A brief summary of CHIWORK 2024
25–27th June — Marta E. Cecchinato and I co-chaired CHIWORK 2024, hosted at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. CHIWORK is an annual symposium which aims to grow our understanding of how HCI and AI will support work in the future.
Facts & Figures
This year’s symposium featured 20 papers whose selection process was overseen by a technical program committee of 50 experts. Additionally, we received 12 submissions for the student consortium, showcased 7 posters and demos, and hosted 2 engaging conversations. The symposium attracted 50 in-person and 34 online participants from various countries, demonstrating a vibrant and diverse academic community.
Keynotes
The opening keynote was delivered by Prof. Mark Graham from the Oxford Internet Institute. In his talk, Prof. Graham explored the concept of AI as an “extraction machine”. He explained that AI draws in critical inputs of capital, power, natural resources, human labour, data, and collective intelligence, transforming these into statistical predictions and profits for AI companies. Using a case study of data annotation workers in Kenya (part of the Fairwork project), he illustrated how these workers are unable to extract meaningful value or concessions from the system.
The closing keynote was delivered by Dr Saiph Savage, Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and director of Civic AI Lab. Recognized as one of the 35 Innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review, her talk introduced the AI for Worker Collective Action Framework that emphasizes the need for worker centric technologies prioritizing their well-being.
Student Consortium, Posters, and Conversations
The first day kicked off with a morning session where Ph.D. students engaged in insightful discussions with mentors about their research. Thank you Duncan Brumby, Erin Solovey, and Koustuv Saha for creating such a nice mentoring experience.
The day concluded with the newly introduced “conversations track” (mirroring the CHIWORK online conversations), which is a track for provocations that blends new ideas with existing ones. Anjali Mohan from INDÉ talked about the impacts of tech and AI on sustainability and cities, particularly for blue collar workers. Duncan Brumby and Anna Cox talked about their alt.chi CHI 2024 paper and invited us to think about the impact that AI can have on our work if it suddenly made “intentional” mistakes (e.g., those ChatGPT “sometimes” does).
Poster sessions had a mix of in-person and online participation, featuring a number of topics including user control in brain-computer interfaces for virtual reality, the impact of AI on job decency and meaningfulness, understanding work monitoring technology, and AI-enhanced interaction in extended reality workspaces.
Paper Summaries
The papers were split into two days, across six sessions: AI & Wellbeing at Work, Inclusive and Accessible HCI, Future of Collaborative Work with(out) AI, Task, Time and Stress Management, AI in Professional Growth & Workplace, Service Sector & Job Market Dynamics— here’s the full list of papers. Thank you Sandy Gould, Carine Lallemand, and Mohit Jain for curating such a fantastic program. Shout out also to the authors who received honourable mentions and a best paper award.
The first session (AI & Wellbeing at Work) kicked off with a paper titled “Design Fiction on Capturing, Amplifying, and Instilling Happiness in Work” by Somanath et al., which is a design fiction for integrating happiness into workplace technologies. Deacon and Plumbley, in their paper titled “Working with AI Sound: Exploring the Future of Workplace AI Sound Technologies”, looked at AI-based sound technologies in the workplaces and how these technologies can monitor and control environmental sound to improve wellbeing and productivity — surfacing also a host of ethical concerns (e.g., privacy and trust) involved in these technologies. The session concluded with a paper titled “Teacher, Trainer, Counsel, Spy: How Generative AI can Bridge or Widen the Gaps in Worker- Centric Digital Phenotyping of Wellbeing” by Swain and Saha, who explored the potential of large language models (LLMs) in enhancing worker-centric wellbeing assessment tools (WATs).
The second session (Inclusive and Accessible HCI) discussed inclusivity and accessibility. Through the lens of feminist geographical perspective, Cho and Voida, in their paper titled “Toward More Inclusive and Accessible Futures of Remote Work Using a Feminist Geographical Lens”, explored the intersection of remote work and home life, especially highlighting how remote work affects individuals who shoulder domestic responsibilities. Burtscher and Gerling, in their paper titled “Neurodivergence and Work in Human-Computer Interaction: Mapping the Research Landscape”, identified a fragmented landscape in neurodivergence research in workplace settings, and argued for a justice-oriented perspective that centers on neurodivergent individuals and their right to self-determination. Finally, Hu et al., in their paper “Telepresence Robots for Remote Participation in Higher Education”, studied the use of telepresence robots for remote participation in higher education. Through a mixed-method study, the authors found that user trust in these robots is influenced by factors such as the robot’s performance, organizational credibility, and user familiarity.
