Hayoun Noh

Many spatial interaction systems privilege visual representation, leaving other sensory modalities underexplored as design materials. This paper presents an interactive research prototype and its evaluation, examining how sound can support memory evocation, place attachment, and social connection within a virtual representation of a shared space. The prototype combines a navigable three-dimensional environment with location-specific ambient sounds and spoken narratives through a two-stage process. First, participatory workshops were conducted with members of a lab community to collect meaningful sonic memories and associate sounds with the corresponding locations in the virtual environment. Second, the resulting audiovisual prototype was evaluated through a controlled study with two conditions: visual-only interaction and audiovisual interaction. The evaluation combined quantitative measures of the autobiographical memory experience, place attachment, and social connection with qualitative accounts of the user experience. The results show that audiovisual interaction was associated with stronger emotional engagement and perceived connection. Qualitative findings further illustrate how everyday sounds supported a sense of shared presence and continuity across non-overlapping occupants of the same space.

Qualitative interviewing is a foundational method in Human Computer-Interaction (HCI) research and a common component of methods education. Yet interview instruction is often framed around procedural competencies, developing protocols, minimizing bias, and ensuring ethical compliance, while the relational tensions that shape real interview encounters remain largely implicit. This provocation argues that interviews are not neutral data-gathering practices but socially situated interactions co-constructed through relational dynamics. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from qualitative methodology, feminist epistemology, and ethics-of-care research, we synthesize three relational dimensions of interview practice. These include power and positionality, emotional work, and ethics-in-practice, and demonstrate how interviews inherently involve negotiation, interpretation, and responsibility that exceed procedural models of training. Building on this synthesis, we propose pedagogical approaches for HCI education that make relational work explicit and teachable, including reflexive exercises that surface positionality and interactional dynamics, case-based analyses to cultivate emotional literacy, researcher-centered protocols, and structured rehearsals for ethical decision-making. Our aim is not to replace procedural instruction but to expand it by framing interviewing as both a technical and relational practice, inviting educators to reconsider how methods are taught and supported while bridging the gap between the formal curriculum of training and the hidden relational work that unfolds in practice.

Decentralised social media (DSM) platforms such as Mastodon offer community-governed alternatives to corporate social networks but place substantial governance burdens on volunteer operators. As interest grows in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to support this work, little is known about whether DSM operators want AI, what roles they consider appropriate, and what governance boundaries they require. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 operators across Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Lemmy, Pleroma, and Funkwhale, using generative feature probes and speculative scenarios to explore their perceptions of AI. Operators rejected AI as an autonomous actor, instead envisioning it as governance infrastructure that provides contextual intelligence, supports cross-instance coordination, and sustains community and moderator well-being. They also articulated strict boundaries rooted in DSM values, including human accountability, reversibility, transparency, community-centred configuration, and strong data-governance constraints. We contribute empirical insights and design implications for AI compatible with decentralised, federated social media.

The experience of leaving North Korea and navigating life as an undocumented person in China presents significant challenges for those seeking refuge in South Korea. This paper presents findings from an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic study with five newly arrived North Korean defector women in their first year in South Korea. We closely examine how digital technologies are intertwined with their everyday adaptation: how newcomers engage with digital systems, what frictions emerge, and how past experiences of living invisibly shape these interactions. This study contributes to the HCI community by (1) offering an empirically grounded, underrepresented account of early-stage digital resettlement among North Korean defectors; (2) conceptualizing first-time digital identity as a site of acute vulnerability shaped by past experiences and long histories of marginalization; and (3) proposing temporal, context-sensitive, self-reliance–oriented approaches to digital adaptation that supports vulnerable newcomers’ sociotechnical transition into a new society.