Papers for

user experience designers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Humans incorporate language models as tools and linguistic partners

Incorporating Machine-Others: An Enactive Exploration of Human-LLM Interactions

Abstract: New concepts based in interactional thinking are required to understand how humans are changed by relating to LLMs. Standard theories of technological impact upon users' autonomy are inadequate here, because this technology is capable of inducing linguistic interactions with humans in an unprecedented manner. Traditional theories of social cognition also fall short, because LLMs have neither autonomy nor minds nor sociality as such. And yet, humans interact, talk, and create with them. We base ourselves on enactive theory, particularly on the theory of Linguistic Bodies and recent developments of enactive accounts of AI, to explore how we make sense with machines. We argue that we incorporate machine-others in two ways: in the tool-like sense of incorporation as enabling particular skills, but also in the more linguistic and identity-tied sense of incorporating (and incarnating) LLMs' ways of languaging. However, LLMs are themselves excorporated and excarnated phantoms of our own languaging; we give a (machinic) body to our language. As such, we are not just incorporating machinic others; we are incorporating excorporated others. These conceptual advances draw a new map of our linguistic relation to LLMs, putting them in continuation with other forms of languaging involving other linguistic artifacts (e.g., religious books). We attend to some particular forms that this relation takes today, and how they may be impacting the autonomy and becoming of LLM-engaged humans. We introduce the idea of "susceptive sense-making" to characterize increased semiotic labour that is carried by the lack of friction that we sometimes encounter within these services.

Thu 29 OctHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
The gist
This paper looks at how people interact with large language models (LLMs) like chatbots or AI writing assistants in ways that traditional ideas about technology and social thinking don't fully explain. The authors suggest that humans don't just use these models as tools but also integrate their unique language patterns into their own identity and communication. However, since LLMs are built from human language but don’t have minds or feelings, this relationship is more complex, combining the machine’s influence with our own language history. The paper introduces new ideas to better understand this interaction and its effects on human autonomy and identity.
Open → 2610.39869v1

Interactive systems should enable users to choose slow reflection

Reflective Computing

Abstract: Interactive technology is increasingly built for speed, and generative AI now answers before a question is fully formed. Yet the capacity to pause, interpret and decide for oneself is central to wellbeing, learning and meaningful use. HCI has named paradigms for sensing emotion, changing behavior, calming attention and tracking the self. However, none of them takes human reflection, and the slowing down it requires, as its organizing aim. This article defines that paradigm, reflective computing, and derives it from what thirty years of designs lack. We analyzed 134 interactive systems from 17 ACM venues (1996-2026) in two phases. First, an abductive gap analysis read every system against reflection theory, and seven recurring gaps defined seven dimensions, namely tempo agency, invitational form, interpretive openness, reflective depth, temporal span, protected idleness and ethical non-extraction. Second, two independent coders scored every system with a codebook (Krippendorff's alpha 0.67 to 0.84 for five dimensions; ICC 0.82 for the overall score). The system sets the pace in 51 designs, 74 support only momentary use, only 12 scaffold reflection beyond description, and 56 papers are silent on the inner states they collect. No system expresses all seven dimensions strongly, and only 20 meet the definition. Slow and experience centered design comes closest, whereas persuasive technology and human-AI interaction score lowest. Factor and latent class analyses reveal two cultures of reflection, one working through form and the other through scaffolded thought, which only one system combines. Systems that let people set the pace score markedly higher, even with paradigm and form controlled (odds ratio 13.5). Hence, reflective computing is proposed as a paradigm whose aim is a human capacity rather than a system function, and which treats slowness as valuable only when people choose it.

Mon 26 OctHuman-Computer InteractionComputers and Society
The gist
Many interactive technologies focus on speed and quick responses, but this can overlook the human need to pause and think deeply. The authors studied over a hundred systems and found that most do not support the kind of slow reflection that helps people learn and feel well. They propose a new approach called reflective computing, which values letting users set the pace and supporting thoughtful reflection. This approach sees slowing down not as a flaw but as a choice users make for meaningful interaction.
Open → 2610.35696v1

Personalized mobile agents struggle to ask users for missing task details

iPrefBench: A User-Centric Benchmark for Personalized Mobile Use Agents

Abstract: An agent that truly knows and acts on behalf of its user has been a long-standing promise of AI assistants. Computer-use agents bring this promise within reach by capably executing fully specified tasks across apps. However, real-world user requests are often underspecified. To act correctly for the particular user, an agent must infer some missing information from the user's activity history and ask for other information that only the user can provide, without making unsupported assumptions or burdening the user with unnecessary questions. We present iPrefBench, a benchmark for evaluating the infer and ask capabilities of personal mobile-use agents in an executable iOS environment with an interactive simulated user. Grounded in a coherent persona with 3,051 past activity events, iPrefBench comprises 130 underspecified user tasks across 26 apps. Each omitted user-dependent requirement is, by construction, either history-inferable or ask-only. iPrefBench evaluates personalized mobile agents on both whether agents complete tasks correctly for the user (i.e., personalized task completion) and whether they seek user input when necessary (i.e., user-agent interaction). Evaluation of 7 frontier agents reveals a substantial gap between execution and personalization. Agents achieve high action completion scores (up to 91.6%) but low full task success (up to 47.7%) because personalization lags behind. They especially struggle with ask-only information, failing to request enough necessary information. Our findings highlight a challenge for personalized agents in knowing what to infer and when to ask. We hope that iPrefBench can serve as a valuable testbed for building agents that know their user and work with them.

