accessible programming toolkit with teachers and children for mixed-visual ability collaboration in classrooms, we reached a pivotal moment: leaving the field. Although the toolkit proved effective during researcher-supported use, this transition raised a key question: how can researchers responsibly step back while enabling sustainable adoption? To examine this, we moved beyond the design of the tool itself, returning to a partner school to explore a handover strategy through interviews, co-design sessions, and classroom enactments with teachers. This allowed us to investigate the pedagogical needs, organizational constraints, and operational dependencies that shaped teachers’ ability to appropriate the toolkit. Our findings show that sustainable integration requires more than accessible technology; it depends on alignment with school practices, curricular demands, and the complexities of mixed-ability classrooms. We contribute empirical and conceptual insights into the challenges of transitioning from researcher-supported to teacher-led use and offer design implications to support teachers’ appropriation of inclusive programming toolkits.
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  • Social Play Between Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Hearing Peers: Learning from Children and School Ecosystems
  • Jing Zhao, Isabel Neto, Michaela Okosi, Paulo Vaz de Carvalho, and Hugo Nicolau. 2026. Social Play Between Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Hearing Peers: Learning from Children and School Ecosystems. Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery. http://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791520
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Social play is an essential pathway for emotional, cognitive, and social development in children. However, Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children often experience barriers to social play, namely in mixed-hearing ability environments (e.g., school playground). In this paper, we conducted interviews with six educators and 19 children with and without hearing loss at a Partially Bilingual School, to better understand their experiences during social play. Moreover, we observed a school playground with 46 children over seven weeks at a Full Bilingual School. Findings show that social play between DHH and hearing children is influenced by school culture, peer culture, and child agency. Importantly, some of these barriers can be (partially) overcome through a supportive bilingual and bicultural environment. We propose the concept of contextualized social play technology, which defines a design space aimed at fostering peer culture and individual agency through contextualization within schools. We also provide design insights to inform the development of future inclusive play technologies.
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  • PARTICIPATE-AI: Exploring the Participatory Turn in Citizen-Centred AI
  • Pam Briggs, Cristina Conati, Shaun Lawson, et al. 2026. PARTICIPATE-AI: Exploring the Participatory Turn in Citizen-Centred AI. Companion Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Association for Computing Machinery, 256–258. http://doi.org/10.1145/3742414.3794954
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  This workshop explores value alignment for participatory AI, focusing on interfaces and tools that bridge citizen participation and technical development. As AI systems increasingly impact society, meaningful and actionable citizen input in their development becomes critical. However, current participatory approaches often fail to influence actual AI systems, with citizen values becoming trivialized during translation to technical requirements. The workshop brings together researchers and practitioners from HCI, AI, and social sciences to address challenges such as risk articulation, value evolution, democratic legitimacy, and the translation gap between community input and system implementation. Topics covered include interactive demonstrations of interfaces (or other ‘boundary objects’) for value elicitation within different communities, critical analysis of failed participatory attempts, methods for capturing evolving community values, and approaches for making citizen concerns actionable for developers.
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  • Understanding Intermediaries’ Role in Public Service Design
  • Nils Ehrenberg, Camila Hergatacorzian, Hugo Nicolau, et al. 2026. Understanding Intermediaries’ Role in Public Service Design. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 14th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/3821402.3830194
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  With the growing digitalization of public services, organizations that act between citizens and digital services platforms - intermediaries - become a unique resource for underserved communities. These organizations are critical yet often invisible for service providers: they enable citizens to access digital services and form an essential part of the infrastructure supporting digital transitions. In this workshop, we discuss how intermediaries support digital inclusion through cases from Finland and Portugal. We aim to develop a shared understanding of intermediaries in public service delivery and outline a research agenda for designing with and for intermediaries.