Generative AI systems are increasingly capable of expressing emotions through text, imagery, voice, and video. Effective emotional expression is particularly relevant for AI systems designed to provide care, support mental health, or promote wellbeing through emotional interactions. This research aims to enhance understanding of the alignment between AI-expressed emotions and human perception. How can we assess whether an AI system successfully conveys a specific emotion? To address this question, we designed a method to measure the alignment between emotions expressed by generative AI and human perceptions. Three generative image models—DALL-E 2, DALL-E 3, and Stable Diffusion v1—were used to generate 240 images expressing five positive and five negative emotions in both humans and robots. Twenty-four participants recruited via Prolific rated the alignment of AI-generated emotional expressions with a string of text (e.g., “A robot expressing the emotion of amusement”). Our results suggest that generative AI models can produce emotional expressions that align well with human emotions; however, the degree of alignment varies significantly depending on the AI model and the specific emotion expressed. We analyze these variations to identify areas for future improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings on the design of emotionally expressive AI systems.

INTRODUCTION: With Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) representing an enormous public health challenge, there is a need to support individuals in learning about and addressing their modifiable risk factors (e.g., diet, sleep, and physical activity) to prevent or delay dementia onset. However, there is limited availability for evidence-informed tools that deliver both quality education and support for positive behavior change such as by increasing self-efficacy and personalizing goal setting. Tools that address the needs of Latino/a, at higher risk for ADRD, are even more scarce. METHODS: We established a multidisciplinary team to develop the Healthy Actions and Lifestyles to Avoid Dementia or Hispanos y el ALTo a la Demencia (HALT-AD) program, a bilingual online personalized platform to educate and motivate participants to modify their risk factors for dementia. Grounded in social cognitive theory and following a cultural adaptation framework with guidance from a community advisory board, we developed HALT-AD iteratively through several cycles of rapid prototype development, user-centered evaluation through pilot testing and community feedback, and refinement. RESULTS: Using this iterative approach allowed for more than 100 improvements in the content, features, and design of HALT-AD to improve the program's usability and alignment with the interests and educational/behavior change support needs of its target audience. Illustrative examples of how pilot data and community feedback informed improvements are provided. DISCUSSION: Developing HALT-AD iteratively required learning through trial and error and flexibility in workflows, contrary to traditional program development methods that rely on rigid, pre-set requirements. In addition to efficacy trials, studies are needed to identify mechanisms for effective behavior change, which might be culturally specific. Flexible and personalized educational offerings are likely to be important in modifying risk trajectories in ADRD.

This workshop explores the transformative potential of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in design research. GenAI, capable of creating new content such as images, text, music, video, and code, raises important questions about authorship, agency, and design practice. Inspired by Roland Barthes’ "The Death of the Author," this workshop examines how GenAI reshapes design research roles and methods. Key topics include best practices, ethical considerations, knowledge generation, and collaboration patterns between human and AI creatives.

Building on themes identified in the successful DIS 2023 workshop, this 2-day event invites designers and researchers to present completed projects, works-in-progress, and theoretical provocations. The structure allows time for both presentations and in-depth discussions, aiming to develop an online resource library and a collaborative publication. The workshop seeks to advance the discourse on GenAI, addressing its challenges and opportunities in design research.

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) permeates every facet of our lives, the imperative to steer AI development toward enhancing human wellbeing has never been more critical. However, the development of such positive AI poses substantial challenges due to the current lack of mature methods for addressing the complexities that designing AI for wellbeing poses. This article presents and evaluates the positive AI design method aimed at addressing this gap. The method provides a human-centered process for translating wellbeing aspirations into concrete interventions. First, we explain the method’s key steps: (1) contextualizing, (2) operationalizing, (3) designing, and (4) implementing supported by (5) continuous measurement for iterative feedback cycles. We then present a multi-case study where novice designers applied the method, revealing strengths and weaknesses related to efficacy and usability. Next, an expert evaluation study assessed the quality of the case studies’ outcomes, rating them moderately high for feasibility, desirability, and plausibility of achieving intended wellbeing benefits. Together, these studies provide preliminary validation of the method’s ability to improve AI design, while identifying opportunities for enhancement. Building on these insights, we propose adaptations for future iterations of the method, such as the inclusion of wellbeing-related heuristics, suggesting promising avenues for future work. This human-centered approach shows promise for realizing a vision of “AI for wellbeing” that does not just avoid harm, but actively promotes human flourishing.

