Exploring Self-Defining Memories in Old Age and their Digital Cues

Self-defining memories represent significant emotional events capturing the most important concerns in our lives. While much HCI work on memory technologies has focused on autobiographic memories and lifelogging technologies for capturing them, there has been little exploration of self-defining memories and how they may be supported by appropriate cues. This is important as such memories are key in the development and maintenance of sense of self, particularly in old age. We report on interviews with 8 older adults in their homes. Findings advance the understanding of self-defining memories and their possible cues with new insights into their relationship with self identities and cues’ specific qualities supporting richer emotional recall. Our findings led to several design implications such as novel technologies for curating self-defining memories and their cues, for embedding layered meaning in such cues across the lifespan, and for crafting them

Mental Health Resources: Reflection on AffecTech Platform

This positon paper presents an overview of the mental health resources developed within the AffecTech, an interdisciplinary European Commission-funded project supporting the wok of 15 PhD students in the space of digital interventions for affective health. It describes different types of targeted resources highlighting both traditional and innovative ones, our approach to developing them, and the challenges and opportunities that our work has uncovered

Thanatosensitive Design Exemplars for Embodied Experience of Nonattachment

This position paper highlights the less supported letting go aspect of the experience of loss and positions it within the HCI work on death and dying. It also argues for the value of embracing nonattachment and accepting impermanence and illustrate this with design exemplars piloted with 4 participants in Japan. Findings emphasize the value of the aesthetic, embodied experience to support the celebration of non-attachment

Keynote: HCI research and wellbeing

This talk provides outlines the disciplinary field of Human-Computer Interaction and provides an overview of my work on technologies for emotional wellbeing and mental health. The presentation places emphasis on the value the human body experiencing the world and describe research outcomes regarding digital disposal following life transitions marked by social loss, and design principles for affective health technologies. The talk concludes with an outline of the AffecTech: Personal technologies for affective health, an EC-funded Innovative Training Network and its interdisciplinary focus

Keynote: The ethics of big data for digital wellbeing and mental health

This talk offers an overview of work on digital wellbeing and mental health that I have done with my research group and external collaborators over the last several 10 years. It unpacks the topics such emotional memories, awareness, regulation and processing, illustrated with relevant design exemplars. This talk highlights my reflection on the ethical challenges regarding these personal technologies and in particular on their use to inform big data-based services. The talk concludes with a call for the importance of considering these ethical implications when designing personal mental health technologies

Digital Wellbeing:Evaluating Mandala Coloring Apps

Over the last decade there has been a significant growth of consumer products to support and promote both physical and mental wellbeing. The most common approach consists of smartphone applications that can be easily adopted in daily life interactions. Generally, these apps translate traditional approaches for wellbeing into the digital realm, yet many times overlooking the importance of tailored design for wellbeing. We explore this translation from physical to digital by using the example of mandala coloring, a historic practice used as an instrument for mental wellbeing. In this position paper, we discuss the concept of digital wellbeing drawing from our findings from an auto-ethnographic and heuristic evaluation of the 14 best rated iOS apps for mandala coloring in the UK. We believe that future digital experiences should be designed with the aim of enhancing human potential, hence we consider key features for positive interactions that lead to digital wellbeing

Emotions in HCI:Future Research Agenda

The significant HCI interest in emotions is reflected in a breath of technologies and design approaches. This paper offers a brief overview of my HCI work on emotions, with a reflection on the outstanding challenges that future HCI agenda in this space should focus on. The latter emphases the need for stronger theoretical framing of emotions for interaction design, multisensory interaction for capturing and representing emotions, richer set of wearable bio sensors and actuators, operationalization of emotion regulation theories, and increased sensitivity towards the ethics of working with emotions as a resource for design

Towards inclusive multisensory embodied experiences for affective and cognitive health

This paper presents a brief overview of my work on disability focusing on affective and cognitive health for embodied and multisensory interactions. This body of work is used to reflect on how senses can be better leveraged to empower the changes experienced by the dynamic self, and to open up conversations on how to design for inclusive interoceptive interactions

Problems in Practice:Critiquing on Thermochromic based Displays for Representing Skin Conductance

Increasing HCI work on affective technologies is using different materials to represent biosensory data. We explored several thermochromic, heating, and insulation materials to represents skin conductance data through abstract and ambiguous representations. We report on the development of three prototypes to represent emotional arousal using different colors, patterns, and shapes. By critically reflecting on our experience, we highlight problems in these prototypes and propose design guidelines to inform future research for representing arousal using thermochromic materials