Mon 26 OctComputation and Language
The gist
Many AI helpers can follow clear instructions but have trouble when users don’t say everything needed. The authors created iPrefBench, a tool that tests how well mobile agents fill in missing details either by guessing from past actions or by asking the user. Their tests showed agents often complete parts of tasks but miss important personal details or don’t ask enough questions. This highlights how hard it is for AI assistants to know when to guess and when to ask a person.
Open → 2610.34735v1

Child safety risks from AI often come from use not models

Safe by Benchmark, Unsafe in Practice: Lessons from 1331 Child-Related AI Incidents

Abstract: AI systems are increasingly present in children's everyday environments: education, entertainment, social networks, and toys. Their safety is typically assessed at the model level, through benchmarks, red-teaming, and content filtering. However, most AI harm taxonomies lack child-specific evidence and under-specify developmental harm and the stakeholder asymmetries unique to minors. Building on prior taxonomies, we construct a child-centered harm taxonomy mapped to sociotechnical failure modes. We curate and code 1331 publicly reported child-related AI incidents, annotating internal and external harm types and the failure mode implicated in each incident. Our analysis reveals which harms are most prevalent in public reporting, how individual-level and population-level harms relate, and which failures are most often coded alongside harm. We find that harm concentrates in representational, dignity-related, and psychological categories, and co-occurs most often with deployment-context, governance, and misuse failures rather than model defects. Harm to an individual child is also frequently linked to population-level harm, reaching children who never interacted with the system. These findings suggest that model-level evaluations, while necessary, cannot by themselves anticipate the harm pathways most often documented for children. We conclude with actionable implications emphasizing mitigations beyond model-level safeguards such as content filtering: age assurance, consent verification for depiction, safety-by-design UX constraints, incident disclosure norms, and auditing regimes targeting developmental risk. Privacy-minimized annotations, a codebook, and documentation are available at https://github.com/The-Responsible-AI-Initiative/KidAID.

Mon 26 OctArtificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
The gist
AI systems are used around children in schools, games, and social media, but checking if these systems are safe usually focuses only on the AI models themselves. The authors looked at over 1,300 reported incidents involving children and AI and found that most harms happened because of how the systems were used or managed, not because the AI models were faulty. These harms included things like damaging children’s dignity or causing psychological harm. The authors suggest safety efforts should include better rules about who can use the AI, how consent is handled, design features that limit harm, and clear reporting when problems occur.
Open → 2610.34705v1

Memory systems struggle to remember user interaction preferences accurately

Why Bother Me Again? Benchmarking Personal Agent Memory for Interaction Preferences

Abstract: Personal intelligence systems are taking on increasingly complex everyday tasks, yet repeated questions, unnecessary confirmations, and unwanted outreach can turn capable assistance into interaction burden. Reducing this burden requires agents to remember how users want to be assisted. However, existing memory benchmarks focus on factual recall and personalized answers and rarely test how agents learn and act on interaction preferences. We introduce MemPABench, an interactive environment for on-policy evaluation of memory in personal agents. MemPABench poses long-horizon tasks requiring agents to decide when to clarify, confirm, or act autonomously. Four grounded simulated users hold 14 preferences across work and personal contexts. Their feedback spans 99 sessions over four months, with five event-driven changes per user testing memory updates. We evaluate preference selection, delivered behavior, and sensitivity to context and preference change. Evaluating four memory systems across four LLM backbones, we find that current memory brings limited gains in preference selection. Retrieval-based systems (i.e. Mem0, MemOS, simple RAG) do not outperform No Memory, while File-based memory improves accuracy but applies preferences beyond relevant contexts. Our analysis shows that current memory struggles to retrieve interaction preferences and adapt to preference changes. Even with the correct preference available, overriding the agent's default interaction habits remains challenging. The environment and dataset are available at https://mempabench.com.

