Robin Burke , Gediminas Adomavicius , Toine Bogers , Tommaso Di Noia , Dominik Kowald , Julia Neidhardt , Özlem Özgöbek , Maria Soledad Pera , Nava Tintarev , Jürgen Ziegler
{"title":"De-centering the (Traditional) user: Multistakeholder evaluation of recommender systems","authors":"Robin Burke , Gediminas Adomavicius , Toine Bogers , Tommaso Di Noia , Dominik Kowald , Julia Neidhardt , Özlem Özgöbek , Maria Soledad Pera , Nava Tintarev , Jürgen Ziegler","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103560","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103560","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Multistakeholder recommender systems are those that account for the impacts and preferences of multiple groups of individuals, not just the end users receiving recommendations. Due to their complexity, these systems cannot be evaluated strictly by the overall utility of a single stakeholder, as is often the case of more mainstream recommender system applications. In this article, we focus our discussion on the challenges of multistakeholder evaluation of recommender systems. We bring attention to the different aspects involved—from the range of stakeholders involved (including but not limited to providers and consumers) to the values and specific goals of each relevant stakeholder. We discuss how to move from theoretical principles to practical implementation, providing specific use case examples. Finally, we outline open research directions for the RecSys community to explore. We aim to provide guidance to researchers and practitioners about incorporating these complex and domain-dependent issues of evaluation in the course of designing, developing, and researching applications with multistakeholder aspects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103560"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144711748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Katie Seaborn , Maximilian Altmeyer , Ge “Rikaku” Li , Bonhee Ku , Sota Kobuki , Jacqueline Urakami
{"title":"The Voice Experience Inventory (VOXI): Validating a consensus-driven instrument for measuring user impressions of computer voice","authors":"Katie Seaborn , Maximilian Altmeyer , Ge “Rikaku” Li , Bonhee Ku , Sota Kobuki , Jacqueline Urakami","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103576","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103576","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Voice interaction has entered daily life. Yet, the measurement of voice user experience (voice UX) remains underdeveloped. We took a consensus-based approach to the creation of a new instrument grounded in the work of voice UX researchers. For this, we conducted a systemic review of the literature from ACM, IEEE, and Web of Science (<span><math><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>49</mn></mrow></math></span>) to gather a corpus of instruments, measures, and methodological perspectives. We then carried out two validation studies on a range of computer voices, showing through exploratory (<span><math><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>100</mn></mrow></math></span>) and confirmatory factor analyses (<span><math><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>150</mn></mrow></math></span>) that five underlying factors unify the consensus-derived measures. We offer the 24-item Voice Experience Inventory (VOXI) alongside three comprehensive frameworks on key independent and dependent variables and their relationships, anchored to the material that guided our instrument development process. This work represents a timely and community-centred path towards rigorous and standardized measurement of voice UX.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103576"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"DUoR: Dynamic User-oriented re-Ranking calibration strategy for popularity bias treatment of recommendation algorithms","authors":"Mert Gulsoy , Emre Yalcin , Yucel Tacli , Alper Bilge","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103578","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103578","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recommender systems are widely used to provide personalized recommendations to users to help them navigate the vast amount of available content. They have become pervasive in various online applications. However, they often suffer from popularity bias, where popular items receive more recommendations, leading to potential issues such as limited diversity, homogenized user experience, perpetuating existing inequalities, and filter bubble effects. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to mitigate popularity bias by incorporating users’ inclination towards item popularity. The proposed method incorporates a practical popularity inclination measuring strategy considering the dynamic preference tendencies of individuals to capture their unique propensities towards item popularity better and to provide more calibrated referrals regarding expectations of individuals on item popularity. Experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed method effectively mitigates popularity bias by generating more diverse and balanced recommendations compared to several benchmark post-processing methods and outperforming them in diversity and fairness metrics according to the Borda count system. Overall, the proposed method presents a promising approach to addressing popularity bias in recommender systems by incorporating users’ inclination towards item popularity and opens up potential directions for further research in the field.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103578"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144633118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joe Cutting, Myat Aung, Francis Perrett, Paul Cairns