The brain is an incredibly complex organ capable of perceiving and interpreting a wide range of stimuli. Depending on individual brain chemistry and wiring, different people decipher the same stimuli differently, conditioned by their life experiences and environment. This study’s objective is to decode how the CNN models capture and learn these differences and similarities in brain waves using three publicly available EEG datasets. While being exposed to a variety of media stimuli, each brain produces unique brain waves with some similarity to other neural signals to the same stimuli. However, to figure out whether our neural models are able to interpret and distinguish the common and unique signals correctly, we employed three widely used CNN architectures to interpret brain signals. We extracted the pre-processed versions of the EEG data and identified the dependency of time windows on feature learning for song and movie classification tasks, along with analyzing the performance of models on each dataset. While the minimum length snippet of 5 s was enough for the personalized model, the maximum length snippet of 30 s proved to be the most efficient in the case of the generalized model. The usage of a deeper architecture, i.e., DeepConvNet was found to be the best for extracting personalized and generalized features with the NMED-T and SEED datasets. However, EEGNet gave a better performance on the NMED-H dataset. Maximum accuracy of 69%, 100%, and 56% was achieved in the case of the personalized model on NMED-T, NMED-H, and SEED datasets, respectively. However, the maximum accuracies dropped to 18%, 37%, and 14% on NMED-T, NMED-H, and SEED datasets, respectively, in the generalized model. We achieved a 5% improvement over the state of the art while examining shared experiences on NMED-T. This marked the outof-distribution generalization problem and signified the role of individual differences in media perception, thus emphasizing the development of personalized models along with generalized models with shared features at a certain level.

Music recommendation systems struggle with predicting the aesthetic responses of listeners based solely on acoustic characteristics, which are dependent on the listener's perception. This research correlates acoustic music features with brain responses to report the neural aesthetic hypothesis that the intensity of an aesthetic experience can be decoded based on the degree of correlation to brain responses. We employ hybrid encoding-decoding model (Canonical Correlation Analysis) to identify music features that maximally covary with brain responses. EEG signals of 20 participants are analyzed while they listen to 12 songs and mark their enjoyment on a scale of 1 to 5. Firstly, 18 acoustic features are extracted from music signals and transformed into the first principal component (PC1). In addition, two other features used for analysis are root mean square (RMS) and Spectral Flux (Flux). The first principal canonical component (CC1) with PC1 determines significant (p<0.05) evidence of correlating with brain responses that increasing correlation reflects increased enjoyment. We consider each participant's average CC1 values and enjoyment rating over all 12 songs, followed by plotting a correlation graph to decode the relationship. We observe a significant (p<0.05) positive linear correlation with increasing CC1 scores of PC1 features against increased enjoyment rating. PC1 shows the maximum Pearson correlation (r = 0.48, p = 0.03). In addition, we segregate the brain responses based on low (1,2) and high (3,4) enjoyment ratings and find that higher CC1 values correspond to brain responses of high enjoyment and low values to low enjoyment in all three features. Our experiments reveal that Canonical correlation reflects music-induced pleasure and can be employed in EEG-enabled headphones to decode the user experience, leading to better recommendations.

Introduction: Designing artificial intelligence (AI) to support health and wellbeing is an important and broad challenge for technologists, designers, and policymakers. Drawing upon theories of AI and cybernetics, this article offers a design framework for designing intelligent systems to optimize human wellbeing. We focus on the production of wellbeing information feedback loops in complex community settings, and discuss the case study of My Wellness Check, an intelligent system designed to support the mental health and wellbeing needs of university students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The basis for our discussion is the community-led design of My Wellness Check, an intelligent system that supported the mental health and wellbeing needs of university students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our system was designed to create an intelligent feedback loop to assess community wellbeing needs and to inform community action. This article provides an overview of our longitudinal assessment of students and staff wellbeing (n = 20,311) across two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: We further share the results of a controlled experiment (n = 1,719) demonstrating the enhanced sensitivity and user experience of our context-sensitive wellbeing assessment. Discussion: Our approach to designing “AI for community wellbeing,” may generalize to the systematic improvement of human wellbeing in other human-computer systems for large-scale governance (e.g., schools, businesses, NGOs, platforms). The two main contributions are: 1) showcasing a simple way to draw from AI theory to produce more intelligent human systems, and 2) introducing a human-centered, community-led approach that may be beneficial to the field of AI.

