It’s that time of year again when many researchers in the field of human-computer interaction turn their attention to the annual CHI conference, which in 2026 is being held in Barcelona, Spain, between the 12th and 17th of April.

As is also an annual tradition, we provide an overview of the contributions being made by the Institute for Design Informatics and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, beyond our institute, to the conference. This year, we’re excited that University of Edinburgh researchers have had 22 papers accepted to CHI 2026, and a further 14 contributions in the form of posters, workshops, panels, and presentations of journal papers.

The type of work being presented this year is hugely diverse – ranging from work tracing the adoption of generative AI by artists to prototypes of novel decentralized attribution systems, to empirical studies of the relations between religion and misinformation on social media, to systematic reviews of the concept of care in the HCI community – and more! What brings this myriad of work together, though, is a commitment to putting people at the heart of technology design.

Congratulations to all of those involved in this work – this is a hugely valuable body of knowledge contributed to the field of HCI!

We’ve compiled a list of accepted contributions below, most of which should be accessible via open access once the conference starts on the 12th of April.

Papers:

Augmenting Clinical Decision-Making with an Interactive and Interpretable AI Copilot: A Real-World User Study with Clinicians in Nephrology and Obstetrics
Yinghao Zhu, Dehao Sui, Zixiang Wang, Xuning Hu, Lei Gu, Yifan Qi, Tianchen Wu, Ling Wang, Yuan Wei, Wen Tang, Zhihan Cui, Yasha Wang, Lequan Yu, Ewen M Harrison, Junyi Gao, Liantao Ma

Behind the Meme: Understanding User Experiences with Memes on Social Media
Yuqi Niu, Dilara Keküllüoğlu, Weidong Qiu, Nadin Kokciyan

Caring about Care: A Meta-Narrative Review of HCI Research on Care
Zixuan Wang, Yuanrong Guo, Eilidh Bowman, Yuxiang Zhai, Xinhuan Shu, Shengchen Zhang, Karey Helms, Tara Capel, John Vines

Characterizing Scam-Driven Human Trafficking Across Chinese Borders and Online Community Responses on RedNote
Jiamin Zheng, Yue Deng, Jessica Chen, Shujun Li, Yixin Zou, Jingjie Li
*BEST PAPER AWARD WINNER*

Chewing It Over: Revealing Tensions And New Directions For More-Than-Human Relational Ethics Through Speculative Design
Yuning Chen, Adam Frank, Larissa Pschetz

DancingBox: A Lightweight MoCap System for Character Animation from Physical Proxies
Haocheng Yuan, Adrien Bousseau, Hao Pan, Lei Zhong, Changjian Li
*HONOURABLE MENTION AWARD WINNDER*

Digital Companionship: Overlapping Uses of AI Companions and AI Assistants
Aikaterina Manoli, Janet V.T. Pauketat, Ali Ladak, Hayoun Noh, Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Jacy Reese Anthis

Digital territories: Entwining technology with Indigenous knowledges
Carlos Guerrero Millan, Radio Tosepan Limakxtum, Bettina Nissen, Larissa Pschetz

ElectroGrasp: Electrotactile Aids for Visually Impaired Individuals in Anticipatory Planning and Control of Grasp
Hechuan Zhang, Rufei Song, Ruoyan Liu, Shengsheng Jiang, Xiaohui Tan, Tianren Luo, Yulin Jin, Teng Han, Hongnan Lin, Feng Tian

From Answer Givers to Design Mentors: Guiding LLMs with the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model
Yongsu Ahn, Lejun R Liao, Benjamin Bach, Nam Wook Kim

From Blank Box to Creative Partner: Designing Ecological On-Ramps for First-Time AI Artists
Charlotte Bird, Caterina Moruzzi, Ewa Luger

From Squishing to Meaning: Exploring Data Physicalization Through Children’s Embodied Experiences
Andres Alberto Ramirez Duque, Dushani Perera, Dorsey B. Kaufmann, Ayça Atabey, Uta Hinrichs, Andrew Manches, Stephen Anthony Brewster

HCI for Agroecology: Agri-Tech between Grassroots and Capitalism
Sebastian Prost, Clara Crivellaro, Henry Collingham, John Vines, Nick Taylor, john thackara, Jon Rogers

Holding MenstaRay: Expressing Menstrual Pain through Tactile and Knitted Soft Robotic Interactions
Yixun Li, Mingke Wang, Imogen A Young, Rebecca Stewart, Bettina Nissen

LLooM: Weaving Stories and Probing Experiences of Language Technologies
Kimberley Paradis, Lachlan D Urquhart, Tara Capel

ORAgen Fables: Advancing the Design and Management of Content Attribution
Frances Liddell, Billy Dixon, Ella Tallyn, Caterina Moruzzi, Evan Morgan, Chris Elsden

Personal Health Data Communication: Techniques, Tensions, and Implications for Design from a Clinician Perspective
Sarah Dunn, Tara Capel, Areti Manataki, Benjamin Bach

