and if you or someone you know is interesting in this sort of stuff and looking for a postdoc in cross-sensory fabrication and playful interaction? Ping me or anyone from the #inclusiveXplay project team for a chat:
www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
We also shared some work on speculative speech tracking for families: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... TLDR; families are more willing to track when it’s for “children’s development purposes”, but cautious about the broken promises of tech living up to expectations. #chi2026
Three people standing at a conference poster. Two facing the camera
Oh, and we did an “AAC thing” too - check out our poster: a lit review on AI and AAC: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... -posing here with co-author + the wisest🦉prof Jeff Higginbotham & guest appearance from Damien Rudaz
This year, it was so exciting to enjoy a full #chi2026 session on Augmented Communication! Long may it continue (…with rigorous AAC HCI work 🙃)
Coffee conversions and catch ups with friends were wholesome (:
All three #chi2026 social impact award talks were so moving for different reasons - feeling energised by the breadth of quality research.
The #chi2026 Speech4All workshop was truly excellent. Loved the WS keynote by Eva Szekely.
It’s been a whirlwind week of #chi2026 & I tried to stay present in-person so here’s my round up of the bits I loved the most ⬇️🧵
🚨 IDC 2026 abstract deadline for Full or Short Papers or Pictorials is TODAY! 🚨
🗓️ Abstracts due today (Jan 20, 2026: Midnight AoE)
🗓️ Full submissions due next week (Jan 27, 2026: Midnight AoE)
Theme: Creating a More Sustainable Future
🔗 Calls & guidelines: idc.acm.org/2026/
#IDC2026
Hey there #IDC2026 community! We see your wonderful pictorials abstracts in PCS and can't wait to receive your full submissions by 27th Jan, midnight AOE!
idc.acm.org/2026/calls/p...
- Good luck with those submissions and remember to get these in soon! (: 🏎️💨
Deadline for submission to the Pictorials track is approaching!
IDC2026 invites pictorial submissions about “Creating a More Sustainable Future.” Pictorials foreground visual communication; images, layout, and typography are central to the contribution. #IDC2026 #InteractionDesignAndChildren
Introducing the IDC2026 Chairs! Kate Howland is taking on the role of General Chair this year, and Seray Ibrahim joins as Chair for the Pictorials track.
🦋Follow Kate @wildwoodlander.bsky.social
🦋Follow Seray @serayibrahim.bsky.social
#IDC2026 #InteractionDesignAndChildren #ourchairs
IDC 2026 is calling on young creators to imagine a more sustainable world. Any idea that helps the planet or supports fairer, kinder communities, in any format (art, stories, videos, prototypes, games), is welcome.
info @ idc.acm.org/2026/calls/r...
#IDC2026 #InteractionDesignAndChildren
The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling 3697-3705 Apr 30, 2025 Education The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Gulu College of Health Sciences, Gulu City, Northern Uganda DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.90400265 Received: 13 March 2025; Revised: 22 March 2025; Accepted: 25 March 2025; Published: 30 April 2025 ABSTRACT The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in social interactions has transformed how humans experience companionship, communication, and mental well-being. This review examines the psychological impact of AI-driven social interactions, focusing on virtual assistants, AI chatbots, and digital companions. It explores the benefits, risks, and ethical concerns associated with AI companionship. A systematic review methodology was employed, detailing inclusion criteria, databases searched, and analysis techniques. Findings suggest that while AI can offer emotional relief and support, over-reliance may disrupt real-world social bonding. Ethical concerns such as data privacy, emotional manipulation, and regulatory gaps are highlighted. The study underscores the need for balanced AI integration in human socialization. The study also addresses gaps in previous literature by examining AI’s influence on different demographic groups and cultural contexts.
Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.
I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
It feels special resurrecting (and creating manual zotero entries) for important papers from no longer active workshops and conferences (...which otherwise sounded great). Your DOIs may not be active, but I see you, brilliant papers 😍
Who’d have thought 😂😂
😂 it still doesn’t sound like a neat automated way of capturing those circled responses 😝
What I wanna know is who has time to process all that paper!
The ISAAC Research Committee invites you to participate in an online survey on how to define AAC! 📝
All stakeholders including AAC users, families, clinicians, vendors, researchers and others interested in the field of AAC are encouraged to participate.
📢Calls for Participation to IDC26 Brighton are now live!📢
Read the full calls🔗https://idc.acm.org/2026/calls/
Follow for updates:👇
➡️Instagram: @idc_acm
➡️Facebook: www.facebook.com/InteractionDesignChildrenConference
➡️LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/acm-idc
#IDC2026 #InteractionDesignAndChildren
Gypsy woman by Crystal waters?
Meme of Bernie Sanders
The first book-length analysis of memes from a linguistic perspective, proposing a new approach to the study of multimodal genres.
The Language of Memes by Barbara Dancygier & @lieven.bsky.social, Out Now
#LangSky #Linguistics 🐦🐦 #BookSky
https://cup.org/3IDqYNf
Such good advice. I’m looking at you R2 …🫣
📣 **Exciting job opportunities** with the absolutely stellar human being @quiteneate.bsky.social. Tim is hiring 2 HCI postdocs, a SLT researcher & a PhD student to explore designing AI-enable AAC. This is gonna be a good one peeps! Check it out ⬇️ 👀
✨ 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
Critically important information, wonderful to see the complete special issue is now freely available! See link in original post
The ESRC Festival of Social Science is returning for its 23rd year!
We're proud to fund incredible research, and this festival brings it to the public, showing them just how influential it is on the world.
If you have some spare time, come along!
For more info: www.ukri.org/news/largest...
Unexpectedly, the data capturing method (a promoted diary & adapted journey map) appeared to help parents engage with online parenting advice, suggesting potential as a component of parenting support. Check out our #OA paper 😊
We were interested in methods that parents could potentially find intrinsically helpful (for self-reflection) whilst also capturing data about lived experiences and implementation challenges.
Together with @juliadabrowska.bsky.social , Alissa Antle, @juliekientz.bsky.social , Alex Chesters & Petr Slovak, we iteratively developed & tested digital probes for investigating parenting experiences.