Background: Readability metrics provide us with an objective and efficient way to assess the quality of educational texts. We can use the readability measures for finding assessment items that are difficult to read for a given grade level. Hard-to-read math word problems can put some students at a disadvantage if they are behind in their literacy learning. Despite their math abilities, these students can perform poorly on difficult-to-read word problems because of their poor reading skills. Less readable math tests can create equity issues for students who are relatively new to the language of assessment. Less readable test items can also affect the assessment's construct validity by partially measuring reading comprehension. Objectives: This study shows how large language models help us improve the readability of math assessment items. Methods: We analysed 250 test items from grades 3 to 5 of EngageNY, an open-source curriculum. We used the GPT-3 AI system to simplify the text of these math word problems. We used text prompts and the few-shot learning method for the simplification task. Results and Conclusions: On average, GPT-3 AI produced output passages that showed improvements in readability metrics, but the outputs had a large amount of noise and were often unrelated to the input. We used thresholds over text similarity metrics and changes in readability measures to filter out the noise. We found meaningful simplifications that can be given to item authors as suggestions for improvement. Takeaways: GPT-3 AI is capable of simplifying hard-to-read math word problems. The model generates noisy simplifications using text prompts or few-shot learning methods. The noise can be filtered using text similarity and readability measures. The meaningful simplifications AI produces are sound but not ready to be used as a direct replacement for the original items. To improve test quality, simplifications can be suggested to item authors at the time of digital question authoring.

This one day workshop will explore the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in design research and practice. Generative technologies are developing rapidly and many designers are using them. Yet, there remains little published work on the use of GenAI in design. Our goal is to not only showcase the potential of GenAI for design, but to engage in discussions of its shortcomings and opportunities as they have been already articulated by scholars. By synthesizing both published and unpublished works, we will develop best practices, ethical considerations, and future research directions for the use of GenAI in design. We will explore a range of topics and themes, including leveraging the characteristics of GenAI for design, mapping the diverse applications of GenAI in design, envisioning a framework for design, and guiding future work on GenAI in design research. Ultimately, we hope to provide a roadmap for the integration of GenAI into the design research process and to encourage designers and researchers to explore the potential of GenAI in a thoughtful and deliberate way.

Electroencephalography (EEG) enables online monitoring brain activity, which can be used for neurofeedback. One of the growing applications of EEG neurofeedback is to facilitate meditation practice. Specifically, EEG neurofeedback can be used to alert participants whenever they get distracted during meditation practice based on changes in their brain activity. In this study, we develop machine learning models to detect moments of distraction (due to mind wandering or drowsiness) during meditation practice using EEG signals. We use EEG data of 24 participants while performing a breath focus meditation with experience sampling and extract twelve linear and nonlinear EEG features. Features are fed to ten supervised machine learning models to classify (i) Breath Focus Awake (BFA) vs Breath Focus Sleepy (BFS), and (ii) BFA vs Mind Wandering (MW). We observe that the linear features achieve a maximum accuracy of 86% for classifying awake (BFA) and sleepy (BFS), whereas non-linear features have more predictive ability for classifying between BFA and MW with a maximum accuracy of nearly 78%. In addition, visualization of unsupervised t-SNE lower embeddings supports the evidence of distinct clusters for each condition. Overall our results show that machine learning algorithms can successfully identify periods of distraction during meditation practice in novice meditators based on linear and non-linear features of the EEG signal. Consequently, our results have important implications for the development of mobile EEG neurofeedback protocols aimed at facilitating meditation practice.

Entrainment is a phenomenon of phase or temporal matching of one system with that of another system. Human neural activity has been shown to resonate with external auditory stimuli. When we enjoy a piece of music, there is a resonance of brain responses with auditory signals. The crux of music cognition is based on this resonance of musical frequencies with intrinsic neural frequencies. It has also been demonstrated that the neural activities are synchronized across participants while listening to music, shown by high inter-subject correlation. In this work, we use this fact to predict the drumbeat a participant listens to based on their EEG response to the drumbeat. We also tested whether we could train on a smaller dataset and test with the rest of the dataset. We generated a frequency∗channel plot and fed it to a CNN model to predict drumbeat with a classification accuracy of 97% for 60-20-20 (train-dev-test) data split protocol and 94% accuracy for 20-20-60 data split. We also got 100% classification accuracy for predicting participants for both the data split protocols.

