The healthcare industry's enthusiastic adoption of Extended Reality (XR) technologies obscures a concerning reality: we were building increasingly sophisticated ways to perpetuate fundamentally broken healthcare systems. Through three deeply personal narratives - a rural patient cut off from care infrastructure, an urban professional navigating fragmented services, and a first-generation immigrant confronting cultural barriers - this provocation paper exposes how our obsession with technological innovation often worsens rather than resolves healthcare disparities. By applying the SEIPS 3.0 model to examine diabetes-CVD care coordination, we identify an "innovation paradox" where advanced technology creates new barriers to effective care. Our care interdependencies framework reveals that healthcare outcomes are shaped primarily by human relationships (50-60%), organizational coordination (25-30%), and sociocultural factors (15-20%), not technological sophistication. This research challenges the HCI community to confront its role in perpetuating healthcare inequities, demands a fundamental rethinking and proposes a new framework for healthcare innovation that prioritizes human relationships over technical capability, systemic change over feature sets, and actual care delivery over technological ambition. For healthcare providers, technology developers, and policymakers, our findings suggest that effective care coordination requires us to step back from our techno-solutionist mindset and engage
Animation production workflows often involve digital colorization of line art, where small unpainted regions ("gaps") frequently occur and remain an underexplored challenge. We conducted a formative study in Japanese animation (anime) pipelines and found that while the paint bucket tool is widely used for base coloring, tiny enclosed areas are frequently overlooked, resulting in time-consuming manual detection and filling. We introduce GapFill, a tool grounded in professional practices that reduces the effort of gap detection, zooming, and color selection. Our deep-learning method suggests appropriate fill colors by referencing surrounding regions, leveraging the flat-color nature of anime-style images. In a user study with 13 professional colorists, our system improved performance and usability in gap-filling tasks over conventional methods. The study also suggested that prediction accuracy alone is not the primary factor for usability, that appropriate colors can be contextually ambiguous, and that GapFill can complement existing tools depending on users' trust in new AI-powered assistance.
Masahiro Kono, Akinobu Maejima, Yuki Koyama et al.· 0 citations
Eye gaze has become an essential input for spatial computing, but its coarse targeting and saccadic nature limit precision and complicate continuous interactions such as dragging, especially under user motion. Gaze+pinch has also become standard in XR for its convenience, yet mid-air gestures remain imprecise, fatiguing, and socially unacceptable. These limitations underscore the need for an approach that preserves the speed of gaze while enabling stable, fine control. We present GazeTune, a cascaded multimodal interaction technique combining gaze and touch to refine gaze-based selection and manipulation. Touch serves as a refinement channel within gaze pointing, allowing precise cursor and target control. Our work investigates how gaze-and-touch enhances dragging and mitigates Motion-Induced instability. In a study (N=20), we compared GazeTune against gaze-only and gaze-pinch methods in 2D dragging. Results show that GazeTune achieves significantly lower error with comparable execution time, validating its effectiveness and balanced trade-off between time and accuracy.
Jina Kim, Eric J. Gonzalez, Yang Zhang et al.· 0 citations
Intelligent design interfaces that rely on preference-based optimization are most useful when their suggestions are both meaningful to users and feasible within the target domain. Procedural models offer compact and editable design spaces, but their native parameters can be entangled and can generate many invalid outputs, causing human-in-the-loop optimizers to waste comparisons. We propose an interaction-oriented representation-learning pipeline for procedural models and study it in automotive wheel design. The method first screens procedurally generated samples using geometric rules and finite-element analysis, then learns a reduced latent space from the screened subset. We further introduce supervised functional alignment, which reserves selected latent dimensions for stiffness, strength-related stress response, or weight so that search can be biased toward functionally meaningful regions. Simulation experiments show that screened reduction improves target-shape retrieval and the feasibility rate of suggestions, whereas unscreened reduction degrades both. Additional simulations show that constraining search along learned functional dimensions accelerates exploration toward target functional properties. A controlled study with 40 participants further shows that a 5D feasibility-aware space yields higher shape similarity and more feasible suggestions than the original 9D procedural parameterization. These results suggest that, for intelligent user interfaces in engineering design, the representation exposed to the user is a central part of the interaction design, not merely a preprocessing step for the optimizer.
