Jasmin Niess

• Colley, Jemina; Niess, Jasmin & Joshi, Suhas Govind (2026). Was It Worth It? Retrospective Meaning-Making in Co-Design. In Havinen, Laura & Hägglund, Susanne (Ed.), NordiCHI '26: Proceedings of the 14th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400723735. p. 1–15. doi: 10.1145/3829807.3829838. Full text in Research Archive
• Culén, Alma Leora; Niess, Jasmin; Carvalho, Aparecido Fabiano Pinatti de; Caspersen, Aki Axel; Jarsve, Tora & Joshi, Suhas Govind [Show all 11 contributors for this article] (2026). The Misalignment of Technology, Democracy, and Design: A Scoping Review. In Yen, Chingchiuan; Lee, Jung-joo; Do, Ellen Yi Luen; Zheng, Clement; Yoo, Daisy & Tang, Tony (Ed.), DIS '26: Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400725630. p. 2595–2612. doi: 10.1145/3800645.3813042. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This scoping review examines the past decade of research at the intersection of democracy, technology and design. Analysing 170 articles across Scopus, the ACM Digital Library, and the DRS Digital Library, we investigate how this research relates to democracy and how democratic values are conceptualised and enacted through interactive systems. We identify four dominant orientations: technology as democratic repair, as risk, as co-constitutive of democratic practices, and as embedded in everyday collective action and lived practices. Across these, we reveal a persistent misalignment: while democratic values are frequently invoked, much of the work reduces democracy to technical or procedural problems, prioritising optimisation over power, relationality, and lived practice. As a result, key dimensions such as collective agency, structural inequalities, and infrastructural conditions remain under-addressed, offering novel opportunities for HCI research. We argue that democratic technology design should advance better alignment fostering responsibility, participation, equity, and transparency in sociotechnical systems.

• Loerakker, Meagan B.; Stefanidi, Evropi; Niess, Jasmin; Eßmeyer, Thomas & Woźniak, Paweł W. (2025). Give and Take: Perceptions of a Conversational Coach Agent in Fitness Trackers. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI). 9(5). doi: 10.1145/3743718. Full text in Research Archive
• Eska, Bettina; Niess, Jasmin; Niess, Jasmin & Woźniak, Paweł W. (2025). How I Use My Body: The Bodily Feedback Quality Scale. PACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. 9(4). doi: 10.1145/3770657. Full text in Research Archive
• Bakås, Sigrid Hoddø; Woźniak, Mikołaj P.; Herstad, Jo; Woźniak, Paweł W. & Niess, Jasmin (2025). The Dual Model for Everyday Stress Technology: Understanding the Lived Experience of Data-Driven Stress. In i Yamashita, Naomi; Evers, V.; i Yatani, Koji; ) Ding, Xianghua (Sharon); n Lee, Bongshin; i Chetty, Marshini & O Toups-Dugas, Phoebe O (Ed.), CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400713941. p. 1–18. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713174. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Technology plays a dual role in our daily lives, both contributing to heightened stress levels and offering potential solutions for stress management. However, the lived experience of stress in everyday contexts remains underexplored, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of how stress manifests and how technology can effectively support stress management. To address this, we conducted user interviews and expert interviews with specialists in psychology, health, and stress research, complemented by an autoethnographic study. Our findings show the complexity of stress as both a subjective experience and a response shaped by socio-technical environments, leading to the construction of the Dual Model for Everyday Stress Technology. This model highlights the paradoxical nature of stress and its management in technology-mediated settings. We identify key directions for future stress-management technology design and research, with implications for creating meaningful, human-centred technologies for managing stress in everyday life.

• Culén, Alma Leora; Stevens, Nicholas; Niess, Jasmin; Finken, Sisse; Miklian, Jason & Hoelscher, Kristian (2025). In the relational sandbox: Deep democracy and technology. In Morrison, Andrew & Habib, Laurence (Ed.), Proceedings of Nordes 2025: Relational Design. p. 1–7. doi: 10.21606/nordes.2025.77. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Designing for democracy often emphasizes values but underestimates the role of relationships in shaping civic life. This workshop explores how relationality - our social ties, political agency, and economic conditions - affects grassroots democratic design experiments and the technologies they inspire. Grounded in deep democracy and participatory approaches, we engage in small-scale experiments using Relational Sandbox to explore how new technologies that support democratic values can reshape power dynamics and how locally rooted, tailored designs can counteract capital-driven technological development. By experimenting with relational civics, we will collectively imagine new design strategies that prioritize meaningful technologies for deep democracy over profit-driven ones. This workshop invites designers, activists, and researchers to co-develop strategies and design guidelines that place relationships at the heart of democratic practice.

• Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian; Niess, Jasmin & Culén, Alma Leora (2025). A Sandbox for (Designing) Democratic Technologies. In Sorce, Salvatore; Elagroudy, Passant & Khamis, Mohamed (Ed.), MUM '25: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400720154. p. 493–498. doi: 10.1145/3771882.3771919. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Interactive technologies have reshaped how we connect, socialise, work, and participate in civic life. However, the design of systems that mediate democracy is too often guided by extractive logics of large technological corporations, highlighting the erosion of public values. This workshop invites participants to reimagine how interaction design can foster grassroots democratic engagement. Using a relational sandbox approach (low threshold, low fidelity prototyping, including the use of generative AI), we will explore civic scenarios that involve stakeholder mapping, prototyping, and speculative design to explore power dynamics, strengthen social ties, and support inclusive civic practices. The workshop will contribute to ongoing debates about how HCI can sustain democratic life in times of social and technological crisis.