Learning engineering adds tools and processes to learning platforms to support improvement research. One kind of tool is A/B testing-common in large software companies and also represented academically at conferences like the Annual Conference on Digital Experimentation (CODE). A number of A/B testing systems focused on educational apps have arisen recently, including UpGrade and E-TRIALS. A/B testing can help improve educational platforms, yet challenging issues in education go beyond the generic paradigm. In response, a number of of digital learning platforms is opening their systems to learning-improvement research by instructors and/or third-party researchers, with specific supports necessary for education-specific research designs. This workshop will explore how A/B testing in educational contexts is different, how learning platforms are opening up new possibilities, and how these empirical approaches can be used to drive powerful gains in student learning. It will also discuss forthcoming opportunities for funding to conduct platform-enabled learning research.

Advances in neurotechnology have enhanced and simplified our ability to research brain activity with low-cost and effective equipment. One such scalable and noninvasive technique is Electroencephalography (EEG), which detects and records electrical brain activity. Brain activity recognition is one of the emerging problems as EEG wearables become more readily available. Our research has modeled EEG signals to classify three states (i) music listening, (ii) movie watching, and (iii) meditating. The datasets incorporating the brain signals induced while performing these activities are NMED-T for music listening, SEED for movie watching, and VIP_Y_HYT for meditating. EEG activity is transformed into deep representation using a convolutional neural network comprising three different types of 2D convolutions: Temporal, Spatial, and Separable, to capture dependencies and extract high-level features from the data. The Depthwise Convolution function is responsible for learning spatial filters within each temporal convolution, and combining these spatial filters across all temporal bands optimally is learned by the Separable Convolutions. EEGNet and EEGNet-SSVEP are specially designed for EEG Signal Processing and Classification, and the DeepConvNet has incorporated more convolution layers. Our finding demonstrates that increasing the number of layers in the Network provided a higher accuracy of 99.94% using DeepConvNet. In contrast, the accuracy of EEGNet and EEGNet-SSVEP resulted in 85.63% and 75.76%, respectively.

Naturalistic music typically contains repetitive musical patterns that are present throughout the song. These patterns form a signature, enabling effortless song recognition. We investigate whether neural responses corresponding to these repetitive patterns also serve as a signature, enabling recognition of later song segments on learning initial segments. We examine EEG encoding of naturalistic musical patterns employing the NMED-T and MUSIN-G datasets. Experiments reveal that (a) training machine learning classifiers on the initial 20s song segment enables accurate prediction of the song from the remaining segments; (b) β and γ band power spectra achieve optimal song classification, and (c) listener-specific EEG responses are observed for the same stimulus, characterizing individual differences in music perception.

Technology aided learning is becoming increasingly popular. In some of the countries, online learning has taken over for traditional classroom-based learning. With this, educational data is being generated in vast amounts. Knowing the potential of this data, many education stakeholders have turned to evidence-based decision making to improve the learning outcomes of the students. EdOptimize platform provides extensive actionable insights for a range of stakeholders through a suite of 3 data dashboards, each one intended for a certain type of stakeholder. We have designed a conceptual model and data architecture that can generalize across many different edtech implementation scenarios. Our source code is available at https://github.com/PlaypowerLabs/EdOptimize

Resonance, a powerful and pervasive phenomenon, appears to play a major role in human interactions. This article investigates the relationship between the physical mechanism of resonance and the human experience of resonance, and considers possibilities for enhancing the experience of resonance within human–robot interactions. We first introduce resonance as a widespread cultural and scientific metaphor. Then, we review the nature of “sympathetic resonance” as a physical mechanism. Following this introduction, the remainder of the article is organized in two parts. In part one, we review the role of resonance (including synchronization and rhythmic entrainment) in human cognition and social interactions. Then, in part two, we review resonance-related phenomena in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). These two reviews serve as ground for the introduction of a design strategy and combinatorial design space for shaping resonant interactions with robots and AI. We conclude by posing hypotheses and research questions for future empirical studies and discuss a range of ethical and aesthetic issues associated with resonance in human–robot interactions.

