Human-Computer Interaction
Visible but Not Yet Curatable: Characterizing the Curatability of Compact and Derived Open LLM Artifacts
Yiyi Lu, Yilai Qian and Yucheng Jin
Open Large
Language Model (LLM) research increasingly produces compact and derived artifacts, such as adapters, quantized checkpoints, merged models, and distilled variants, that are distributed across papers, model hubs, model cards, code repositories, and release statements. Although these artifacts are publicly visible, digital libraries often lack sufficient evidence to identify, preserve, and cite them as coherent scholarly objects. We introduce a framework that conceptualizes curatability as a record-level property of distributed scholarly records and operationalizes it through four evidence dimensions: artifact identity, scholarly linkage, upstream evidence, and release assets. Guided by this framework, we conduct the first collection-scale characterization of open LLM curatability using a May 2026 snapshot of 191,375 public Hugging Face repositories and a core corpus of 2,214 scholarly papers. Our results reveal a pronounced visibility-to-curatability funnel. While 90.7% of paper records contain at least one useful curation signal, only 18.1% combine usable upstream evidence with concrete release evidence, and only 6.1% provide sufficiently coordinated evidence to support high-curatability records. Based on these findings, we derive a minimal seven-field curatable record and complementary responsibilities for model hubs, scholarly indexes, and digital libraries, providing practical guidance for improving the preservation and bibliographic control of open LLM artifacts.
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Human-Computer Interaction
Bringing Data to Life: Designing Data Characters for the Emotional Self
Diego Abarcar Calugay, Isabella Amador and Keke Wu
Journaling is a common practice for emotional expression, reflection, and processing. However, as entries accumulate, it can become difficult to interpret and compare their affective content, especially since traditional text-based analyses and visualizations often struggle to convey affective nuance. We introduce Data Characters, a visualization approach that represents affective content in journaling through human-like characters. Using a customizable Data Character as a design probe, we investigate the potential of character-based representations for conveying affective experiences and explore what visual encodings emerge through customization. Preliminary walkthroughs with two participants demonstrate the intuitiveness and feasibility of the approach. This work contributes an exploratory approach to studying how affective experiences can be visually represented and encoded through anthropomorphic forms.
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Human-Computer Interaction
A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Team Adaptation in Cooperative Games Through Ludic Knowledge
Caleb Vatral
With the increasing importance of teamwork skills for modern workplaces, development of teamwork training programs has received substantial
attention. Game-based teamwork training is one promising approach that is engaging, cost-effective, and well-suited to increasingly decentralized workplaces. However, design of effective game-based teamwork training requires understanding how a game elicits specific desired teamwork behaviors. Significant progress has been made in characterizing these relationships. However, despite its critical importance, little work has examined how a game's design influences team adaptability behaviors. This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing adaptability in cooperative games by conceptualizing adaptive stimuli as
retrieval or disruption of players' ludic knowledge. We illustrate this framework through a qualitative case study that applies interaction analysis methods to gameplay
videos of a Overcooked!, a cooperative cooking game. We examined instances where game events led to players altering their behavior and connected the game's design features that resulted in each event with three adaptive stimulus cue categories. Although exploratory and limited to a small case study of a single game, the proposed framework is grounded in established theories across teamwork research and game studies, and it offers an initial vocabulary for describing how cooperative games can be designed to create demands for team adaptation. With this continued development, the framework may provide an analytic tool to help inform the design and evaluation of purpose-built game-based teamwork training environments.