• Loerakker, Meagan B.; Jarsve, Tora; Niess, Jasmin & Woźniak, Paweł W. (2025). The Framework of the Lived Experience of Metrics: Understanding the Purposes and Activities of Self-Tracking Metrics. In Yamashita, Naomi; Evers, Vanessa; Yatani, Koji; Ding, Sharon; Lee, Bongshin; Chetty, Marshini & Toups-Dugas, Phoebe (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400713941. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713650. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Most studies of Personal Informatics (PI) focus on the holistic experience of self-tracking or how users relate to self-tracking goals. Recently, new tracker metrics became available in commercial systems, e.g. stress scores or body battery. Hence, more attention should be devoted to what users track and how they understand metrics produced by their trackers. Charting the evolution of metrics in PI can enable building systems that better support well-being. To this end, we interviewed 𝑛 = 25 fitness tracker users to discover what metrics are most important to them, how they understand the metrics, and how they formulate their goals with respect to the metrics. We found that users created a metric ecology which they adjusted to their life circumstances, reformulating their goals. We identified key issues in understanding metrics which bear the risk of misuse. We contribute recommendations for future PI systems as self-tracking metrics increase in complexity.

• Culén, Alma Leora; Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian & Niess, Jasmin (2025). Mindset and Posture in Designing Democratic AI-driven Technology. RSD5 Symposium Proceedings. ISSN 2371-8404. RSD13. doi: https:/rsdsymposium.org/designing-democratic-ai-driven-technology/. Full text in Research Archive
• Schneegass, Christina; Wilson, Max L.; Shaban, Jwan; Niess, Jasmin; Chiossi, Francesco & Mitrevska, Teodora [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2024). Broadening the mind: How emerging neurotechnology is reshaping HCI and interactive system design. i-com Zeitschrift für interaktive und kooperative Medien. ISSN 1618-162X. doi: 10.1515/icom-2024-0007. Full text in Research Archive
• Jarsve, Tora; Malkomsen, Emma Rist; Woźniak, Paweł W. & Niess, Jasmin (2024). Exploring User Expectations and Perceived Creepiness in AI: A Study on Furhat and ChatGPT, NordiCHI '24 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400709654. doi: 10.1145/3677045.3685428. Full text in Research Archive
• Loerakker, Meagan B.; Niess, Jasmin & Woźniak, Paweł W. (2024). Technology which Makes You Think: The Reflection, Rumination and Thought in Technology Scale. PACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. 8(2). doi: 10.1145/3659615. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Reflection is widely regarded as a key design goal for technologies for well-being. Yet, recent research shows that technologies for reflection may have negative consequences, in the form of rumination, i.e. negative thought cycles. Understanding how technologies support thinking about oneself, which can take the form of rumination and reflection, is key for future well-being technologies. To address this research gap, we developed the Reflection, Rumination and Thought in Technology (R2T2) scale. Contrary to past research, R2T2 addresses ways of self-focused thinking beyond reflection. This scale can quantify how a technology supports self-focused thinking and the rumination and reflection aspects of that thinking. We developed the scale through a systematic scale development process. We then evaluated the scale's test-retest reliability along with its concurrent and discriminant validity. R2T2 enables designers and researchers to compare technologies which embrace self-focused thinking and its facets as a design goal.

• Loerakker, Meagan B.; Niess, Jasmin; Bentvelzen, Marit & Wozniak, Paweł* (2024). Designing Data Visualisations for Self-Compassion in Personal Informatics. PACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. 7(4), p. 1–22. doi: 10.1145/3631448. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Wearable personal trackers offer exciting opportunities to contribute to one's well-being, but they also can foster negative experiences. It remains a challenge to understand how we can design personal informatics experiences that help users frame their data in a positive manner and foster self-compassion. To explore this, we conducted a study where we compared different visualisations for user-generated screen time data. We examined positive, neutral and negative framings of the data and whether or not a point of reference was provided in a visualisation. The results show that framing techniques have a significant effect on reflection, rumination and self-compassion. We contribute insights into what design features of data representations can support positive experiences in personal informatics.

• Wróbel-Lachowska, Magdalena; Dominiak, Julia; Woźniak, Mikołaj P.; Bartłomiejczyk, Natalia; Diethei, Daniel & Wysokińska, Aleksandra [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2023). ‘That’s when I put it on’: stakeholder perspectives in large-scale remote health monitoring for older adults. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. ISSN 1617-4909. doi: 10.1007/s00779-023-01753-w. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract Remote health monitoring (RHM) provides various benefits to older adults, but its use is still limited. Remote monitoring may help in avoiding emergencies and prolong users’ independence. To understand how to design systems which support older adults, we studied a large-scale remote health monitoring system. The system used fitness-grade smartwatches to monitor the vital signs of more than 2000 users constantly. To probe the lived experience of using RHM, we conducted an explorative interview study ( N = 41) with operators, carers, and users of the RHM system. Our thematic analysis reveals that personalisation of care ecology is crucial for developing users’ confidence and trust in the system. We found that participation in RHM may catalyse positive changes in older adults’ lifestyles. Based on our findings, we formulate five recommendations for designing future health monitoring systems. Our work contributes to insights into the lived experience and stakeholder ecology of health monitoring systems.

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