‘The plan is just survival’: Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment
Shivani Kapania, Tianling Yang, Nuredin Ali, Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, Milagros Miceli, Alex S Taylor, Sarah E Fox

“God says we are right!”: The Interplay between Religion and Propaganda on Arabic Social Media
Mahmoud Fawzi, Björn Ross, Walid Magdy

Silencing & Surging: A Layered Ecology of Algorithmic Repression and Resistance in the Gaza Escalations
Houda Elmimouni, Sarah Rüller, Yarden Skop, Norah Abokhodair, Konstantin Kosta Aal, Tashfia Fatema, Mahmoud Fawzi, Ghadeer A. Awwad, Walid Magdy, Volker Wulf, Peter Tolmie

Speculating with Older Adults in HCI: A Scoping Review
Yuxiang Zhai, Chris Elsden, Luhua Chen, Jihong Jeung, John Vines

Speculative Performance: Staging Intergenerational Speculation to Explore Critical Literacies of Technological Futures
Tara Capel, Jingjie Li, Kimberley Paradis, Peter Bentley, Ryan McKay, Rupert Goodwins, Willy Barr, Clare Duffy

Posters:

Designing with Tensions: Reframing Smart Home Ecosystem UX through In-the-Wild Evidence
Shuang He, Yueyan Liu, Zixuan Wang, Xiao XUE, Xu Zhang, Lei Shi, Xinyi Fu

From Seeing it to Experiencing it: Interactive Evaluation of Intersectional Voice Bias in Human–AI Speech Interaction
Shree Harsha Bokkahalli Satish, Maria Teleki, Christoph Minixhofer, Ondrej Klejch, Peter Bell, Eva Szekely

How Can We Make Precision Medicine (PM) Contestable? Provotyping for PM Service Ecosystems
Yuhao Sun, Albert Tenesa, John Vines

MathTales: Designing and Studying an AI Agent-Based Story Generation System for Teaching Mathematical Problem Solving to Children
Kejia Zhang, Yuqi Niu, Mona Y. Alqassim, Andrina L Inglis, Charaka Palansuriya, Aurora Constantin

Public Libraries as Third Places: Computer Usage Patterns of a German Public Library System
Maria K Wolters, Mathilde Linnenberg, Dennis Lindt

The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech
Alice Ross, Nina Markl, Catherine Lai, Lauren A. Hall-Lew

Unpacking Children’s Perceptions of Their Digital Money Futures
Valentina Andries, Caroline McKinley, Harvey Everson, Cara Wilson, Susan Lechelt, Chris Elsden

Demos:

Slide.Bingo: From Passive Attendance to Active Listening Through AI-Generated Bingo
Kyle Montague, Dan Jackson, Pamela Briggs, Reem Talhouk, Luís P. Carvalho, Lauren Scott, Shaun Lawson, Austin L. Toombs, Colin M. Gray, Paul C Parsons, Hugo Nicolau, Ana Cristina Pires, Tiago Guerreiro, John Vines

Panels:

Biodesign x AI: Interactions in the Algorithmic Wet Lab
Raphael Kim, Yuning Chen, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Jiwei Zhou, Orkan Telhan, Iohanna Nicenboim, Martyn Dade-Robertson, Margherita Pevere, Zoë Robaey

Workshops:

Child-Centred AI-Mediated Collaborative Agency by Design
Vidminas Vizgirda, Isobel Voysey, Zaki Pauzi, Najme Babai, Eva Durall Gazulla, Jane Waite, Ayça Atabey, Sarah Turner, Manolis Mavrikis, Jun Zhao

Configuring Money as an Interface
Chris Elsden, Belén Barros Pena, Helena Lyhme, Jeff Brozena, Daniel Mwesigwa, Chris Speed, Jofish Kaye, John Vines

Human Expertise for AI Red-Teaming and Scalable Evaluation
Alice Qian, Srravya Chandhiramowuli, Laura Dabbish, Hong Shen, Alex S Taylor, Ding Wang, Theodora Skeadas, Bolor-Erdene Jagdagdorj

The Quality of Speculation: Common Ground for Speculative Design in Human-Computer Interaction?
Ronda Ringfort-Felner, Judith Dörrenbächer, Chris Elsden, James H Auger, James Pierce, Richmond Y. Wong, Marc Hassenzahl

Journals:

The Partner Modelling Questionnaire: A Validated Self-Report Measure of Perceptions toward Machines as Dialogue Partners
Philip R Doyle, Iona Gessinger, Justin Edwards, Leigh Clark, Odile Dumbleton, Diego Garaialde, Daniel Rough, Anna Bleakley, Holly Branigan, Benjamin R. Cowan

* CHI – it’s full title being the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and pronounced “kai“ (rhymes with “hi” or “sky”) – is the premier venue for research in the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interaction. The 2026 conference has 5000+ registrations, and recieved over 6700 submissions, of which 25% were accepted.