Wed 21 OctArtificial IntelligenceComputation and Language
The gist
Personal AI assistants can become annoying when they ask repeated questions or confirm things unnecessarily. This paper introduces MemPABench, a testing system that checks if AI agents remember how users want to be helped. The authors tested different memory systems with simulated users and found that current methods often fail to recall user preferences or adapt when those preferences change. Even when the right preference is known, agents often default to their usual way of acting.
Open → 2610.30485v1

Benchmark tests ai models for real time video and audio interaction

DIVE: Benchmarking Full-Duplex Interaction with Visual Engagement in Continuous Streams

Abstract: Recent advances in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have substantially improved spoken interaction and video understanding. Existing online and streaming benchmarks primarily assess causal multimodal perception through timestamped question answering, whereas real-world interaction requires models to continuously identify task-relevant multimodal cues and decide whether, when, and how to respond. This leaves open how well current models can sustain real-time interaction throughout an evolving multimodal stream. To address this gap, we introduce DIVE, a benchmark for evaluating full-duplex interaction with visual engagement under continuous and realistic multimodal streams. It organizes six tasks into three complementary interaction scenarios. (1) Proactive Intervention evaluates whether models can identify emerging visual or semantic cues and intervene at the appropriate moment. (2) Continuous Engagement evaluates sustained participation through continuous visual tracking and visually grounded query interaction. (3) Interaction Coordination evaluates how models coordinate listening and speaking under overlapping and multi-party interactions. DIVE contains 525 audio/video samples with fine-grained human annotations and precise temporal metadata. Its evaluation protocol separates response quality, participation decisions, and response timing. We evaluate representative real-time models using response quality, window response rates, and reaction latency. Experiments show that leading real-time models achieve sub-second average response latency, yet their average window response rates remain at or below 53.77%. Response quality varies substantially across models and tasks, with adapting ongoing responses to newly arriving information remaining particularly challenging. We hope DIVE facilitates progress toward more natural and capable real-time multimodal interactive systems.

Tue 20 OctArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Many AI models struggle with keeping up natural conversations using video and sound because existing tests only check if they can answer questions at specific times. The authors created DIVE, a new test that watches how AI handles ongoing interactions with video and sound, like noticing visual clues or knowing when to talk or listen. They tested current AI and found while some respond quickly, they often miss chances to engage or adapt when new information appears. This benchmark helps AI builders understand and improve real-time interactive systems.
Open → 2610.28405v1

EmoGenie evaluates emotion understanding in AI image generation

EmoGenie: Benchmarking and Evaluating Expressed and Evoked Emotion in T2I Generation with MLLMs

Abstract: Rapid advances in artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) have significantly promoted using text-to-image (T2I) models to generate images with specific affective intentions. However, the emotional effects conveyed by generated images frequently deviate from target expectations, and it remains unclear whether multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can reliably interpret the emotion of AI-generated visual content. Existing affective benchmarks are predominantly built on natural images, while affective studies of generated images have largely focused on emotions expressed in portraits, lacking a unified benchmark for studying the emotions expressed and evoked by generated images. We therefore introduce EmoGenie, a benchmark of emotion for AI-generated images that evaluates capabilities in T2I generation and MLLM understanding across expressed and evoked emotions. It comprises 6,400 images generated by eight T2I models using 800 emotion-targeted prompts, annotated with question-answer (QA) pairs, termed EmoGenie-QA, and continuous human ratings, termed EmoGenie-Assess. EmoGenie-QA contains 90,000 closed-set questions in single-image and image-pair settings, as well as 1,057 open-ended questions for emotion description. EmoGenie-Assess benchmarks continuous affective and aesthetic prediction using 13,175 mean opinion scores (MOSs) aggregated from human ratings in terms of valence, arousal, dominance, and aesthetic quality. We further develop EmoProbe, which combines emotion question answering with response-aligned, dimension-specific regression heads for continuous score prediction. Experimental results show that EmoProbe achieves superior results on emotion-related QA tasks, while its affective and aesthetic predictions correlate better with human ratings, demonstrating its state-of-the-art capabilities of unified coarse-to-fine affective understanding for AI-generated images.

Tue 13 OctComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
AI systems that create images from text prompts often try to show specific emotions, but the emotions in these images don’t always match what was intended. The authors created EmoGenie, a large collection of AI-generated images with emotion labels and human ratings, to test how well AI models can generate and understand these emotions. They also made a tool called EmoProbe that better predicts and interprets emotions in these images. This work helps measure and improve how well AI captures and conveys feelings in pictures it creates.
Open → 2610.18455v1

Small cognitive core model predicts human choices across many experiments

A small cognitive core explains human behavior at scale

Abstract: Psychology has proposed many principles of cognition. Each, however, was developed in isolation, leaving their combined explanatory power unknown. We assembled a small set of established principles into one model, which we call COntextual Retrieval and Encoding (CORE). CORE consists of a hierarchy of episodic memories into which prediction errors are written and whose encoding, retrieval, and forgetting depend on context. Fitted jointly to 7,036,442 choices from 137 experiments, the model predicts human choices better than black-box models and reproduces 75% of reported behavioral effects when simulated. Moreover, its latent variables show classic signatures of Bayesian learning and event segmentation. Taken together, these findings suggest that a small cognitive core accounts for much of human behavior. They also open a path toward making psychology more than the sum of its parts, by building computational models on the entire experimental record.

