UBC Computer Science wins numerous awards at social technology design conference
The eDAPT group presents five papers, wins two honourable mention awards for remarkable research projects
UBC’s eDAPT group, led by Dr. Joanna McGrenere, Professor and Co-Head of the Department of Computer Science, published five papers at the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), which took place in Bergen, Norway from Oct 18-22, 2025. Two papers won Best Paper Honourable Mention Awards, representing the top ~4% of papers submitted to the conference.
From a personalized AI agent to help you communicate with your long-distance family members to a tool that gives subtle feedback on your body language during video calls, the following papers were presented at the conference:
A study led by Ph.D. student Sang-Wha Sien created a prototype of a digital story-sharing platform to help address the stigma of mental health in international students from non-Western backgrounds. Results from the study, A Gentle Introduction to Mental Health Through Storytelling: Design and Evaluation of Digital Human Library, can inform future design of digital storytelling applications for mental health.
Ph.D. student Zhe Liu and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jiamin Dai, along with Professor Dr. Cristina Conati and Professor Dr. Joanna McGrenere, led the paper, Envisioning AI Support during Semi-Structured Interviews Across the Expertise Spectrum, which discusses the opportunities and challenges for involving AI-driven assistants in interview contexts where the goal is to collect rich qualitative data. This paper won a Best Paper Honourable Mention Award.
In the paper Envisioning Interventions to Combat Misinformation Propagation on Social Media: Insights from Older Adults’ Approaches to Credibility Assessment, UBC Computer Science M.Sc. graduate Ishita Haque and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jiamin Dai found that older adults mostly favour independently assessing the credibility of information on social media before (re)posting, but may check with family and friends in order to collaborate in the decision-making process and strengthen their social relationships. The researchers propose design approaches that leverage their findings to help mitigate the spread of online misinformation. This paper won a Best Paper Honourable Mention Award.
A study led by Ph.D. student Kevin Chow and collaborators at the University of Zurich presented Novecs (Non-verbal cue system), a tool that gives personalized feedback on body language and facial cues during video conference calls to assist users in understanding how they are presenting themselves to others. The paper, Exploring a Real-time Feedback Display of Non-verbal Cues in Online Work Meetings to Support Self-Presentation, also discusses design opportunities and challenges of these feedback systems and how to tailor them to different individuals and types of meetings.
Ph.D. student Teerapaun Tanprasert, postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jiamin Dai and collaborators at Microsoft prototyped an AI digital twin of a family member, called FamilyDitto, that can have video calls with long-distance family members. In the paper, FamilyDittos: Reimagining Intergenerational Interaction through Mimetic Agents, participants from different generations in the user study imagined that FamilyDitto would act as a bridge between different time zones to enhance the connection between family members and could act as a buffer for challenging family relationships.