Takashi Owaki, Yuki Koyama, Tomoyasu Nakano et al.· 0 citations
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Object scaling serves as a fundamental spatial manipulation that enables complex and productive tasks in XR environments. This paper investigates unimanual scaling techniques for XR using gaze and hand interactions. We propose UniScale, a set of unimanual alternatives to the standard bimanual pinch, allowing users to scale objects while preserving hand availability for concurrent spatial manipulations. We design five distinct mapping strategies based on physical metaphors, exploring unimanual control that varies depth, angle, micro-gestures, and finger-distance input. We then compare these techniques against a standard bimanual baseline, in which users adjust the inter-hand distance via a bimanual pinch gesture. In a user study, we evaluate their effectiveness in a 3D object scaling task under both clutching and clutching-free conditions. The results indicate that while bimanual scaling relies on clutching for stable control, unimanual techniques excel in clutching-free conditions, significantly reducing physical hand movement. From the results, we derive valuable design implications for developing efficient 3D multimodal interactions in XR.
Kyoungwhan Mheen, Jinwook Kim, Sang Ho Yoon· 0 citations
The number of people with age related physical or cognitive impairments is increasing due to the worlds ageing population. Technology has the potential to support independent living, and to achieve aged and health service efficiencies, however, there are gaps in our understanding of factors that motivate technology adoption and ongoing use by older adults, especially those with cognitive impairments. This study aims to explore motivators and enablers for technology adoption and ongoing use by older Australians with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and their carers, to identify technology design principles and guidelines that maximise adoption. Semi structured interviews were used to gather data about individual demographics, needs, priorities, lifestyle, challenges, and experiences with technology. Results of inductive, reflective, thematic analysis indicate that a desire for independence, autonomy and quality of life motivate use of technology, and perceived technology self-efficacy and IT literacy are enablers. The Protection Motivation Theory illustrates that constant technology change is a disabler for technology adoption and sustained use, because it lowers perceived technology self-efficacy and IT literacy, and reduces confidence to use technology. Two high-level technology design principles and related guidelines are proposed, grounded in theory and aligned with Banduras four sources of self-efficacy. These design principles and guidelines are intended to increase feelings of self-efficacy and confident use of technology, while also reducing adverse impacts of technological change and encouraging sustained technology adoption by older adults with MCI to support independent living and quality of life.
Snezna Bizilj Schmidt, Nathan D'Cunha, Stephen Isbel et al.· 0 citations
Prolonged digital device use has made poor posture and musculoskeletal discomfort pervasive among knowl- edge workers. Existing ergonomic wearables rely solely on posture thresholds, frequently interrupting users during high-focus moments and leading to alert fatigue and abandonment. Yet posture and cognitive load are closely coupled, and most systems remain cognitively unaware. We present ErgoAssist, a head-worn ergonomic assistant that detects poor posture using IMU-based head tracking and estimates task-induced cognitive load using a consumer-grade EEG headband for continuous everyday use. In a controlled lab study, ErgoAssist achieves 81% posture classification and 90.2% task induced cognitive load estimation accuracy under leave-one-subject-out evaluation. In a preliminary real-time deployment, cognition-aware alerting reduces alert frequency by 81%, improves perceived usability by 43%, task performance by 25%, and improves posture correction rate by 38%, delivering fewer but better-timed interventions rather than merely suppressing alerts.
People who study or work at a desk sit for long uninterrupted periods and drink less water than they intend to. Software reminders address both problems but are easy to dismiss and easy to resent. We present FocusBuddy, a proof-of-concept fabric case that wraps a standard water bottle and houses a microcontroller, environmental sensors, and a small display showing a virtual pet. The pet's condition mirrors the user's self-care: drinking water feeds the pet, standing up to move plays with it, and refilling an empty bottle cleans it. Twenty undergraduate students used FocusBuddy for two weeks during their regular coursework and completed a written interview. Self-reported water intake rose from a median of 3 to 4 cups per day, movement episodes rose from 2 to 4 per day, and interviews surfaced two tensions: that wellness prompts must respect focused work, and that pet neglect can convert a wellness prompt into a source of guilt. We contribute the prototype, first-deployment evidence of healthy-direction shifts in self-reported habits, and design implications for emotionally framed wellness devices.