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Human-Computer Interaction
Between Algorithm (AI) and Intuition (Human): Preserving Designer Agency in AI-Assisted Sensemaking of Qualitative UX Data
Md Haseen Akhtar
The integration of AI into qualitative design research presents a fundamental tension: how do we leverage AI while preserving the subjective, intuitive judgments that define design expertise? This paper examines this question through a case study of analyzing 20 user responses about
video conferencing platforms for educational contexts. We argue that AI sensemaking tools risk flattening the rich data patterns, amplifying contradictory textures of user feedback into sterile categories thereby transforming design research from an interpretive craft into a mechanical sorting exercise (rigid and formal). Through comparative analysis of AI-assisted sensemaking versus human-centered approaches to the same
dataset, we identify when algorithmic efficiency enhances understanding and when it diminishes the designer's interpretive agency (uncovering hidden needs, critical enquiry, what if enquiries, making decisions, having trade-offs). We present a framework for augmented sensemaking that positions AI as an instrument for amplifying human judgment rather than replacing it. Our findings suggest that the most valuable role for AI in design research is not to eliminate subjectivity, but to make it more intentional, reflective, and accountable.
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Human-Computer Interaction
AI as Teammate: Rethinking Task Distribution in Medical Training
Fendi Tsim, Alina Gutoreva, Anthony Weiss et al. (+1 more)
Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, into medical training has prompted concerns about learner over-reliance, misuse, and erosion of foundational clinical competencies. We propose a conceptual reframing at the decision level: the problem is not misuse but misclassification - a mechanistic failure of real-time metacognitive evaluation in selecting a subzone-inappropriate AI interaction mode. Drawing on "SCAN" (Substitute, Complement, Aid, Non-Negotiable), a human-centric decision-making framework for generative AI task allocation grounded in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and metacognition, we advance the emerging social-constructivist conversation around AI in medical education by offering a testable account of AI's role in clinical
reasoning development. This framework yields testable predictions for how misclassification can be detected, mitigated, and, more importantly, prevented in the clinical learning environment. Regarding clinical
reasoning development, we show how trajectories of skill acquisition (upskilling) and failure (the triad of skill failure: de-skilling, never-skilling, and mis-skilling) operate at the individual task level in ways that fixed-phase, cohort-wide treatments fail to capture. We further identify passive engagement within correctly classified AI-scaffolded tasks as a particularly insidious, detection-resistant pathway to mis-skilling - one requiring subzone re-identification from AI assistance to expert assistance, with human experts serving as epistemic auditors. The paper operationalizes SCAN for clinical curriculum design, supervision, and assessment, and opens an empirical research agenda grounded in cognitive science. This paradigm shift from misuse to misclassification is not semantic: it offers educators a clear perspective on what to look for, what to assess, and what to intervene on.
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All authors Fendi Tsim, Alina Gutoreva, Anthony Weiss, Nicole Dubosh
Human-Computer Interaction · Cross-listed from cs.CY
It Takes Three to Converse: Empirical Observations on How the Developer, the Convener and the Participant Shaped 119 Polis Conversations
Lodewijk Gelauff
Polis is a popular democratic innovation tool that allows asynchronous citizen engagement through atomic statements: short statements that together describe a complex question, inviting the citizen to vote Agree or Disagree on each. This paper uses 119 conversations with 100 or more participants and an extensive data export, drawn from a wider set of 271 collected processes. The paper asks what determines the output of such a process. Three parties shape the result. The developer of the platform has made important design choices that restrict the outcome: the number of groups the platform is able to report (restricted to 2–5) and which statements are prioritized. The convener defines the assignment: the initial statements that set the tone, the policy that accepts or rejects new statements and who can be invited. Finally, the participant works within these boundaries. With access to less than half of the generated statements, they end up responding to more statements when their conversation seems to have an achievable number of statements to complete, than when they are presented with more statements. Due to choices such as warm path clustering, the exported resulting clustering cannot be reproduced based on the voting data. Conveners may want to re-analyse their own conversations once the process is closed, to consider the data in its entirety, and make their own analysis priorities explicit.
