ITI researchers at ACM DIS’26 conference
Researchers from the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI/LARSyS) presented five contributions at DIS26, the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, with work addressing Sustainable HCI, ocean knowledge, ageing, brain health, culturally grounded design, and more-than-human design practice.
Valentina Demarchi, Valentina Nisi, and Nuno Jardim Nunes (all from ITI/LARSyS) presented the pictorial “Designing Boundary Objects to Surface Ocean Knowledge: The Case of the Coastal Community Thinking Toolkit”, which received an Honourable Mention. The work introduces a visual mapping device that supports collaborative sense-making around coastal communities and helps represent different forms of ocean knowledge across contexts.
The same ITI team also presented the paper “Infrastructuring Visual Systems to Foster Coastal Knowledge: Extending Points of Infrastructuring and Advancing an Analog-First Approach”. The paper develops the Coastal Community Thinking Toolkit as an analog visual mapping system for the co-production of situated coastal knowledge, contributing to ocean-focused Sustainable HCI and inclusive digital ocean ecosystem efforts.
Ana C. Veloso-Luis, Sónia Rafael, Mónica Mendes, all from ITI/LARSyS, and Joaquim Ferreira (LFCT, U.Lisboa) presented the pictorial “When a Puzzle Speaks: Collective Memory as a Brain-Health Practice”. The work explores an interactive cube puzzle that transforms community storytelling with older adults into visual compositions and audio retellings, supporting place attachment, collective memory, and cognitive stimulation.
Neeta M. Khanuja and Valentina Nisi, both from ITI/LARSyS, together with Yogesh Kumar Meena, from IIT Gandhinagar, and Jodi Forlizzi, from Carnegie Mellon University, presented the pictorial “Designing Culturally Grounded Reflection Cards That Explore Self-Perception of Aging and Automated Recommendations with Older Adults in India”. The work presents culturally grounded reflection cards and non-diagnostic reflective guidance designed to support emotional meaning-making and wellbeing among older adults in India.
Fernanda Soares da Costa (ITI/LARSyS) contributed to the workshop “Multispecies Response-ability in More-than-human Design Practice: Fabulation with Tides”. The workshop explored speculative fabulation with tides as a method for thinking about multispecies response-ability and more relational forms of design practice.
Together, these contributions show ITI’s engagement with participatory, situated, and interdisciplinary design research addressing social, ecological, cultural, and technological challenges.
