ZPAC News
News list
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Award-Winning Thesis by Natasha Obukhova Featured in OEC Magazine
Studying trauma can be tough on researchers too, but in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), their well-being is often overlooked. In her Master's thesis, Natalia Obukhova interviewed ten HCI practitioners and found weak support systems, scarce formal guidelines and a heavy dependence on informal advice. Also, universities rarely provide enough counseling and training. To address these gaps, Obukhova sug- gests better counseling, training, and ethical processes, alongside a prototype app ,,We are also humans'' designed to support researchers' self-care.
The thesis was one of 11 award-winning projects across Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 and was selected as one of five works featured in the December 2025 issue of OEC Magazine.
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New PhD Student: Marinja Principe - Welcome!
We’re excited to welcome Marinja Principe as a PhD student at ZPAC! Her research centers on adolescent menstrual health technology and literacy, supported by the DSI Excellence Program (with scholarship) and co-supervised by Prof. Elaine M. Huang (UZH), Prof. Marcia Nissen (Ostschweizer Fachhochschule), and Prof. Tobias Kowatsch (Med-HSG).
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Aarhus Workshop on Ethics, Power, and Participation
At the recent Aarhus Decolonial Conference, Nimra Ahmed, Lu Arn, and Natasha Obukhova, together with [co-organizers: Nadia Campo Wotyuk, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen, Anupriya Tulli, Angelika Strohmayer], co-organized the workshop “Ethics, Power, and Participation” within the Crisis × Computing theme.
The workshop explored tensions of ethics and power in participatory and justice-oriented design research, especially when working in crisis contexts. We were delighted to welcome 16–18 participants, including several who joined spontaneously on the day. Together, participants engaged in lively discussions, shared critical reflections from their own practice, and co-created a collective zine capturing experiences, challenges, and strategies for navigating ethics and power in design work.
The workshop not only sparked thoughtful conversations but also fostered new connections among researchers committed to addressing justice, care, and participation in computing. The workshop paper is available here.
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Nimra Ahmed Invited Speaker on Feminist Design and GBV
Nimra recently spent time at Northumbria University on a research stay with the Design Feminisms Lab, working closely with Angelika Strohmayer. During her visit, she explored how feminist and community-led design approaches can shape technologies that support help-seeking in the context of gender-based violence (GBV).
She was also invited to give a talk at Open Lab Newcastle University, where she shared insights from her research and discussed how we can design technology that is safer, more supportive, and better aligned with the realities of GBV survivors.
This visit was an inspiring opportunity to connect with researchers who share a commitment to feminist HCI, social justice, and community-based design.
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ZPAC at CHI 2025!!
The ZPAC team attended CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan, in various roles. Felix Schmitt-Koopmann presented his full paper on PDF accessibility, which received an Honorable Mention. Nimra Ahmed participated in the Doctoral Consortium, presenting her research on women affected by forced marriages. Ksenia Beloturkina presented her Late-Breaking Work on fairness and equity characteristics in platform cooperatives, and Clara-Maria Barth presented her Late-Breaking Work on a method for translating participants’ experiences into an artifact for research and design.
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Felix Schmitt-Koopmann presented his latest research on PDF accessiblity at CHI 25!
At this year’s CHI conference, Felix Schmitt-Koopmann presented his paper “Towards More Accessible Scientific PDFs for People with Visual Impairments: Step-by-Step PDF Remediation to Improve Tag Accuracy”. The paper introduces and evaluates PAVE 2.0, a novel PDF remeditiation tool designed to simplify and enhance the process of making PDFs more accessible for people with visual impairments. The work was recognized with an Honorable Mention Award, reflecting its significant impact and highlights the importance of making science accessible for everybody.
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Nimra Ahmed participates at the CHI25 Doctoral Consortium!
At CHI 2025, Nimra Ahmed participated in the Doctoral Consortium, where she received valuable feedback on her research from a group of dedicated mentors and connected with a cohort of inspiring fellow PhD students. The DC offered a unique opportunity to reflect on her work in a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment.
In addition to the consortium, Nimra also helped organize events for the Feminist HCI collective, including a well-attended picnic that brought together over 40–50 researchers. These informal gatherings fostered moments of care, solidarity, community, and mutual support, offering a welcoming space for both established feminist HCI researchers and those just beginning to find their way into the community and CHI.