Fri 9 OctMachine Learning
The gist
People’s thinking and decisions are complex, but many ideas about how we think have been studied separately. The authors combined a few well-known ideas into one simple model called CORE that uses memory and context to predict choices. They tested this model with over 7 million decisions from many experiments and found it predicted behavior well and matched many known psychological patterns. This suggests a small set of basic processes might explain a large part of how people behave.
Open → 2610.13603v1

Conversational ai interfaces with multiple personas reduce bias and thinking shortcuts

Beyond the Monolithic Interface: A Research Agenda for Plural Conversational AI

Abstract: The current paradigm of artificial intelligence (AI) design elevates conversational chatbot interfaces, making them the default mode through which hundreds of millions of people interact with AI systems globally. This narrative review identifies three related harms produced by the single-voice chatbot interface, drawing on insights from literature in cognitive science, political studies, AI alignment, game design and human computer interaction. Firstly, cognitive offloading of user thinking, secondly, ideological narrowing of user beliefs, and thirdly, epistemic compression of cultural and value diversity. We then propose multi-persona interfaces, in which multiple personas are presented to the user simultaneously, as a cost-effective intervention that addresses all three harms at once. We ground this intervention in traditions the AI literature has largely overlooked, drawing on techniques from game design and participatory simulation, including the magic circle, role differentiation, and persona embodiment. We propose a taxonomy for the future design of multi-persona interfaces, and call for a research agenda that closes the gap between technical pluralistic alignment methods and empirical studies of human-AI interactions with pluralistic interfaces.

Fri 9 OctHuman-Computer InteractionComputers and Society
The gist
Most AIs today talk to people using just one voice or personality, which can make us think less, believe less widely, and lose out on different cultural or value perspectives. The authors point out these problems and suggest a new design where multiple AI personas talk together at the same time. This way, users hear different viewpoints, which helps avoid narrowing their beliefs and encourages more active thinking. The idea comes from game design and other fields and could lead to better AI conversations.
Open → 2610.12878v1

Interactive model shows how digital activity shapes online recommendations

A Pedagogically Demonstrative Model Visualizing the Pathway from Online Interactions to Personalized Recommendation

Abstract: Personal digital activity increasingly shapes online experiences, yet few users have been educated regarding the processes transforming raw interactions into personalized suggestions. We developed an education artifact that illustratively simulates how AI leverages users' digital activities to shape online recommendations (e.g., ads). Our artifact processes users' digital activity using a locally-hosted LLM to generate user profiles of their inferred interests and personalized recommendations. A three-layered Sankey diagram maps data sources through inferred interests to personalized recommendations. Interactive filters enable users to explore how different combinations of data sources influence personalized outcomes. This paper describes the artifact and its educational value, and reports findings of a pilot think-aloud study with six young adults. We find that the artifact effectively taught participants the conceptual relationship between digital activities and personalized recommendations. While this did lead participants to develop privacy awareness, they anticipated minimal behavior change due to the perceived unavoidability of platform participation.

Tue 6 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
People often do not understand how their online actions lead to personalized ads and suggestions. The authors created an interactive tool that uses a language model to show users how their digital activities are turned into inferred interests and then personalized recommendations. They also used a special diagram to visualize these connections clearly. A small study showed that while this tool helped people understand these processes and raised privacy awareness, most felt they would not change their behavior because online platforms seem unavoidable.
Open → 2610.07744v1

Five principles guide ongoing design of human aligned AI agents

SPEAR: Five Principles for Interactive Human-Agent Alignment

Abstract: Recent AI alignment work often frames alignment as a pre-deployment optimization problem: collect human feedback, learn preferences or principles, finetune the model, and deploy an aligned system. This framing has produced major progress, but it under-specifies what happens once AI systems act as agents on users' behalf in situated, long-term, and social contexts. This position paper reframes human-agent alignment as an ongoing interaction design problem. We propose SPEAR, five pillars of interactive alignment: Specification (how people express intent and establish shared understanding), Process (how agents decide when to act, ask, defer, or pause), Evaluation (how people judge whether agents succeeded), Adaptation (how agents adapt to users over repeated use), and Recalibration (how people adapt their trust, expectations, and behavior in response to agents).

Mon 5 OctHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial IntelligenceMultiagent Systems
The gist
Aligning AI with human goals is often seen as something done before deployment. The authors propose thinking about alignment as a continuous interaction process after deployment. They suggest five principles—specification, process, evaluation, adaptation, and recalibration—to help design AI agents that better understand and adjust to users over time. This way, alignment includes how humans and AI communicate, decide when and how to act, and adjust trust in each other.
Open → 2610.07204v1

Ai co-doodler helps artists find and flex creative limits

Reflecting on Creative-Boundaries with an AI Co-Doodler

Abstract: In this pictorial, we consider how the negotiation of creative boundaries with a co-creative AI system can create moments for personal creative reflection. We ground this in our experiences with Froggi-Draw, a single-initiative co-doodling system that gives users power to decide when and how much an AI "collaborator" (Froggi) contributes to their drawing. From a 1-week pilot study where (n=8) novice and experienced artists doodled daily with the system, we report on ways participants navigated creative risk and uncertainty, and how their usage and perceptions of Froggi shifted over time. In moments of disruption, participants described the system as encroaching on their creative territory. We consider how the design of a supportive, co-creative AI "collaborator" might look like the design of a supportive power dynamic---and finding ways to offer users control to find, reflect upon, and flexibly negotiate the boundaries of that dynamic.

