Muzhi Zhou

Anqi Wang, Lei Han, Jiahua Dong et al.

Digital platforms frequently reproduce heteronormative norms and structural biases, limiting inclusive communication between LGBTQ+ and cisgender individuals. The Metaverse, with its affordances for identity fluidity, presence, and community governance, offers a promising site for reimagining such interactions. To investigate this potential, we conducted participatory design workshops involving LGBTQ+ and cisgender participants, situating them in speculative Metaverse contexts to surface barriers and co-create alternative futures. The workshops followed a three-phase process-identifying challenges, speculative problem-solving, and visualizing futures-yielding socio-spatial-technical solutions across four layers: activity, interaction, scene, and space. These findings highlight the importance of spatial cues and power dynamics in shaping digital encounters. We contribute by (1) articulating challenges of cross-group communication in virtual environments, (2) proposing inclusive design opportunities for the Metaverse, and (3) advancing principles for addressing power geometry in digital space. This work demonstrates futuring as a critical strategy for designing equitable, transformative communication infrastructures.

Lan Luo, Anqi Wang, Muzhi Zhou et al.

Parent child tutoring is a collaborative learning setting with asymmetric roles, where parents guide children s problem solving while children engage in understanding and reasoning. However, most LLM based learning systems are designed for either single users or symmetric collaboration, leaving parent child tutoring with distinct instructional roles underexplored. Through a formative study, we find that effective parent child tutoring depends on preserving these distinct roles, with parents guiding the learning process and children remaining actively engaged in reasoning. We also identify recurring challenges when parents struggle to understand problem structure, lack sufficient knowledge to provide support, or encounter communication difficulties that disrupt shared understanding. To address these challenges, we present ParaTutor, a scaffolding system that provides different forms of support to parents and children. ParaTutor supports parents with guidance for tutoring and provides children with visual grounding for problem solving. We evaluate ParaTutor with 23 parent child dyads (children aged 10 to 12) under four tutoring conditions that vary how LLM assistance is delivered. Results show that generic LLM assistance tends to reduce the parent s role in tutoring, whereas ParaTutor better preserves parent led support and sustains children s participation in reasoning. These findings suggest that in multi users learning, the value of LLM support depends not only on model capability but also on how support is distributed across users with different roles. Our work contributes design implications for LLM systems that support family learning.