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Human-Computer Interaction · Cross-listed from cs.AI
Generative AI Alignment with Hinduism's Theological Plurality and Sacred Representation
Dipto Das, Arpita Kundu, Nusrat Jahan Mim et al. (+2 more)
Generative AI systems are increasingly used to answer personal questions and mediate everyday practices, including religion. However, existing discussions around AI
alignment and ethics have largely centered secular, Western, and Abrahamic assumptions about religion, offering limited
attention to other faith-based traditions. In this paper, we examine how Hindu users engage with generative AI systems in relation to their religious knowledge, belief, and practice. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews with Bangladeshi Hindu participants, we analyze how users interpret AI-generated religious representations, scriptural explanations, devotional interactions, and synthetic religious media. We found that AI can be both accessible and ethically troubling. While AI supported scriptural inquiry, devotional visualization, and religious storytelling, our study also identified concerns about theological flattening, cultural misrepresentation, devotional manipulation, and the simulation of sacred presence and authority. We conclude by arguing that religious
alignment in generative AI requires interpretive
alignment: systems that disclose their limits, preserve plurality, and avoid simulating sacred authority and sycophantic personalization.
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All authors Dipto Das, Arpita Kundu, Nusrat Jahan Mim, Shion Guha, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed
Human-Computer Interaction · Cross-listed from cs.AI
CrabOS: An Operating System for Human-AI Co-inhabitation
Qi Yang and Yun Ma
AI
agents are evolving into long-running computational entities that can invoke tools, maintain
memory, and complete complex tasks across applications. In real-world settings, completing a task often requires humans and AI to take turns leading its execution. Such alternation depends on the seamless handoff of the work state of the task between humans and AI. Existing
agent systems, however, provide humans and AI with separate work environments. AI
agents must therefore rely on additional bridges to continue work: either developers build task-specific interfaces to access the work state, or users manually transfer relevant parts of it through screenshots or textual descriptions. Both approaches make handoffs costly and scale poorly. We propose Human-AI Co-inhabitation, a type of work environment that enables humans and AI to seamlessly take turns continuing work on the same task, and design and implement CrabOS to realize this concept. CrabOS represents the work state as natural-
language-readable text objects shared by humans and AI, allowing both to access and manipulate it directly through the same auditable interface without bridges. Case studies show that CrabOS elevates support for complex tasks with alternating human and AI leadership from bridge-dependent application-level solutions to native operating-system capabilities, which provide a new foundation for developing and running AI
agents.
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Human-Computer Interaction · Cross-listed from cs.AR
Gen-TAS: A Generative AI-Aided Hardware-Software Task Allocation Framework for FPGA-GPP Heterogeneous Systems
Mary Kong, Yuqin Zhao, Semih Vazgecen et al. (+2 more)
FPGA-GPP heterogeneous systems combine software flexibility with the performance and energy efficiency of reconfigurable hardware. However, determining which application tasks should execute on the GPP or FPGA requires extensive expertise and design-space exploration, particularly when user objectives vary across latency, communication, resource utilisation, and power. This paper proposes Gen-TAS, a knowledge-grounded LLM framework for user-specific FPGA-GPP task allocation. By combining task-graph analysis with RAG, Gen-TAS grounds LLM
reasoning in historical implementation knowledge and generates multiple explainable strategies tailored to the specified objectives. Human-in-the-loop selection and a deterministic backend connect LLM-generated decisions to reproducible FPGA SoC implementations. Experiments on CNN and SDR workloads across multiple LLMs demonstrate stable, requirement-driven allocation. Under latency-oriented objectives, implementations following the selected strategies achieve speedups of up to 2.45$\times$ and 92.53$\times$, respectively, relative to the corresponding all-GPP baselines while other objectives select strategies that trade some acceleration performance for FPGA-GPP communication, resource utilisation, or FPGA power.
