Younah Kang

Soonho Kwon, Dong Whi Yoo, Shaowen Bardzell et al.

We present four conceptual value-sensitive AI systems to examine how the presence of AI could influence praying experiences. Drawing on key values and practices associated with praying identified through a diary study, we designed AI systems intended to "assist" prayer practices. These designs were presented to participants through speculative design workbooks, serving as provocations to co-reflect on how the intervention of AI systems might shape their praying experiences. Our findings suggest that a sense of authenticity (or feeling a genuine connection to the divine) is a crucial value, while the presence of AI was often perceived as diminishing this authenticity, particularly when AI assumed too much agency in guiding praying practices. Based on our findings, we argue that AI system designs for deeply value-laden experiences should preserve users' agency in shaping their own experiences by maintaining interpretive openness, perhaps by leveraging AI's inexplicability as a resource for personal meaning-making or by recognizing non-use of AI as a legitimate design choice.

Soonho Kwon, Dong Whi Yoo, Koustuv Saha et al.

This study examines how parents of LGBTQ+ individuals in South Korea navigate the emotional rupture fueled by fear, isolation, and disorientation after learning their children's queer identity, encounter queer-related (mis)information as a way of coping with this emotional toll, and come to listen to queer realities relationally. Through this process, we highlight how parents reconstruct their identities as supportive parents, which reshapes their informating practices, making them more critical in assessing queer-related (mis)information, developing strategies to protect themselves from harmful narratives, and actively challenging misinformation to support others navigating similar experiences. This work contributes to CSCW by (1) foregrounding parents of LGBTQ+ individuals, an underrepresented yet critical stakeholder group in Queer HCI; (2) demonstrating how identity reconfiguration following a trauma-healing process could transform information practices; and (3) arguing that addressing misinformation requires attention beyond individual fact-based discerning to account for its relational, cultural, and emotional dimensions. Further, we invite CSCW scholars to reconsider the balance between abstracting and humanizing information, explore future design possibilities for parents of LGBTQ+ children, and reflect on the role of researchers as participants in collective research communities fueled by care.

Soonho Kwon, Dong Whi Yoo, Younah Kang

This speculative video piece showcases participants interacting with a career counseling AI agent, unaware that the responses were actually derived from the fortunetelling of a mudang (a Korean traditional shaman). Our work captures this deception and documents participants' reactions, showcasing shifts in their initial perceptions of the agent's advice following the reveal. Notably, even after learning that the advice came from a mudang rather than an AI, participants did not change their initial attitudes toward the advice they received. This raises questions about the perceived importance of AI's explainability and accuracy. By juxtaposing scientific and pre-scientific approaches, we aim to provoke discussions on human agency in the age of AI. We argue that, regardless of AI's advancements, we continue to navigate life in fundamentally human ways -- wonderfully messy and uncertain.