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Ksenia Beloturkina presented her Late-Breaking-Work at CHI 25!
Ksenia Beloturkina presented her late-breaking work, "Charting the Design Space for Platform Cooperatives" (co-authored with Prof. Dr. Anton Fedosov, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, and Prof. Dr. Elaine M. Huang, University of Zurich), at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025) in Yokohama, Japan.The paper explores the unique characteristics of platform cooperatives - a fairer alternative to monopolistic platform-based companies - focusing on how fairness and equity are embedded in their design and how users perceive these values. It also provides actionable design recommendations to help manifest fairness characteristics through platform design.
In addition, Ksenia participated in the CHI 2025 workshop "Maternal Machines: Imagining Experiences in Perinatal Care." This workshop fostered thought-provoking and motivating discussions on how HCI technologies in perinatal care can move beyond quantifiable data and embrace sensorial, non-numerical forms of knowledge. -
Clara-Maria Barth presented her Late-Breaking-Work at CHI 25!
Clara-Maria Barth presented her Late-Breaking Work at CHI 2025: “Incident Cards: A Tool for Documenting and Reviewing Experiences with Chronic Conditions”. This work was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Anton Fedosov, Prof. Jürgen Bernard, Gabriela Morgenstern, and Prof. Elaine M. Huang.
Have you ever wondered how to translate participants' experiences into actionable insights for research and design? Our paper introduces Incident Cards an artifact that helps researchers and designers to translate participants experiences into a structured format that facilitates documentation, recollection, review, and reflection. Curious about the value of Incident Cards for your research and how to create them? Read our paper!
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Maryam Rabie Yeganeh Invited Talk at University of Basel
Maryam Rabie Yeganeh was hosted by the Lovelace Turing Club at the University of Basel for an invited talk on “A Digital Service to Facilitate Recruitment and Retention of Older Cancer Patients in Clinical Trials.”
Maryam shared her research on how digital patient companions can support older adults with breast cancer in clinical trials, helping improve both recruitment and retention. -
Nimra presented in the Data Protection Week 2025
Nimra presented in the Data Protection Week, where she discussed key challenges in designing technology for vulnerable populations. Her talk focused on ethical considerations, data privacy, and the complexities of ensuring digital safety for individuals facing gender-based violence and forced marriage.
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DSI Health Innovathon
Clara-Maria Barth, Alexander Lill, and Federica Zavattaro organized the DSI Health Innovathon, a two-day interdisciplinary event funded by a grant from the DSI Health Community. The Innovathon brought together students, researchers, industry professionals, and innovators from a wide range of disciplines to collaboratively generate and test innovative solutions for the digitalization of healthcare. Participants worked on real-world health challenges, guided by experts in the field. The organizers invited three keynote speakers Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bernard, Prof. Dr. Viktor von Wyl, and Andreia Fernandes that explored topics such as data visualization, digital health, and entrepreneurship.
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Lu, Nimra and Tim presented at NordiCHI2024!
The NordiCHI 2024 conference saw a (very) active participation from the ZPAC lab, with presentations, panel discussions, and poster sessions highlighting our research at the intersection of Feminist HCI, cultural sensitivity, and intelligent technology.
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Aufruf zur Teilnahme an unserem Typ-1-Diabetes Workshop
Haben Sie Typ-1-Diabetes und sind interessiert, die Entwicklung neuer Technologien zu beeinflussen oder mit anderen Typ-1-Diabetiker/Innen zu diskutieren? Dann suchen wir genau Sie!
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Clara-Maria Barth and Maryam Yeganeh attended UBISS 2024
Clara-Maria Barth and Maryam Rabie Yeganeh attended the Workshop on Designing Tangible AI Interactions at the UBI Summer School UBISS 2024. Maryam Rabie Yeganeh presented "Squishy" an embodied AI companion for frustrating AI interactions. Clara-Maria Barth presented "CheersMate" an AI powered beer mug for enhancing social experiences.
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Clara-Maria Barth presents Paper at CHI 2024
Clara-Maria Barth presents her full paper "It's like a glimpse into the future": Exploring the Role of Blood Glucose Prediction Technologies for Type 1 Diabetes Self-Management at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI2024, in Honolulu, Hawaii. This work was conducted together with Prof. Elaine Huang and Prof. Jürgen Bernard.