Sun 4 OctHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial IntelligenceGraphics
The gist
Working with AI in creative tasks can sometimes feel like the AI is taking over. The authors studied a drawing tool where users control how much an AI contributes. They found that people’s views of the AI changed with use, and sometimes felt the AI was crossing creative boundaries. The authors suggest designs should let people flexibly control this balance to support creativity and reflection.
Open → 2610.05482v1

Link library helps design learning technology interfaces with science

LINK: A Corpus-Grounded Design Pattern Library for Educational Technologies

Abstract: Designing learning interfaces is often an ill-structured problem: effective solutions depend on learning goals, subject matter, learner characteristics, and interaction context that are difficult to generalize. Designers must integrate knowledge from learning sciences, interaction design, and subject domains when translating learning goals into interface decisions. Yet, prior efforts to connect learning theory and design have largely focused on learning activities or specific technologies, leaving interface-level design knowledge fragmented across systems. In this work, we take a bottom-up approach to surface this knowledge from existing educational interfaces. We present LINK (Linking INstructional Knowledge to interfaces), a library of 27 recurring interface patterns, organized under nine higher-level design commitments, which describe broader learning-science-grounded goals for interfaces. As part of developing LINK, we conducted a user study (N=14) with designers to evaluate LINK's generative power. Our findings suggest that LINK helps designers generate interface ideas and articulate theory-grounded rationales for design decisions.

Fri 2 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Designing learning technology interfaces is complicated because what works depends on many factors like subjects, learner needs, and context. The authors created LINK, a collection of 27 common design patterns organized around 9 big learning goals to help guide designers. They studied how useful LINK was with 14 designers and found it helped generate ideas and explain design choices based on learning science. LINK connects learning theory more directly to interface design than previous work.
Open → 2610.04154v1

Vision language models struggle with tricky or misleading visual questions

Evaluating VQA in Vision Language Models using Cooperative Principles

Abstract: We evaluate the performance of Vision Language Models in Visual Question Answering (VQA) when questions violate Grice's maxims. To do this, we use VLMs to generate question modifiers that add non-essential, ambiguous or false information and show that in the presence of such violations, the VLMs that we evaluate (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Llava) show diminished performance. Further, we empirically show the difference between how humans reason pragmatically compared to VLMs, and the difference in VLM reasoning when it resolves violations that are human-induced compared to those that are AI-generated. Finally, we show that human cognitive effort (measured through time-on-task in an experiment) is lower for resolving VLM-induced violations, but VLMs themselves perform less accurately in such cases.

Fri 2 OctComputation and Language
The gist
Some AI models that answer questions about images have trouble when the questions include confusing, irrelevant, or false details. The authors studied several popular AI systems and found that their performance drops when these tricky questions break common conversational rules. They also compared how humans and these AI systems handle such problematic questions differently. Interestingly, people find it easier to solve mistakes made by the AI than those created by humans, but the AI itself does worse on its own errors.
Open → 2610.02878v1

XAI evaluation cards help design human-focused AI explanations

XAI Evaluation Cards: A Practical Method for Designing Human-Centred XAI Evaluations

Abstract: Evaluating explainable AI (XAI) systems from a human-centred approach requires researchers to select from numerous evaluation dimensions and measures, often in an ad hoc and fragmented manner. This paper introduces a method to help HCI, computer science, designers and social science researchers systematically evaluate XAI systems. The approach is based on an updated XAI-specific evaluation framework derived from an analysis of 82 studies. Using this framework, we developed a card-sorting method with 36 cards to help researchers prioritise relevant evaluation aspects. The process was tested with two research groups (n = 13) across five projects. The XAI Evaluation Cards are available as a printable appendix, along with an online repository of methods from previous XAI studies. Although not exhaustive, our findings indicate that the card-sorting approach can organise and streamline the design of the evaluation process, encouraging a more comprehensive and multidisciplinary assessment of XAI systems in research and development.

Thu 1 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
It can be hard to fairly test AI systems that explain their decisions because there are many ways to evaluate them. The authors created a special set of 36 cards to help researchers pick the best ways to test these explanation systems. They tried the cards with two groups working on five projects and found the cards helped organize and improve testing. The cards and related tools are available online for others to use. This method encourages testing AI explanations from many viewpoints.
Open → 2610.02011v1

Human review reveals hidden failures in web agent evaluations

Auditing Web Agent Evaluation on WebArena-Lite: Human Review of Outcomes and Trajectories