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All authors Mary Kong, Yuqin Zhao, Semih Vazgecen, Cristian Sestito, Themis Prodromakis
Human-Computer Interaction
User Preferences for UI Anchoring in MR: Effects of Task Mobility and Interface Properties
João Belo, Sina Elahimanesh and Anna Maria Feit
Anchoring - the choice of frame of reference for mixed reality (MR) interface elements - is a critical design decision involving trade-offs between accessibility, interaction comfort, and visual interference. Despite its importance, user preferences for anchoring across different mobility contexts and interface properties remain poorly understood, as prior work has largely focused on specific tasks or fixed interface configurations. We address this through a mixed-methods user study in which participants configure anchoring strategies across different mobility conditions and interface types. Combining behavioral analysis with structured qualitative inquiry, we analyze how participants select and reason about anchoring modes. Our results show a clear transition from world-anchored interfaces in stationary contexts to body-anchored interfaces during locomotion. However, no single body anchor consistently dominates, highlighting the personal nature of anchoring strategies. Our qualitative analysis reveals the factors users consider in their anchoring decision, including interface accessibility, stability during interaction, visual clutter, and individual mental models. These findings inform the design of adaptive and controllable MR interfaces and highlight the importance of supporting user customization.
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Human-Computer Interaction
Too Much of the Same: From Algorithmic to Human Bias in Learning to Defer
Dario Pesenti, Alessandro Bogani, Stefano Teso et al. (+1 more)
Learning to Defer (LtD) extends supervised learning by allowing a Machine Learning (ML) model to defer harder or less confident decisions to a human expert. Despite being geared for human-AI collaboration, LtD strategies neglect the potential negative interference of human cognitive biases. Our contribution is twofold. First, we demonstrate that standard LtD strategies show class-dependent sampling bias in classification tasks in practice, and thus may disproportionately defer the minority classes when applied to imbalanced
datasets. Second, we show that such asymmetries in task delegation may trigger human biases, ultimately leading to poorer downstream decision making. Specifically, we conduct a user study ($N=226$) where participants complete a classification task on a set of deferred items, with conditions presenting different levels of class imbalance. Our results show that participants exposed to a highly imbalanced rejection set achieved lower classification accuracy in the majority class compared to those exposed to a more balanced set, regardless of which class constituted the majority. Exploratory analyses suggest that this may be an instance of the Test-taker's effect, which stems from a mismatch between the actual distribution of classes and the participants' expectations about that distribution. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the deployment of LtD
algorithms.
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All authors Dario Pesenti, Alessandro Bogani, Stefano Teso, Andrea Pugnana
Human-Computer Interaction
FocusGen: Expanding Visual Design Exploration with a Simulated Focus Group of Persona Agents
Jaewon Choi, Helena Vasconcelos, Hyun Lee et al. (+3 more)
Creative professionals rarely design for themselves–they design for audiences whose preferences they must anticipate. Yet current text-to-image exploration tools derive diversity entirely from the designer's own input–their
prompts, their chosen dimensions, their search queries–confining exploration to what the designer already knows to look for. We present FocusGen, an interactive system that introduces external perspectives into visual design exploration through a "virtual focus group" of simulated persona
agents. In contrast to prior persona systems in which multiple
agents converge as critics on a single evolving artifact, FocusGen uses personas as parallel generators: each
agent–constructed from demographic data, a procedurally generated backstory, and aesthetic preferences elicited through interviews–independently drives an iterative generation loop that produces its own visual concept, transforming one design brief into a spectrum of audience-conditioned directions. With real human participants, we confirm that the iterative refinement loop produces outputs people prefer over zero-shot generation. With synthetic
agents at scale, we show that persona conditioning yields higher visual diversity than a generic-assistant baseline–measured by CLIP distance and corroborated by human perceptual judgments–and that open-ended preference interviews yield more diverse outputs than structured ones for both human and synthetic cohorts, while also revealing that
agent cohorts recover only part of the diversity of comparable human cohorts. A qualitative study with 16 creative professionals suggests FocusGen helps designers discover unanticipated directions, overcome fixation, and probe audience contexts–while surfacing stereotyping risks that we analyze. We position FocusGen as a divergence scaffold for early-stage ideation rather than a substitute for audience research.