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ZPAC at CHI 2024
The ZPAC team attended CHI24 in Honolulu, Hawaii in various Roles. Nimra Ahmed presented her poster on cultural dimensions and mental health technology, Tim Schluchter participated in the student competition with his poster on user perceptions of mental health content on TikTok, and Clara-Maria Barth presented her full paper on how blood glucose predictions affect the lived experience of individuals with type 1 diabetes together with Elaine M. Huang.
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Am I too personal? Personalizing Digital Health Technologies using AI for Chronic Disease Management.
Clara-Maria Barth gave a talk at the Campus Oerlikon Lecture Series: “Friend or Foe: Artificial Intelligence as a Challenge for Society”, about challenges and opportunities of AI-based personalization of technologies for people with chronic conditions. Using the example of Type 1 Diabetes management, she discussed how AI could alleviate the cognitive burden of managing chronic conditions by providing tailored insights, such as personalized blood glucose predictions and similarity search in VA to help users learn from their experiences. She further reflected on challenges like ensuring user agency, balancing automation with users feeling like they are still in control, and the downsides of personalization in sensitive contexts. Her ongoing work aims to use AI-based personalization approaches, investigating when and how personalization using AI might be useful and how to avoid unintended harm.
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DIZH funding received
For her project 'Supporting People Affected by Forced Marriage in Switzerland through Digital Transformation', Nimra has received funding from the DIZH. In this interdisciplinary project, she will be working with the Federal Competence Center against Forced Marriages and partnering with the ZHAW.
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Nimra receives the SDG Impact Award
Nimra has received the newly launched SDG Impact Award for her thesis «Designing Technology for People Affected by Forced Marriage in Switzerland». With her thesis, she contributed to the UN SDG Goal 5, «Gender Equality».
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Workshop at ECSCW 2021
Anton has co-organized a workshop on "Challenges of transferring UX designs and insights across products and services" at ECSCW'21
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UZH Forschungskredit grant received
Anton has received a UZH Postdoc Forschungskredit grant to conduct research on local sharing economy communities in Zurich
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Workshop at ECSCW 2023
Anton is co-organizing a workshop on "Spatial tensions in CSCW: The political and ethical challenges of scale" at ECSCW'23 in Trondheim, Norway
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STSM research visit from Koç University
Prof. Özge Subaşı from Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey visited ZPAC during her STSM
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COST Action "Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab"
Anton Fedosov joined COST Action "Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab"
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Podcast on Sharing Economy Communities and Their Supporting Technologies
Anton Fedosov participated in the Sharing and Caring podcast series with Susanne Bødker.
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GoodBrother International Conference on Privacy-friendly and Trustworthy Technology for Society
Anton Fedosov co-organized the GoodBrother International Conference on Privacy-friendly and Trustworthy Technology for Society.
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New grant received
Chat Wacharamanotham is appointed as an assistant professor in interaction design
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ZPAC @ CHI 2016
ZPAC members will present research on smart home, IFTTT, fabrics input, and vibrating vest at CHI 2016
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Thesis and project topics for summer break 2016
Two projects are opening for master thesis or master projects
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New professor at ZPAC
Chat Wacharamanotham is appointed as an assistant professor in interaction design
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CHI 2015 Papers, Workshop, and DC Accepted
We're happy to announce that ZPAC members have two full papers at CHI 2015, as well as a workshop ("Smart for Life: Designing Smart Home Technologies that Evolve with Users") and an entry in the doctoral consortium!
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CSCW 2015 Paper Accepted
Nemanja's paper "Capture the Moment: “In the Wild” Longitudinal Case Study of Situated Snapshots Captured Through an Urban Screen in a Community Setting" got accepted to the Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2015) Conference. It will be presented at the conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada in March 2015.
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UbiComp 2014 Paper Accepted
Sarah's paper "From Today's Augmented Houses to Tomorrow's Smart Homes: New Directions for Home Automation Research" got accepted to Ubicomp 2014. It will be presented at the conference in Seattle, WA, USA in September 2014.