The third session (Future of Collaborative Work with(out) AI) started with a paper titled “Drinking Chai with Your (AI) Programming Partner: Value Tensions in the Tokenization of Future Human-AI Collaborative Work” by Muller et al. The authors highlighted the complexities of human-AI collaboration using fictional narrative scenarios, demonstrating that design fictions as a basis for discussing value tensions and ethical concerns. Rinott and Shaer, in their paper titled “Temporal Aspects of Human-AI Collaborations for Work”, discussed differences in temporal attributes between humans and LLMs. He et al., in their paper “AI and the future of collaborative work: Group ideation with an LLM in a virtual canvas” (honourable mention 🏆), found that in a human-AI collaborative setting for ideation, participants valued AI’s ability to augment perspectives and streamline ideation but also raised concerns about potential risks such as loss of empathy, homogenization of ideas, and de-skilling. The session concluded with the paper titled “Trinity: A Design Fiction to Unravel the Present and Future Tensions in Professional Informatics and Awareness Support Tools” (honourable mention 🏆), which highlighted the potential benefits and ethical concerns of using self-tracking and awareness support tools through a fictional narrative.
The fourth session (Task, Time and Stress Management) began with the paper titled “Enhancing Stress Understanding through Team Reflection: Technology-Driven Insights in HighStress Training Scenarios” by Akiri et al. The authors introduced a collaborative tool designed to enhance stress awareness and management in high-stress work environments by integrating electrodermal activity (EDA) into video simulations to facilitate team-based reflection on stress-inducing events. Ahmetoglu et al., in their paper titled “Bridging the Gap Between Time Management Research and Task Management App Design: A Study on the Integration of Planning Fallacy Mitigation Strategies”, investigated the alignment between time management research and task management app design through a literature review and functionality analysis of 47 popular task management apps. The session concluded with a paper titled “Unpacking Task Management Tools, Values, and Worker Dynamics” by Hu et al. Through a large-scale survey, the authors explored the use and value of task management tools among knowledge workers, and how these tools align with users’ personality traits and job characteristics.
The fifth session (AI in Professional Growth & Workplace) kicked off with a paper titled “Opportunities and Challenges for AI-Based Support for Speech-Language Pathologists” (honourable mention 🏆) by Suh et al. The authors discussed challenges in AI technologies for supporting speech-language pathologists (SLPs) as well as how current AI can enhance various aspects of their practice, including streamlining documentation, session planning, and care coordination. The paper titled “Non-Expert Programmers in the Generative AI Future” by Feldman and Anderson, identified barriers to effectively use LLMs for coding, particularly for non-expert programmers. Along the same lines, Drosos et al., in their paper titled “It’s like a rubber duck that talks back”: Understanding Generative AI-Assisted Data Analysis Workflows through a Participatory Prompting Study”, found that non-expert users faced difficulties with query formulation, specifying context, and verifying results of LLMs for supporting data analysis.
The final session (Service Sector & Job Market Dynamics) started with my presentation of our team’s (at Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK) paper titled “The Geography of U.S. Companies that Care About their Employees” by Sen et al. We analyzed more than 350K employee Glassdoor reviews from 104 major U.S. companies, and found that U.S. states with companies emphasizing on employee wellbeing tend to be wealthier, more equal, and more attractive to the creative class, compared to those focusing primarily on financial benefits. Kingsley et al., in their paper titled “‘Your Duties Are To Sweep A Floor Remotely’: Low Information Quality in Job Advertisements is a Barrier to Low-Income Job-Seekers’ Successful Use of Digital Platforms”, investigated the challenges low-income job-seekers face due to low information quality in job advertisements on digital platforms. Job-seekers frequently encounter ads with missing, unclear, or misleading information, unethical or illegal job postings, and scams, or develop heuristics to navigate these ads. Drouet and Lallemand, in their paper titled “Empathy in Service Design: Prompting Employees’ Empathy with Users through Love and Breakup Declarations”, investigated the effectiveness of using emotional and engaging user insights (“love and breakup declarations”) to foster empathy among service employees. Finally, the paper titled “Public Technologies Transforming Work of the Public and the Public Sector” (best paper 🏆🏆🏆) by Kim et al., investigated the impact of the digital platform OneStop on the work practices of public sector employees and external stakeholders, revealing inequitable practices for local business owners, and highlighting tensions between standardization, equality, and equity in technology transitions.
Now, over to Shadan Sadeghian and Abdallah El Ali for hosting CHIWORK 2025 in Amsterdam, Netherlands 🌷🚲🌉.
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