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All authors Jaewon Choi, Helena Vasconcelos, Hyun Lee, Carolyn Zou, Tak Yeon Lee, Michael Bernstein
Human-Computer Interaction
Graphionale: How Graph Visualizations of LLM Rationales Affect Human Decision Making
Xinru Wang, Zhexuan Ma, Ming Yin et al. (+2 more)
Large
Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly equipped with augmented
reasoning capabilities to generate rationales that support human decision-making. Yet these text-dense rationales often impose substantial cognitive burdens. Building on a formative co-design study that identified user preferences for non-linear
reasoning representations, we developed Graphionale as a testbed for empirically studying argument-map-style rationale visualization. This system transforms linear LLM rationales into interactive, multi-level graphs. It explicitly structures logical relationships (e.g., conclusions, premises, support, and objections), while further extracting entities and relations within each statement to construct condensed node-link representations. We conduct a large-scale online user study (N = 204) to examine when graphical rationales are more effective than textual ones, across varying task modality (verbal vs. visual
reasoning), rationale format (textual vs. graphical), and question difficulty (easy vs. hard). Our results show that graphical rationales do not help uniformly: they improve trust calibration for verbal
reasoning yet feel more cognitively demanding and less satisfying; for visual
reasoning, they impair calibration yet feel more engaging and helpful. In each modality, the format that better supports calibrated decisions is not the one users prefer, highlighting that matching rationale format to task modality is key to effective AI explanation design. Our findings contribute empirical design knowledge about when and how graphical rationales support human decision making, and inform the next-generation
reasoning-aware AI interfaces.
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All authors Xinru Wang, Zhexuan Ma, Ming Yin, Shuai Ma, Thomas W Malone
Human-Computer Interaction
Guidelines Are Not Rules: Characterizing Terminologies around Visualization Design Guidelines
Anna L. Chinni, Md Dilshadur Rahman, Bon Adriel Aseniero et al. (+6 more)
A common expectation in visualization research is that outcomes recommend how researchers and practitioners take action or make design decisions. We often express these as "guidelines." Yet, the term "guideline" is both ambiguous and loosely defined, and what one researcher considers a guideline may be too broad, too loose, or too strict for another. We take a closer look at a broader set of terms that can express desirable results around visualization research, and untangle how these words are understood in the community in relation to other similar terms. We base our work on an exploratory study with experts, followed by a crowdsourcing study with a separate mapping phase (n=30) and rating phase (n=42) targeting input from the broader visualization community, and an analysis of the use of terminology in 3,877 IEEE VIS papers published from 1990 to 2024. Based on our findings, we call for more nuanced, precise discussions of research outcomes and their communication to the broader community, including practitioners and students.
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All authors Anna L. Chinni, Md Dilshadur Rahman, Bon Adriel Aseniero, Petra Isenberg, Kushin Mukherjee, Ghulam Jilani Quadri, Paul Rosen, Karen B. Schloss, Daniel Weiskopf
Human-Computer Interaction
How Much Can AI Understand? Toward AI-Assisted Sensemaking of Collaborative Discussion in Groups with Shared History
Soobin Cho, Mark Zachry and David W. McDonald
AI tools that support collaborative discussion typically treat the discussion as a standalone task, focusing only on its content and setting aside the social context of the group having it. But it is groups with a shared history, with their own norms, hierarchies, and relationships, where the most tangled and complex discussions tend to arise. These discussions cannot be understood apart from that context, and AI that overlooks it risks failing to convey what a discussion means, or even misrepresenting it. Drawing on two studies of how experienced Wikipedia editors read and make sense of discussions, we propose an AI-Assisted Sensemaking Model for Collaborative Discussions, which captures not only a discussion's arguments but also the norms and participants behind it, along with the context that gives each meaning. In this model, the system supports the early stages of the sensemaking process, and the degree to which it performs interpretive work can range from low to high. We argue that higher interpretive work reduces the burden on users but increases their reliance on the system's judgment. We then discuss the risks of an insufficiently intelligible system, what it would take to make one more intelligible, and the safeguards it still requires.
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