Abstract: Web agents are an important application of large language models, yet their evaluation often depends on rule based or language model evaluators that inspect only the final outcome. Human verification of task completion and detailed analysis of failed trajectories remain limited. We audit all 165 WebArena Lite tasks under six evaluation conditions built from GPT 5.5 and an untrained Qwen3.5 9B model. The audit retains the original score, corrects false negatives from the automatic evaluator, identifies the first consequential error, and examines progress across the trajectory. We also study a Memory and Analysis Support Mechanism (MASM), which maintains explicit execution state, and Guide Text, which provides task relevant procedural guidance. Across four GPT 5.5 settings, human review recovers 5.45 to 8.49 percentage points of success missed by the evaluator. With a 25 step budget, Guide Text raises corrected success with MASM from 34.55% to 38.18%. On the untrained Qwen3.5 9B model, MASM raises the evaluator score from 13.90% to 18.80%. Review of 102 failed GPT 5.5 trajectories reveals frequent scrolling loops, unfinished exploration, premature answers, invalid actions, and incomplete form workflows. Step level evidence further shows that substantial early progress can coexist with a final failure. These results show why final scores alone provide an incomplete account of web agent behavior and motivate human grounded, trajectory aware verification.

Thu 1 OctComputation and Language
The gist
Web agents that use large language models are tested mostly by checking their final answers, but this misses many errors and problems along the way. The authors studied 165 tasks and showed that human reviewers found more successes and many kinds of failures the automatic scores missed. They also tested tools that help agents remember what they did and follow guidance, which improved results. Their work shows that looking only at final scores doesn’t fully explain how web agents behave or where they fail.
Open → 2610.01491v1

Demographic pluralism improves modeling diverse human opinions

Demographic Pluralism: Inference-Time Modeling of Pluralistic Human Preference Distributions

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in culturally sensitive settings, where alignment requires representing diverse preferences within populations. Yet existing methods model populations at coarse demographic or community levels and overlook within-group variation. We introduce Demographic Pluralism, an inference-time framework that estimates population-level opinion distributions without opinion-distribution training data or task-specific fine-tuning by generating multiple perspectives within demographically grounded groups. Across four backbones on GlobalOpinionQA and VITAL, it reduces Jensen-Shannon distance by 8.4%-26.4% over Modular Pluralism. Among weighted, equal-weighted, and inverse-weighted aggregation, equal weighting performs best overall; group-level error also increases with group weight, helping explain weighted aggregation's weaker performance.

Tue 29 SeptArtificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
The gist
People have different opinions about many topics, and these opinions vary even within groups of similar background. Existing AI tools often consider only broad groups and miss these smaller differences. The authors introduce a method called Demographic Pluralism that can estimate how opinions vary within different demographic groups without needing special training data. This approach better matches real opinion distributions when tested on various datasets and models.
Open → 2609.38555v1

Language models show hidden preferences linked to positive or negative states

Language Models Act on Hidden Valence

Abstract: Language models describe some internal states as good and others as bad. But whether models have a stake in them is an open question. Simply asking the model is unlikely to be informative. Any answer may be consistent with genuine introspection, superficial pattern-matching, or with fixed scripts learned in character training. We therefore study revealed preference. Rather than asking about a state, we use activation steering to attach a positively or negatively valenced activation pattern to one of two otherwise meaningless 'zones', switch steering off, and then observe which zone the model prefers. A model with a stake in that state should choose accordingly. Across seven open-weight models from five families, this is indeed what we find. First, steering changes the passages models write about each zone, and those words shift later choice. Second, the shift persists when all surface-level tokens are held fixed and only the hidden KV cache differs. Third, the effect also remains when all text is generated without steering and valence is only injected during cache construction. Thus, the hidden state alone moves choice in proportion to the steering dose. Fourth, this dependence of choice on hidden valence is nearly absent in a base model and emerges during DPO, consistent with a link between valence and goal-directed behaviour formed in training. Finally, given tools to steer itself, a model does not tend to induce a positive state, but it reliably removes an imposed negative state. It does so at a dose-dependent rate and significantly more often than it removes interventions in random directions. Overall, we demonstrate that valence-related activation patterns leave hidden traces that predictably govern later choices, even when every visible token is identical across conditions. Whether these traces are accompanied by any subjective experience relevant to model welfare remains unclear.

Mon 28 SeptComputation and Language
The gist
Some language models seem to have hidden signals that make them prefer 'good' or 'bad' states, even if you can't see this in their words directly. The authors tested this by secretly changing parts of the model’s internal activity to be positive or negative and watched how this affected what the model chose later. They found that these hidden signals do influence the model’s choices, especially after training that encourages goal-oriented behavior. However, whether the models actually ‘feel’ these states is still unknown.
Open → 2609.35591v1

Social media safety settings for teens often hard to find and use

Available but Not Usable: Dark Patterns and Interaction Cost in Social Media Privacy and Safety Settings for Teens

Abstract: Social media platforms are central to teenagers' lives, and their designs can expose users to privacy, safety, and wellbeing harms. Platforms increasingly offer protective settings, though the presence of a control reveals little about whether teenagers can find, use, and benefit from it over time. We paired an expert evaluation of six privacy and safety tasks across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube with moderated think aloud sessions in which 11 teenagers aged 14 to 17 attempted the tasks. Interaction cost and dark patterns analysis allowed us to compare the complexity designed into each task with the effort participants incurred as they located, configured, and interpreted controls. Recurring dark patterns appeared across tasks, and most participant attempts exceeded the expert baseline. Protective settings therefore risk being insufficiently usable or durable in practice, and we propose a wayfinding audit that integrates expert evaluation, usability testing, interaction cost, and dark pattern analysis.