On-surface interaction in Virtual Reality improves input performance through physical support and tactile feedback, but current shape displays are constrained by limited resolution. This can misalign physical and virtual surfaces, degrading usability and user experience. We present MorphPatch, a system that enables real-time alignment between a dynamic shape display and virtual surfaces. MorphPatch uses a Signed Distance Field-based surface approximation pipeline to find practical alignments for diverse geometries. For residual discrepancies, MorphPatch incorporates pen redirection with visuo-haptic illusion to perceptually compensate for misalignment. Three evaluations show improved geometric alignment, tolerable redirection thresholds, and better control, surface guidance, and modeling results over mid-air and tablet-like interaction.
Wen Ying, KyeongMin Kim, Adil Rahman et al.· 0 citations
Recent advances in Video Generation Models (VGMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in producing short video clips. However, it is still challenging for everyday creators to leverage these models to produce polished long-form animated videos from brief story texts. Informed by a formative study with both novice creators and film experts, we identify two major challenges of interactive video authoring: (1) the lack of expertise in translating free-form story texts to professional cinematic scripts and finally high-quality animated videos, and (2) the absence of effective ways to convey video design intents to key variables of visual storytelling, such as shot composition, camera controls and shot sequencing. Drawing on narratology and film studies, we propose a three-layer design framework that defines the key design dimensions across three layers (i.e., story texts, cinematic scripts, and animated videos) as well as the translation between them. Built on this framework, we present AniMaster, a VGM-powered authoring tool to enable everyday creators to easily produce smooth animated videos from free-form story texts. AniMaster automatically expands brief story texts to detailed cinematic scripts, and further translates cinematic scripts into polished videos by following professional visual storytelling principles. It also allows users to interactively edit the scripts and refine the generated videos via text instructions and intuitive interactions. We extensively evaluated AniMaster through an in-depth user study with 16 participants, two case studies, and expert interviews with 2 film professionals. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of AniMaster in helping everyday creators create polished animated videos from free-form story texts.
Ruiqi Yu, Dekun Qian, Jiale Xu et al.· 0 citations
Digital Twins (DTs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies have significantly advanced manufacturing digitalization. However, these technologies are typically applied to individual manufacturing processes rather than integrated into a unified cyber-physical manufacturing environment. This paper proposes a cyber-physical digital factory architecture that enables disembodied work, where manufacturing systems can be supervised and operated remotely through eXtended Reality (XR) user interfaces in collaboration between AI-based control and human operators. The architecture integrates synchronized DTs, hierarchical cloud-edge AI, IIoT, and XR teleoperation interfaces into a cyber-physical manufacturing environment. The proposed approach is validated through representative manufacturing operations, including CNC machining, robotic-assisted abrasive finishing, and robotized disassembly. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture for disembodied manufacturing work and provide a reusable cyber-physical framework for future human-AI-controlled digital factories.
Tero Kaarlela, Ivan Ruchkin, Jose Outeiro et al.· 0 citations
Large tabletop displays and multi-surface environments offer potential for enhancing visual data exploration and collaborative work with geospatial datasets. These systems typically rely on multi-touch interactions, which can pose challenges when the multi-touch sensors misrepresent transitory movements as control inputs, leading to interruptions. Active tangibles and styluses offer an alternative to multi-touch interactions in MSEs, and have shown the potential to facilitate sense-making around large datasets. However, further research is needed to better understand how these modalities can be effectively leveraged for interacting with geospatial data visualizations. To address this, a gesture elicitation study was conducted in which users suggested interactions for 16 geospatial data visualization tasks, presented as a realistic collaborative workflow co-designed with geography and migration researchers. The study produced a taxonomy of user-defined gestures using tangibles and styluses for engaging with geospatial data, along with a thematic analysis of users' experiences with visualization tasks and interaction techniques.
A new method, called CW-Net, translates the reasoning process of an autonomous vehicle’s AI system into understandable concepts that explain its behavior.
Known for his clear and elegant writing style, Bertsekas shaped fields from control and optimization to large-scale computation and artificial intelligence.
