arXiv subjects

Noura Howell

Publications and source records attributed to Noura Howell.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

HeartSway: Exploring Biodata as Poetic Traces in Public Space

Human traces scattered across urban landscapes can signify our everyday lives and societal vibrancy in subtle and poetic forms. In this paper, we explore how designed technology can engage biodata as evocative traces. To this end, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of HeartSway, an interactive hammock that captures a user's heart rate and micro-movements as traces and replays them as an embodied experience for the next visitor. Through a qualitative field study (N=10), we find that HeartSway evokes feelings of connection, curiosity about prior users, and appreciation for shared human vitality. Our work contributes to understanding anonymous archival biodata as a design material for experiential urban traces. We offer design considerations for intimate asynchronous encounters between strangers in public spaces and for reimagining public amenities.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

ORIBA: Exploring LLM-Driven Role-Play Chatbot as a Creativity Support Tool for Original Character Artists

Recent advances in Generative AI (GAI) have led to new opportunities for creativity support. However, this technology has raised ethical concerns in the visual artists community. This paper explores how GAI can assist visual artists in developing original characters (OCs) while respecting their creative agency. We present ORIBA, an AI chatbot leveraging large language models (LLMs) to enable artists to role-play with their OCs, focusing on conceptualization (e.g., backstories) while leaving exposition (visual creation) to creators. Through a study with 14 artists, we found ORIBA motivated artists' imaginative engagement, developing multidimensional attributes and stronger bonds with OCs that inspire their creative process. Our contributions include design insights for AI systems that develop from artists' perspectives, demonstrating how LLMs can support cross-modal creativity while preserving creative agency in OC art. This paper highlights the potential of GAI as a neutral, non-visual support that strengthens existing creative practice, without infringing artistic exposition.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

From Regulation to Support: Centering Humans in Technology-Mediated Emotion Intervention in Care Contexts

Enhancing emotional well-being has become a significant focus in HCI and CSCW, with technologies increasingly designed to track, visualize, and manage emotions. However, these approaches have faced criticism for potentially suppressing certain emotional experiences. Through a scoping review of 53 empirical studies from ACM proceedings implementing Technology-Mediated Emotion Intervention (TMEI), we critically examine current practices through lenses drawn from HCI critical theories. Our analysis reveals emotion intervention mechanisms that extend beyond traditional emotion regulation paradigms, identifying care-centered goals that prioritize non-judgmental emotional support and preserve users' identities. The findings demonstrate how researchers design technologies for generating artificial care, intervening in power dynamics, and nudging behavioral changes. We contribute the concept of "emotion support" as an alternative approach to "emotion regulation," emphasizing human-centered approaches to emotional well-being. This work advances the understanding of diverse human emotional needs beyond individual and cognitive perspectives, offering design implications that critically reimagine how technologies can honor emotional complexity, preserve human agency, and transform power dynamics in care contexts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

PlayFutures: Imagining Civic Futures with AI and Puppets

Children are the builders of the future and crucial to how the technologies around us develop. They are not voters but are participants in how the public spaces in a city are used. Through a workshop designed around kids of age 9-12, we investigate if novel technologies like artificial intelligence can be integrated in existing ways of play and performance to 1) re-imagine the future of civic spaces, 2) reflect on these novel technologies in the process and 3) build ways of civic engagement through play. We do this using a blend AI image generation and Puppet making to ultimately build future scenarios, perform debate and discussion around the futures and reflect on AI, its role and potential in their process. We present our findings of how AI helped envision these futures, aid performances, and report some initial reflections from children about the technology.

cs.HC↗