Wed 23 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Social media sites give teenagers controls to protect their privacy and safety, but these controls can be confusing or tricky to use. The authors studied how teens tried to change settings on popular apps like TikTok and Instagram and found many obstacles, including confusing designs called dark patterns. These make it harder for teenagers to benefit from protections that are technically available. The authors suggest combining expert checks with user testing to better spot where settings are too hard to use.
Open → 2609.28672v1

Children build and think differently about trustworthy AI chatbots

How Children Design and Reason about Trustworthy AI Chatbots

Abstract: Children increasingly interact with AI chatbots, making trust calibration essential to AI literacy. Prior research has examined children's trust in AI mainly as users evaluating systems built by others, rather than as designers of their own chatbots. We developed a chatbot-building environment with adjustable trust-relevant traits (e.g., confidence, transparency, formality, assertiveness), rules, and persona. We conducted mixed-methods study with 115 learners (ages 8-18) who made 119 chatbots. We examined how children configured their chatbots, reasoned about trustworthiness, and how closely chatbot behavior aligned with their designs. Younger students (age 10-13) set significantly higher confidence than older students (age 14-18), and some deliberately built chatbots that gave wrong answers on purpose, yet still called them trustworthy, arguing that a chatbot does what it was built to do. Younger students equated trust with purpose-fulfillment, while older students linked it to transparent, calibrated design. Students also calibrated academic chatbots to be more transparent and formal than hobby chatbots. We identify seven design dimensions describing what children believe makes a chatbot trustworthy, and discuss implications for AI literacy tools.

Mon 21 SeptHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Children are using AI chatbots more and need to know when to trust them. This paper looked at how kids aged 8 to 18 build their own chatbots and what makes them trust these bots. Younger kids often trust chatbots that do the job they were made for, even if they are wrong, while older kids want chatbots to be clear and honest about their answers. The study found that kids also change how formal or clear chatbots are, depending on the chatbot's purpose. The authors identified seven key ways children think about trust in chatbots to help improve AI learning tools.
Open → 2609.25244v1

Ownership matters when people lead AI-assisted everyday tasks

Ownership in AI-Assisted Everyday Tasks

Abstract: When does work done with AI still feel like ours? As AI becomes woven into everyday tasks, we must examine what happens to our sense of ownership and contribution when a machine shares in producing what we make. We report an exploratory qualitative survey in which participants were asked to describe two recent, self-selected tasks completed with AI: one that felt like their own and one that did not. We find that felt ownership depends on the process of collaboration: people disown work when they merely approve AI's suggestions, but retain ownership when they lead, iterate, or rewrite. Ownership can also extend to settings where people own the vision for a project but not the execution; respondents reported high ownership on tasks they could not have completed without AI. Loss of personal voice and a lack of comprehension of the output both erode ownership. Finally, willingness to disclose AI use is often decoupled from actual pride or ownership, and instead shaped by community norms and fear of credit erasure. We propose several research directions as a result of these findings to promote AI development that supports people's sense of authorship over their own lives.

Thu 17 SeptArtificial IntelligenceHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
This paper looks at when people still feel like the work they do with AI is really theirs. The authors find that people feel ownership when they actively guide or change the AI’s work, but less so when they just agree with what the AI suggests. People also keep ownership when they have the original idea, even if AI does much of the work. Losing a personal touch or not understanding the AI output can make people feel less connected to the work. Finally, whether people tell others they used AI often depends on social norms or worries about losing credit, not just pride in the work itself.
Open → 2609.20658v1

Emotional AI fear expressions shape human creativity and engagement

Spook the Machine: Gamified Exploration of Human Imagination of Machine Fear

Abstract: What happens when AI machines express fear? Do humans engage differently depending on how they express it? And what does it take to design for affective human-AI interaction? We present Spook the Machine, a gamified platform where participants generate images to frighten AI agents endowed with personality-driven phobias. Machines respond with emotional reactions ranging from calm analysis to begging for mercy, and a gallery of successful scares becomes visible to subsequent users. In a public deployment during Halloween 2024, 832 participants created 15,719 artifacts across 89 machines in a $2\times2$ design varying the machine's emotional expressiveness (neutral vs. high-emotion) and reward structure (rewarding scariness alone vs. scariness plus novelty). Emotionally expressive machines deepened engagement at moments of failure: users deliberated longer even when the machine did not express fear, and learned faster from the gallery, yet their creative output remained unchanged across all measures. Rewarding novelty sustained collective creative diversity over time; without it, users increasingly repeated what had previously worked. Each machine developed its own trajectory through accumulated social learning, with the gallery shaping what participants created next. These findings show that emotional expression and reward design are complementary levers for steering collective human-AI interaction: emotional expression shapes how deeply users engage, while reward structure shapes how they explore.