{"title":"The development and validation of the Immersion Experience Questionnaire Short Form (IEQ-SF)","authors":"Joe Cutting, Myat Aung, Francis Perrett, Paul Cairns","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103580","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103580","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital games are a dominant form of entertainment and of increasing interest to HCI researchers. Unlike productivity applications, the chief outcome of a game is the experience it provides and one of the key aspects of that experience is the feeling of immersion. Immersion can be measured using the Immersion Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) (Jennett et al., 2008), however this scale was developed over 16 years ago using outdated methods and its length (31 items) makes it unsuited for studies which use multiple scales or recruitment platforms which charge by the minute. To address this, we used item response theory and open science practices to develop a new Immersion Experience Questionnaire Short Form (IEQ-SF). We performed a large-scale factor analysis and developed a candidate short-form with 11-items which represent the subfactors of Involvement, Real-World Dissociation and Challenge. This scale was then validated with four studies using a mix of existing data available through Open Science and a new validation study. The short-form was found to function very similarly to the original IEQ. We also provide best practice guidelines for development of short form scales, and through OSF, all analysis scripts and data used during this scale development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103580"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144702589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Algorithmic transparency in path planning: A visual approach to enhancing human understanding","authors":"Yiyuan Zou, Clark Borst","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103573","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103573","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Computer algorithms facilitate increased automation in various human-centered work areas to improve operational safety and efficiency. Algorithmic transparency is considered essential for human operators, policy makers and system developers, as it allows them to understand the capabilities and limitations of an algorithm. In this research, we focus on path-planning algorithms and propose a purely visual approach to achieve their transparency. This approach extracts and portrays information directly from the algorithms, aiming to visually reveal their inner workings. Benchmark tests indicate that extracting information from path-planning algorithms may significantly slow them down. For time-constrained operations, it is recommended to store only the necessary data during the pathfinding process and perform information extraction afterwards. Based on theories from cognitive engineering, six transparency levels were designed to chunk meaningful information pertaining path-planning algorithms. A user study among non-experts (<span><math><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>40</mn></mrow></math></span>) was then conducted to evaluate the impact of visual algorithmic transparency on human understanding. The results suggest that increased transparency levels allow non-experts to more correctly and confidently understand the details of a path-planning algorithm. However, it is also found that certain transparency levels can lead to confusion, especially when the algorithm behaves in a way contrary to human expectations. This study further reveals that, given the same level of transparency, sampling-based algorithms may be easier to comprehend than graph-based algorithms. This research can serve as a reference for how to achieve transparency in path-planning-related applications and how to hierarchically portray and organize transparency information.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103573"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144517690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"DianTea: An augmented performance VR system for enhancing Chinese youth learning about tea-making as an intangible cultural heritage","authors":"Jiajia Li , Zixia Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103579","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103579","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As one of China’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH) artifacts, <em>dian cha</em> is a distinctive tea-drinking ritual deeply rooted in traditional Chinese tea culture. This ritual art form is characterized by its specialized tea-making implements and meticulously choreographed performance techniques. Sadly, this ICH is on the verge of being lost, as many young Chinese are increasingly neglecting traditional Chinese cultural activities. To better promote <em>dian cha</em> and stimulate young people’s interest in learning about tea culture, we propose “DianTea,” an immersive virtual reality (IVR) tea-drinking system that uses a virtual teacher, embodied bilateral performances, game-based learning, and culturally contextualized designs to help remote players learn about <em>dian cha</em>. To explore the feasibility of combining IVR with ICH, we conducted a between-subjects user study of the DianTea system’s interactive (IM) and browsing (BM) modes among a group of 40 young adults. The results showed that compared to the BM, the IM significantly improved learners’ knowledge acquisition and learning motivation, provided a sense of engagement and presence, and effectively enhanced their interactive experience and awareness of the need to preserve Chinese ICH.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103579"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144597557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Qiqi Huang , Katarzyna Stawarz , Linqi Zhao , Shuya Yang , Wenyu Xie , Fanghao Song , Hantao Liu
{"title":"Applying cross-modal plasticity principles in auditory training applications","authors":"Qiqi Huang , Katarzyna Stawarz , Linqi Zhao , Shuya Yang , Wenyu Xie , Fanghao Song , Hantao Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103570","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103570","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research indicates that a significant number of individuals are in a suboptimal auditory health state, yet their auditory function can potentially be improved through auditory training. To raise awareness of auditory health issues, auditory training apps should provide effective yet accessible training methods alongside engaging mechanisms that motivate users to adopt and sustain auditory training habits, ultimately facilitating self-directed auditory health management. Current auditory training apps overlook the importance of user needs and motivation, as well as the relationship between the two, leading to low engagement and retention rates. We document the specific needs of