Learning engineering adds tools and processes to learning platforms to support improvement research. One kind of tool is A/B testing, which is common in large software companies and also represented academically at conferences like the Annual Conference on Digital Experimentation (CODE). A number of A/B testing systems focused on educational applications have arisen recently, including UpGrade and E-TRIALS. A/B testing can be part of the puzzle of how to improve educational platforms, and yet challenging issues in education go beyond the generic paradigm. For example, the importance of teachers and instructors to learning means that students are not only connecting with software as individuals, but also as part of a shared classroom experience. Further, learning in topics like mathematics can be highly dependent on prior learning, and thus A or B may not be better overall, but only in interaction with prior knowledge. In response, a set of learning platforms is opening their systems to improvement research by instructors and/or third-party researchers, with specific supports necessary for education-specific research designs. This workshop will explore how A/B testing in educational contexts is different, how learning platforms are opening up new possibilities, and how these empirical approaches can be used to drive powerful gains in student learning. It will also discuss forthcoming opportunities for funding to conduct platform-enabled learning research.

Focusing on human capacity to design, the volume's final chapter draws attention to the fascinating role imagination can play in human life. The relationship between human consciousness and the evolution of the species continues to captivate and puzzle scholars. By revisiting the dialogue between consciousness and evolution, the authors demonstrate how enigmas often necessitate dynamic collaboration between sciences, arts, and humanities. Archaeology provides evidence that the drive for diverse conscious experiences is no new phenomenon, while neuroscience illuminates the ways in which altered states of consciousness can enhance the variety of mental experience. Art, design, and cognitive technologies can build on this picture by providing innovative ways of exploring conscious experience. Inspired by insights from a range of academic disciplines and reflecting on personal experience, this chapter proposes the role of ‘harmony’ as another enigmatic angle of research with potential to shed further light on the functioning both of human society and of the human mind.

One interpretation of breathing exercise is to enforce mind-body harmony, when someone feels well and healthy, different organs of our body function harmoniously. One dysfunctional organ may disturb the resonating mechanism across multiple organs. There are different breathing techniques, and recent scientific evidence encourages understanding the neural correlates of breathing. This research investigates breathing exercises at two paces: Rapid and Deep Slow using neural signals. We collect Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of 14 participants performing breathing tasks. EEG signals are primarily decomposed in frequency bands that designate different cognitive functions. We extract six primary frequency bands, including delta (1-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), low beta (13-20 Hz), high beta (21-30 Hz), and gamma (30-40 Hz). Two different techniques are utilized to report the findings encompassing power spectral analysis and employing machine learning classifiers to discriminate features among different stages of inhalation and exhalation with the significance of different frequencies bands. Lowered beta power in Slow Deep breathing is observed compared to Rapid Breathing, which may suggest increased relaxation, calmness, and anxiety reduction. Differences between the two conditions observed in the frontoparietal cortex may be attributed to differences in voluntary control between the two tasks. We observed classification accuracy of 72 % using low beta between Rapid and Deep Slow breathing using Decision Tree. Several interesting findings are observed in different scalp regions suggesting future direction for further investigation. This study contributes to the understanding of neural signatures for different breathing practices. The implication of this research in health care is to design personalized therapies and to design better breathing mobile applications for daily use.

Classical theories of harmony have been used to explain phenomena like beauty, happiness, health, virtue, pleasure, peace, and even ecological sustainability. With the intent of making these theories more accessible to designers, this article reviews the conception of harmony from about 500 BCE to the present. It begins with a brief overview of harmony in classical Chinese and Greek philosophy. Then it examines the role of harmony in the renaissance, the scientific revolution, and the early modern period across topics in aesthetics, ethics, physics, politics, and economics. Finally, turning to the 20th century, this article highlights the conceptual function of harmony in psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and design. This synthesis concludes with a review of applications and implications for contemporary designers. An essential conclusion of this article is that harmony involves the integration of diversity into a greater whole; harmony is not pure agreement or “sameness.” Overall, we suggest that classical principles of harmony might serve as a theoretical framework to help designers develop a more sustainable and vibrant vision of the future.