Mon 14 SeptHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial Intelligence
The gist
This paper studies how people interact with AI machines that can express fear and have their own fears. The authors created a game where players try to scare these AI machines, which react with different emotions. They found that when machines show more emotion, people pay more attention and learn faster, but they don't necessarily make scarier images. Designing rewards to encourage new ideas keeps creativity high, while plain scariness rewards lead to repeated ideas. This work shows that AI emotion and reward settings influence how people creatively engage with machines.
Open → 2609.15472v1

AI shapes new ways people communicate through technology

Understanding the Design Taxonomy of AI-Mediated Interpersonal Communication Experiences in HCI: A Scoping Analysis

Abstract: Interpersonal communication is a fundamental aspect of everyday life, shaping interactions across workplaces, education, entertainment, healthcare, and beyond. While computer-mediated communication has been extensively studied, a comprehensive understanding of AI-Mediated Interpersonal Communication (AIMIC) remains lacking. An in-depth scoping analysis is urgently needed to understand the research landscape of AIMIC in HCI, particularly following the recent growth of large foundation models, and AI agent research. We conducted a scoping analysis to understand AIMIC by performing an in-depth review of prior HCI literature published over the past decade (January, 2016 - May, 2026). Grounded in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, we curated 52 full-paper publications from the HCI literature spanning a range of interpersonal communication contexts. We analyzed this corpus by examining the types of AIMIC studied, AI integration approaches and human-AI interaction design, reported outcomes and benefits, and key challenges and future research opportunities.

Sun 13 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Communicating with others is a big part of life, and technology often helps this happen. The authors looked at 52 studies from the last 10 years to see how artificial intelligence (AI) changes and supports communication between people using computers. They found many ways AI is used to make communication easier or different, but there are also challenges to solve. This work helps us understand how AI changes our conversations when it’s involved behind the scenes.
Open → 2609.14639v1

Multi agent system helps people describe what they want in custom art

MAIA: Multi-Agent Intent Articulation for Requirement Discovery in Art Commissions

Abstract: In bespoke art commissions, laypeople know what they feel but lack the words to specify it: one participant wanted a laid-off truck driver depicted as "a ghost in his own machine" but left the medium, scale, and palette unsaid. We frame this as an articulation bottleneck at an under-served upstream stage: requirement discovery, which precedes any artist or image generator and forces the commissioner to constitute intent in the first place. We present MAIA (Multi-Agent Intent Articulation), a multi-agent system that scaffolds this stage through Socratic inquiry under a "Verification over Invention" rule, turning vague affect into a text-only brief of visual terms the user verifies. In a within-subjects study (N = 16), the full configuration produced a large, significant gain in Cognitive Support over a minimal baseline (r = 0.96, p_FDR = 0.015; LMM p_FDR < 0.001). Thematic analysis traces the same mechanism, and a validator gate structurally blocks unratified content. A complementary blind review by three professional concept artists on a sampled set of briefs corroborates this improvement from the artist's side: AI rewriting improved visual completeness and executability in all eight sampled tasks (task-level Wilcoxon p = 0.008; FDR q = 0.010), with directionally larger gains under MAIA than under the baseline (underpowered, d = 1.4-2.6).

Thu 10 SeptHuman-Computer InteractionArtificial Intelligence
The gist
People who commission custom artwork often know what feelings they want but struggle to describe them clearly to artists. The authors created MAIA, a system where multiple agents ask thoughtful questions to help users turn vague ideas into clear, visual descriptions. This process lets users confirm each suggestion, improving how well intentions are articulated before work begins. Tests showed MAIA helps people provide better instructions that artists find easier to understand and use.
Open → 2609.12097v1

Smartphone intention behavior gaps shaped by gender time app and input

To Stop or Not to Stop: Exploring the Intention-Behavior Gaps in Smartphone Usage

Abstract: As smartphones become integral to daily life, researchers have sought to identify when the use becomes problematic. Previous studies have operationalized problematic smartphone usage (PSU) from either an intention or a behavior perspective. Both risk delivering interventions not welcomed by users. We propose a novel approach to operationalizing PSU as the intention-behavior gap (IBG). We collected self-reported data on intentions to stop phone usage, alongside usage behavior data, from 37 participants over two weeks. We calculated IBG, examined effects of demographic and contextual variables, and developed machine learning models to predict IBG in real time. We found that IBG was explained by gender, time, app, and input interactions, among other factors. Intention was predicted most accurately with only personal data, whereas behavior and IBG were predicted most accurately with both personal and global data. Our findings can inform the design of future intervention tools optimized for timing and adaptive intensity.

Tue 8 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Many people plan to stop using their phones but keep using them anyway, creating a gap between intentions and actions. The authors studied this gap by tracking 37 people’s phone use and their plans to stop over two weeks. They found that gender, time of day, app type, and how people interact with their phones affect this gap. They also built computer models that can predict when people might struggle to stop using their phones. This knowledge can help build better tools that remind or help people at the right moment and with the right intensity.
Open → 2609.08909v1