Papers

    Call for Participation

    We invite researchers, designers, and practitioners to join the workshop (Re-)thinking Empathy’s Materiality in HCI at CHI 2026. This workshop critically examines empathy as both a tool in research and design practices and as a quality embedded in technologies such as conversational agents, XR, and Large Language Models.

    Through a sociomaterial lens, we explore empathy across three dimensions: technologies and their affordances, actors and social practice, and context, situatedness, and intentionality. Our goal is to disentangle diverse definitions, applications, and risks of empathy, and collaboratively develop a taxonomy to guide its responsible and meaningful use in HCI.

    We welcome position papers, design cases, and provocations (2–4 pages, ACM single-column format) addressing these themes or presenting empirical,theoretical, or design perspectives on empathy in HCI. We particularly welcome perspectives from domains where empathetic design can advance research and practice, recognizing that applying an empathy-centric lens can benefit work across application areas such as healthcare interventions, educational technologies, human-robot interaction, assistive systems, or humanAI collaboration. Accepted authors will contribute to structured discussions and co-design activities during the workshop.

    Submit via EasyChair by February 12, 2026 AoE. Selection is based on originality, quality, relevance, and potential to stimulate discussion. Submissions will be juried by the organizing team. At least one authorperacceptedsubmissionmustattendtheworkshopin-person.

    For inquiries, contact Sophia Ppali (s.ppali@cyens.org.cy) or Alice Vitali (A.Vitali@tudelft.nl).

    Topics of Interest

    The 4th EmpathiCH Workshop builds on its predecessors wherein the workshop welcomes original, high-quality academic contributions in:

    • Hypermedia and interactive software with empathy-centric design
    • Human-computer, human-robot, and human-agent empathy
    • Assessment and measurement of empathy and empathetic systems
    • Empathy abuses, tensions, and misuses
    • Empathy and interaction dynamics in multi-stakeholder systems
    • Empathy in sensitive, personal, critical, or medical circumstances

    Further, in keeping with the theme of Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual, we also welcome research contributions which examine:

    • Empathy in a post-humanist HCI context. Some interesting questions include (but are not limited to):
      • How do externalized representations of users (avatars, profiles, organizations) empathize?
      • How do these representations help, harm, impact, eliminate, introduce, highlight, or devalue facets of empathetic interaction?
      • What is the nature of empathy and interaction in the context of abstractions such as a collective ideology or cause?
    • The role of the researcher in empathy-centric design. Some interesting topics and questions include (but are not limited to):
      • How can CHI research be approached in an empathetic manner?
      • What role and drawbacks does empathy play in an interactive research environment?
    • Empathy beyond perspective-taking. Some of the interesting topics include (but are not limited to):
      • Emotion contagion and resonance in interactive systems
      • Interpersonal empathy and empathic accuracy for artificial agents

    We aim to assemble a multidisciplinary professional network that involves people in HCI, AI, social science, design, psychology, and health from universities, companies, non-profit organizations, and government sectors.

    Submission Guidelines

    We welcome the following types of submissions along with a brief description of the submission type. All submissions are to be a maximum of eight (8) pages excluding references (within reason). 

    • Research Paper:  novel research on Empathy-Centric Design (i.e., empathy in HCI and related fields)
    • Case study: research based on real-world experiences on Empathy-Centric Design topics
    • Provocation/Position Paper: inspiring, controversial, provoking thoughts on Empathy-Centric Design
    • System Demonstration: prototypes and new technology concepts that will be tested during the workshop (including a description of what attendees will experience through the demos) related to Empathy-Centric Design topics
    • Pictorials: visual components (e.g., diagrams, sketches, illustrations, renderings, photographs, annotated photographs, and collages) accompanying text to convey new ideas and contribute to Empathy-Centric Design

    Submissions should be submitted via Easychair (link) and be anonymized according to the CHI anonymization policy.

    • Submissions should include a manuscript (excluding references) using the ACM Master Article Submission Template (single column). Here you find the templates for LaTeX, Word, and Overleaf.
    • Again: manuscripts need to be anonymized according to the CHI anonymization policy.
    • If you use LaTeX, please use: documentclass [manuscript, review, anonymous] {acmart}

    Submissions will be accepted or rejected based on novelty, provocativeness, quality, and relevance to the workshop (i.e., related to topics of Empathy-Centric Design and the relevant theme) through a rigorous, double-blind peer review process.

    After Decision

    Accepted papers will be published in an ACM International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) publication. Accepted papers should remove the anonymous tag from their LaTeX \documentclass.