Track Chairs

Abhishek Behl, Keele Business School, Keele University, UK. Email: a.behl@keele.ac.uk

Agnessa Spanellis, University of Edinburgh, UK. Email: agnessa.spanellis@ed.ac.uk

Yuanyuan Lai, School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Email: Yuanyuan.Lai@rhul.ac.uk

Muhammad Irfan Khalid, Department of Information Systems, University of Agder, Norway. Email: muhammad.i.khalid@uia.no

Track Call

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is undergoing a substantial shift. Once centred primarily on usability, interfaces, and task performance, the field now addresses a wider set of interactions between people and intelligent, immersive, embodied, and increasingly autonomous technologies. The thematic direction of this track recognizes that HCI research today spans human-centered AI, extended reality, spatial and multisensory interaction, digital and societal twins, ubiquitous computing, and cross-device ecosystems, while also engaging with broader concerns of trust, inclusion, sustainability, safety, and governance. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have accelerated the diversification of interaction modalities. Text-based agents, voice assistants, embodied digital humans, humanoid interfaces, and metaverse environments are no longer marginal developments; they are becoming central to how users encounter digital systems across work, education, healthcare, public services, and consumer settings. These developments raise fundamental questions about how interactive systems should be designed to support trust without manipulation, autonomy without opacity, and personalisation without compromising privacy, accountability, or fairness.

The track themes place responsible AI at the center of contemporary HCI inquiry. HCI is no longer only concerned with enabling efficient interaction; it is increasingly concerned with shaping responsible relationships among humans, data, algorithms, organisations, and environments. This includes issues of explainability, transparency, value-sensitive design, governance, and the societal consequences of automation, particularly as generative and agentic systems become embedded in everyday life. At the same time, immersive and hybrid environments are expanding the scope of interaction design. Extended reality, spatial computing, digital twins, and multisensory interfaces are transforming how users engage with information, spaces, and one another. These developments create opportunities for simulation, collaboration, and participation, but they also introduce new challenges related to consent, identity, embodiment, surveillance, and data ethics. The field of research therefore treats immersive systems not as a separate niche, but as part of a broader HCI agenda shaped by ethical, social, and institutional implications.

An important dimension of the theme is the growing prominence of synthetic media and information integrity. AI-generated content, deepfakes, and adaptive interfaces are reshaping how individuals assess authenticity, provenance, and trust in digital environments. HCI scholarship has a critical role to play in understanding how users interpret, resist, or rely upon such systems, and in identifying design approaches that strengthen human judgement rather than undermine it. This stream of research also foregrounds inclusion and sustainability as essential rather than peripheral concerns. This includes accessibility, culturally responsive design, disability-centred approaches, and environmentally responsible interaction design that considers energy, material, and lifecycle impacts. Similarly, gamification and persuasive systems remain relevant, but the emphasis shifts toward understanding when motivational design supports wellbeing, learning, productivity, and ethical participation, and when it becomes extractive or manipulative.

This track invites empirical, conceptual, methodological, and design science contributions that reflect these revised themes. It welcomes qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and design-oriented research that examines human-computer interaction across conversational, embodied, and immersive technologies through the lens of responsible innovation. The track particularly encourages submissions that integrate rigorous methods, inclusive perspectives, and systemic thinking, while building bridges across HCI, responsible AI, metaverse research, and broader Information Systems scholarship .

Indicative Topics

  1. Human-centred AI and user experiences: usable, useful, explainable, and adaptive interaction in AI-mediated systems
  2. Ethical design of relational AI, including chatbots, voice assistants, digital humans, and humanoid robots
  3. Trust, transparency, and anthropomorphism in human-AI interaction
  4. Humane, responsible, ethical, and trustworthy HCI: fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, safety, governance, and value-sensitive design
  5. Gesture, multimodal, and multisensory interaction: voice, vision, touch, movement, bio-signals, and cross-sensory interfaces
  6. Synthetic media, deepfakes, and information integrity: deception, authenticity, provenance, and human judgement in digital environments
  7. Extended reality, spatial computing, and immersive interaction, including considerations of privacy, consent and data ethics
  8. Digital twins, societal twins, and hybrid human-system environments
  9. Cross-device, ubiquitous, and context-aware interaction: seamless experiences across devices, settings, and user journeys
  10. Gamification, motivation, and behavioural design: gameful systems in education, health, work, public services, and organisational contexts
  11. Inclusive, accessible, and more-than-human design and HCI, including environmental responsibility: disability-centred, culturally responsive, energy-aware, circular, and sustainable design
  12. Responsible AI innovation and governance in virtual and augmented reality platforms
  13. Regulatory perspectives on AI-mediated communication and digital identity