Collage of five newly appointed ACM TOCHI Associate Editors arranged left to right in name order across two rows. Top row: Dr. Anna Cox (University College London), Dr. Eduardo Velloso (University of Sydney), and Dr. Kaisa Väänänen (Tampere University). Bottom row: Dr. Vera Liao (University of Michigan) and Dr. Wanda Pratt (University of Washington). Each portrait includes the editor’s name and affiliation beneath the photo on a white background.

We are excited to welcome five new Associate Editors to the editorial board of #TOCHI:

Drs. Anna Cox, Eduardo Velloso, Kaisa Väänänen, Vera Liao, & Wanda Pratt.

Each brings strong leadership and valuable perspectives in #HCI to TOCHI.

Please join us in welcoming them!

Active Inference and Human–Computer Interaction | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Active Inference is a closed-loop computational theoretical basis for understanding behaviour, based on agents with internal probabilistic generative models that encode their beliefs about how hidden ...

New in #TOCHI: Active Inference and #HCI by @rodmurraysmith.bsky.social , @rodmurraysmith.bsky.social , and @ssteinresearch.bsky.social reviews how Active Inference can be applied to model the HCI loop for both research & design.
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Project: difai-project.org

TouchEmotion: Augmented Reality Interfaces Leveraging Metaphorical Emotional Trajectories for Emotion Regulation | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Emotion regulation skills are crucial for wellbeing, yet mastering them is not trivial. Because of wearability, private passthrough display, and ability to keep users connected to their surroundings, ...

Emotions are invisible;so how can we regulate them?
In TouchEmotion,authors (Chen Ji, Corina Sas, Katherine Isbister) present #AR prototypes that use metaphorical emotional trajectories to support regulation.
A thoughtful shift from "fixing" emotions to co-existing.
dx.doi.org/10.1145/3777...
#TOCHI

Understanding Freehand Cursorless Pointing Variability and Its Impact on Selection Performance | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Freehand pointing is a fundamental gesture commonly used for cursorless interactions. Prior work in HCI often elicits the same pointing behaviour – facing the target with an outstretched dominant arm ...

📃Full paper: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...
📊Full dataset, including motion capture data: doi.org/10.15125/BAT...

@james-whiffing.bsky.social @tobiaslanglotz.bsky.social

Whiffing et al. study freehand cursorless pointing across different levels of attention, effort, and target placement using a hybrid motion capture setup with 23 participants. They uncover 3 distinct pointing behaviours, each with different performance characteristics

🖐️ How do people actually point when there is no cursor?
As spatial interaction becomes more common in AR, VR, and smart environments, freehand pointing is often treated as a single, idealized gesture. In reality, people point in many different ways depending on context.

Unite and Engage: Positive Experiences and Work Engagement through Digital Tools | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction As remote collaboration becomes central to contemporary work, it is crucial to understand how digital tools shape user experience (UX) and work engagement. This study examines how product design teams...

The paper shows how unity emerges when digital tools become part of shared work practices. This sense of unity, experienced through aggregation, relationality, connection, and fun, supports key psychological needs linked to engagement and well being at work
Read the paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

🤝 What makes digital collaboration feel good at work?
In a new TOCHI paper, Pinar Simsek Caglar and colleagues move beyond usability to examine how tools like Miro shape everyday experiences in remote teamwork.

New in #TOCHI

FairFare (arxiv.org/pdf/2502.11273) a crowdsourced data tool co-designed with a Colorado rideshare union to audit platform take rates from 76k+ rideshare trips.

Authors: Dana Calacci, Varun Rao, Samantha Dalal, Kok-Wei Pua, Andrew Schwartz, Danny Spitzberg, Andrés Monroy-Hernández

Applications for ACM TOCHI Distinguished Reviewer Board This form is for nominating yourself to the Distinguished Reviewer Board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI, https://tochi.acm.org/). The work of distinguished reviewers helps en...

ACM #TOCHI is inviting self-nominations for its Distinguished Reviewer Board!

Seeking researchers who can review 5 papers/year, return reviews within 30 days, and have prior reviewing + a strong HCI publication record.

Apply here: forms.gle/ggUy5DvbjFQV...

Please re-share!

Uncovering Parental Struggles: Using Digital Probes to Analyse Challenges in Applying Online Parenting Content | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Understanding the situated challenges that people face when attempting to apply online parenting advice is crucial for building effective digital parenting supports. However, existing HCI methods do n...

Authors: Seray Ibrahim, Julia Dabrowski, Alissa Antle, Julie Kientz, Alexandra Chesters, Petr Slovák
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The work contributes new directions for the design of digital parenting interventions that are more closely aligned with the realities of family life and responsive to the complexity of parenting practices.

Based on studies with 280+ parents, this research adapts probe-like methods to uncover the everyday challenges of applying parenting advice. Findings reveal practical and emotional barriers while offering insights into adapting probes to capture rich, in-situ parenting data.

✨ New in ACM TOCHI: Uncovering Parental Struggles. This article investigates how parents encounter and respond to online parenting advice, and introduces a digital probe methodology to capture their lived experiences in everyday contexts. @serayibrahim.bsky.social
#DigitalHealth #Parenting

Authors: Authors: Eimaan Saqib, Shijing He, Junghyun Choy, Ruba Abu-Salma, Jose Such, Julia Bernd, and Mobin Javed

Behind the scenes, when this team first started studying bystander privacy, it felt like a “side issue” compared to protecting owners. But they realized that waiting would mean bystanders’ privacy might never be addressed. That insight led to their new TOCHI review paper.