both normal-hearing and mildly hearing-impaired users and analyze physiological data collected during auditory training tasks. Through lab experiment study, we provide quantitative evidence supporting the effectiveness of the auditory training method used in this study. The findings indicate that audiovisual-based auditory training contributes to improved auditory performance. Building on these insights, we develop an auditory training app prototype that integrates gamification and narrative design into the auditory training app prototype, and examine their impact on user motivation and engagement. Furthermore, based on the results, we propose design recommendations for future auditory training app development, emphasizing the need to align training effectiveness with user motivation and engagement strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103570"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144502516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Snehasish Banerjee , Héctor González-Jiménez , Li Zheng
{"title":"Help please! Deriving social support from Geminoid DK, Pepper, and AIBO as companion robots","authors":"Snehasish Banerjee , Héctor González-Jiménez , Li Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103577","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103577","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Rooted in the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, this study explored the possibility of robots to serve as companions. Two research questions were investigated: (1) How do people’s perceptions of companion robots help them obtain social support from the robots? (2) To what extent does robot appearance affect the relationship between people’s perceptions of companion robots and social support? Three different robots were considered: Geminoid DK (a human-like robot), Pepper (a human/machine-like playful robot), and AIBO (a zoomorphic robot). A scenario-based online experiment (<em>N</em> = 306) was conducted with robot appearance as a between-participants factor. Perceived anthropomorphism of robots had a negative curvilinear relationship with social support. Perceived safety was a significant mediator that explained the effects of perceived anthropomorphism on social support for all three robot types. The study further revealed how perceptions of a robot vary as a function of its appearance. Perceived likeability mediated the effect of perceived anthropomorphism on social support for Pepper but not for Geminoid DK or AIBO. The study adds to the human-robot interaction literature by revealing the underlying mechanism of how robots’ perceived anthropomorphism predicts the extent to which they can offer social support as companions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103577"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144517689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mikołaj P. Woźniak , Anna Walczak , Krzysztof Grudzień , Heiko Müller , Jan Borchers , Marion Koelle , Susanne Boll
{"title":"Connecting the dots: How users understand and diagnose smart home ecosystems","authors":"Mikołaj P. Woźniak , Anna Walczak , Krzysztof Grudzień , Heiko Müller , Jan Borchers , Marion Koelle , Susanne Boll","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103559","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103559","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Smart homes are evolving into complex ecosystems, but their inner workings often remain opaque to users, limiting their ability to troubleshoot and customise the technology. The distributed and hidden components make it challenging for users to understand how these systems work. To design interfaces that enable intuitive troubleshooting for non-experts, we first need a clear understanding of how they form mental models and instinctively diagnose issues. We conducted three iterative vignette studies with realistic smart home scenarios to explore how users perceive interconnectivity in smart home ecosystems and how system complexity impacts their troubleshooting approaches. We identified common smart home topologies envisioned by users and categorised their diagnostic strategies. Our findings show that while users view their smart homes as hierarchical, their mental models are often incomplete, and current interfaces favour functional models, hiding the connections in the system. We provide seven actionable takeaways for designing interfaces that improve user understanding and troubleshooting capabilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103559"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144471399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eunhwa Song , Taewook Ha , Junhyeok Park , Hyunjin Lee , Woontack Woo
{"title":"Holistic quantified-self for context-aware wearable augmented reality","authors":"Eunhwa Song , Taewook Ha , Junhyeok Park , Hyunjin Lee , Woontack Woo","doi":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103568","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103568","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose Holistic Quantified-Self for wearable Augmented Reality (HQS-AR), a unified user model for users wearing AR glasses that captures multi-dimensional user states through sensors and interaction data. Despite the growing need for a personalized AR system, unified user modeling in wearable AR remains limited, often leading to suboptimal experiences. To address this gap, we identified key modeling dimensions and their corresponding factors: physical (posture, energy expenditure), cognitive-emotional (cognitive load, emotion), social (social engagement, interpersonal density), and behavioral (device type, usage log). Using motion, visual, audio, behavioral, and physiological datasets, we implemented machine learning models to infer user states and classify scenarios in office environments, achieving an average accuracy of 88% for state estimation and 99% for scenario classification in hold-out validation. Our user model is expected to serve as a state indicator for configuring wearable AR systems and a tool for modeling user routines, advancing personalized AR interfaces.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54955,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Human-Computer Studies","volume":"203 ","pages":"Article 103568"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144535018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}