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Book Chapter and ICT4S Paper Accepted
Christian's book chapter "Addressing the obsolescence of end-user devices: Approaches from the field of sustainable HCI" has been accepted and will be published in the upcoming book ICT Innovations for Sustainability. The book chapter also has been accepted for presentation at the ICT4S 2014 conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
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DIS 2014 Paper Accepted
Helen's paper "A Qualitative Study of Workplace Intercultural Communication Tensions in Dyadic Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Interactions" got accepted to the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2014) conference. The paper will be presented at the conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada in June 2014.
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Interact 2013 Paper Accepted
We are happy to announce that the paper Supporting Voice Content Sharing among Underprivileged People in Urban Indiawas accepted into the INTERACT 2013conference program.
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Proposals Accepted
Three of our PhD students successfully defended their thesis proposals this week. Gunnar Harboe defended his proposal on "Understanding and augmenting a paper arrangement-based process," Sarah Mennicken on "Improving the smart home experience by integrating routines and technologies," and Christian Remy on the "Sustainable design of consumer electronics."
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AppDJ: A new way to Discover the World of Apps
Have you ever sat in front of your phone or tablet on a rainy Sunday afternoon wanting to find a new, cool app and been frustrated with searching through the Play store? Did you ever search through many different categories, having a general idea of the app you would want to install, but never quite finding the right app that fulfills this notion? AppDJ is a ZPAC Bachelor Thesis project that tries to address these issues. The AppDJ app is the result of looking into alternative ways to explore and discover apps.
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Elaine's Antrittsvorlesung
Prof. Elaine M. Huang will hold her Antrittsvorlesung (Inaugural Lecture), "Practices and perceptions: Environmental sustainability in ubiquitous computing," on Monday, 12. December at 19:30 in the University Aula. The talk is open to the public. (Edit: Previous announcement said it would be at 19:00. 19:30 is the correct time.)
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CSCW 2012 Note Accepted
We're happy to announce that a ZPAC short paper, Computer Support for Collaborative Data Analysis: Augmenting Paper Affinity Diagrams(Harboe, Minke, Ilea and Huang), has been accepted as a note for CSCW 2012.
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New Job Position
A Master student job position is available. The work involves helping to create a new application for tablets, smart phones and PCs.
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IFI Summer School 2011
Sign up for the Summer School at UZH! It will take place from July 4 to 8, 2011 at our institute.
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Talk by David Dearman
ZPAC will host a talk by David Dearman of the University of Toronto entitled, “Identifying and applying place-based activities derived from community authored content” on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 13:30 in the HCI Lab (BIN 1.B.18).
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Colloquium: Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick
On May 26, 2011 Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick will give a talk in the course of the IFI colloquium.
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Pervasive 2011 talk
The paper "Designing Shared Public Display Networks – Implications from Today’s Paper-Based Notice Areas" will be presented at the Pervasive 2011 conference.
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CHI 2011 talk
We will present the note "Rendering Physical Effects in Tabletop Controls" at the SIGCHI 2011 conference.
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Leila Takayama at ZPAC
Leila Takayama of Willow Garage is visiting ZPAC on March 10, 2011.
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Nadir Weibel on Pen Computing in the Wild
Nadir Weibel is visiting ZPAC on December 10, 2010 to present his current research.
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James Scott on Gadgeteer
James Scott visits ZPAC on November 5, 2011 to present his research.
- Natasha Obukhova Wins the Fall Semester 2024 Thesis Award
- New PhD Student: Marinja Principe - Welcome!
- Aarhus Workshop on Ethics, Power, and Participation
- Nimra Ahmed Invited Speaker on Feminist Design and GBV
- CHI2025
- Felix Schmitt-Koopmann at CHI 25!
- Nimra Ahmed at CHI 25!
- Ksenia Beloturkina at CHI 25!
- Clara-Maria Barth at CHI 25!
- Maryam Rabie Yeganeh Invited Talk at University of Basel
- Nimra presented in the Data Protection Week 2025
- DSI Health Innovathon
- Lu, Nimra and Tim presented at NordiCHI2024!
- Aufruf zur Teilnahme an unserem Typ-1-Diabetes Workshop
- Clara-Maria Barth and Maryam Yeganeh attended UBISS 2024
- Clara-Maria Barth presents Paper at CHI 2024
- ZPAC at CHI 2024
- Oerlikon Lecture Series