🔊Smart home devices don’t just track their owners-- they also collect data on guests, tenants, and workers. A new TOCHI paper reviews how research defines “bystanders,” what concerns they face, and which solutions might protect their privacy. doi.org/10.1145/3731...

Authors: Jiangnan Xu, Sanzida Mojib Luna, Garreth W. Tigwell, Nicolas Lalone, Michael Saker, Samuli Laato, John Dunham, Yihong Wang, Alan Chamberlain, Konstantinos Papangelis

🎮✨When the game is both digital and physical, how do players adapt?
A new TOCHI study on Shared AR gameplay (Urban Legends) shows players start off confused, leaning on verbal cues, but soon evolve dynamic movement, role strategies, and smoother teamwork
doi.org/10.1145/3749...

We’re thrilled to announce that ACM #TOCHI 's impact factor rose from 4.8 → 6.6 in the latest JCR (Clarivate)! 🎉

📊 Top-ranked:
• 4/31 in Cybernetics
• 25/258 in CS: Info Systems

Know more about the JCR impact preview in the August Blue Diamond newsletter:
www.acm.org/articles/pub...
#ACMTOCHI #HCI

Violence isn’t just physical. This work theorizes how cyber forces are weaponized against transgender people, what that does to us, and what we might do about it, drawing on decolonial theory of necropolitics. (2/2)

#HCI #TransStudies #CyberPolitics #TOCHI

The Three Steps to Trans Death: Introducing Trans Cyber-Necropolitics in Digital Media | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Many trans people experience marginalization and violence in cyberspace. This violence is characterized by intricate dynamics surrounding voice, identities, bodies, and social interactions. To compreh...

✨ New from #TOCHI ✨

📄 The Three Steps to Trans Death: Introducing Trans Cyber-Necropolitics in Digital Media
by @shanoliang.bsky.social, Michelle V. Cormier, @snapdragoness.itch.io , & @rose-bohrer.bsky.social

DOI: doi.org/10.1145/3745... (1/2)

Behind the scenes (Authors mention): Recruiting participants was a challenge.

Authors: Niclas Kannengießer*, Niklas Hasebrook, Felix Morsbach, Marc-André Zöller, Jörg Franke, Marius Lindauer, Frank Hutter, Ali Sunyaev

#TOCHI
(2/2)

Practitioner Motives to Use Different Hyperparameter Optimization Methods | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Programmatic hyperparameter optimization (HPO) methods, such as Bayesian optimization and evolutionary algorithms, are known for their sample efficiency in identifying optimal configurations for machi...

New in #TOCHI: "Practitioner Motives to Use Different Hyperparameter Optimization Methods"

Interviews and surveys reveal performance goals, model understanding, org context, and tool limits shape HPO choices, explaining manual tuning’s lasting appeal.

🔗 dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

#ML#HPO

(1/2)

Paper: "Transphobia is in the Eye of the Prompter: Trans-Centered Perspectives on Large Language Models"
Authors:
@morganklauss.bsky.social, Katy Weathington, Adrian Petterson, Dylan Thomas Doyle, Dipto Das, Michael Ann DeVito, Jed R. Brubaker.
#ACMTOCHI #LLMs #AIethics #HCI

🤖🏳️‍⚧️ Can chatbots be trans-affirming, or do they just sound that way?
New TOCHI paper finds that LLMs often respond “positively” to trans questions, but with subtle, hard-to-detect transphobia lurking beneath.
📄 Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Authors: Dagoberto Jose Herrera-Murillo, Hector Ochoa Ortiz, Umair Ahmed, Barbara Re, Andrea Polini, Francisco J. Lopez-Pellicer, Javier Nogueras-Iso

@iaaa-lab.bsky.social, @i3a.unizar.es
#CollectiveIntelligence #DisasterResponse #OpenStreetMap #Crowdsourcing #ACMTOCHI

Collective Intelligence in Humanitarian Voluntary Geographic Information: The Case of the HOT Tasking Manager | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Voluntary Geographic Information initiatives are transforming the disaster response landscape. Our research provides insights into how the concept of collective intelligence is accomplished in humanit...

🌍 When disasters hit, thousands map. But a few experts keep it from falling apart.

New TOCHI study of 746 HOT projects reveals how collective intelligence drives disaster response—and how to make it smarter, more connected, and useful 🧠

📄 Read: doi.org/10.1145/3733...

How Creative Practitioners Use Tools to Capture Ideas: A Cross-Domain Study | ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Creative practitioners rely on tools to capture and manage ideas as a foundational aspect of their work. However, we have little knowledge about how idea management practices vary in different creativ...

Authors: Emilia Rosselli Del Turco, Nanna Inie, James D. Hollan, Peter Dalsgaard

@erossellidt.bsky.social, @nannainie.bsky.social ie.bsky.social, @profhollan.bsky.social , @peterdalsgaard.bsky.social

#Creativity #HCI #DesignTools #ACMTOCHI

🎨🧠 How do creatives really capture ideas on the fly?

New TOCHI paper finds idea capture for creative practitioners is fast, messy, and wildly different across creative domains. ⚡Yet all prioritize capturing ideas quickly, even if it disrupts order.

📄 Read the full paper: doi.org/10.1145/3727...