Alexis Hiniker

Alexis Hiniker is an Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Washington Information School, Director of the User Empowerment Lab, and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Youth. She studies the ways in which current technologies harm their users and builds and evaluates alternative systems to demonstrate instead how technology can help young people thrive. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, which have been featured in mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and more. Her research has been cited in multiple U.S. state and federal congressional sessions, and she has provided subject-matter expertise on manipulative designs to the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the European Commission. She is a Jacobs Foundation Fellow, a Google Research Scholar, a former advisor to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and a recipient of the SIGCHI Societal Impact Award.

Papers

SusBench: An Online Benchmark for Evaluating Dark Pattern Susceptibility of Computer-Use Agents

Longjie Guo, Chenjie Yuan, Mingyuan Zhong, Robert Wolfe, Ruican Zhong, Yue Xu, Bingbing Wen, Hua Shen, Lucy Lu Wang, Alexis Hiniker

Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2026). Acceptance rate: 20%.

Alexis Hiniker

Papers

SusBench: An Online Benchmark for Evaluating Dark Pattern Susceptibility of Computer-Use Agents

Quantifying the Novelty Bias when Evaluating Interactive Prototypes

Mobile Gambling: Unexplored Risks to Children and Families

Decoupling of Usefulness and Novelty: Evaluating the Impact of Generative AI on Design Outputs and Designers' Creative Thinking

Ability Heuristics for Conducting Accessibility Inspections

The Engagement-Prolonging Designs Teens Encounter on Very Large Online Platforms

Risks and Consequences of Children's Use of Social AI

Understanding Privacy Norms Around LLM-Based Chatbots: A Contextual Integrity Perspective

Trust-Enabled Privacy: Social Media Designs to Support Adolescent User Boundary Regulation

Using Screenshot Data to Examine the Phone Use People Regret

Problematic Media Use as a Content-Neutral, Enforceable Harm

Privacy as Social Norm: Systematically Empowering Teen Privacy Management on Social Media

Toward Nonviolent Design: Co-Designing a Human-Centered Framework for AI-Mediated Communication

You Go Through So Many Emotions Scrolling Through Instagram: How Teens Use Instagram to Regulate Their Emotions

Should ChatGPT Write Your Breakup Text? Exploring the Role of AI in Relationship Dissolution

Building the Beloved Community: Designing Technologies for Neighborhood Safety

Moving Toward the Metaverse: Children’s Avatar Making in Online Social Games

A Temporal Model for Supporting Hard Conversations Online Through Design

Investigating Attention and Normative Dissociation in Children's Online Social Games

'I Just Don’t Care Enough To Be Interested': Teens’ Moment-By-Moment Experiences on Instagram

Tuning into the World: Designing Community Safety Technologies to Reduce Dysfunctional Fear of Crime

Aligned Co-Design: An Interdependent, Multi-Modal Method for People with Motor and Communication Disabilities

From Text to Self: Users' Perception of AIMC Tools on Interpersonal Communication and Self

Representation Bias of Adolescents in AI: A Bilingual, Bicultural Study

ML-EAT: A Multilevel Embedding Association Test for Interpretable and Transparent Social Science

Dataset Scale and Societal Consistency Mediate Facial Impression Bias in Vision-Language AI

Sharing, Not Showing Off: How BeReal Approaches Authentic Self-Presentation on Social Media Through Its Design

Self-Talk with Superhero Zip: Supporting Children’s Socioemotional Learning with Conversational Agents

Let Kids Wonder, Question and Make Mistakes: How the Designers of Children’s Technology Think about Child Well-being

SwitchTube: A Proof-of-Concept System Introducing 'Adaptable Commitment Interfaces' as a Tool for Digital Wellbeing.

Deceptive Design Patterns in Safety Technologies: A Case Study of the Citizen App

Parents' Ontological Beliefs Regarding the Use of Conversational Agents at Home: Resisting the Neoliberal Discourse

Shame on Who? Experimentally Reducing Shame During Political Arguments on Twitter

Social Emotional Learning with Conversational Agents: Reviewing Current Designs and Probing Parents' Ideas for Future Ones

Reclaiming Attention: Christianity and HCI

'I Don’t Even Remember What I Read': How Design Influences Dissociation on Social Media

Monitoring Screen Time or Redesigning It? Two Approaches to Supporting Intentional Social Media Use

Prevalence and Characteristics of Manipulative Design in Mobile Applications Used by Children

Examining Voice Assistants in the Context of Children’s Speech

How the Design of YouTube Influences User Sense of Agency

Someone is Wrong on the Internet: Having Hard Conversations in Online Spaces

Parenting in a Pandemic: Juggling Multiple Roles and Managing Technology Use in Family Life During COVID-19 in the United States

When Screen Time Isn’t Screen Time: Tensions and Needs Among Tweens and Their Parents During Nature-Based Exploration

Is Someone Listening? Audio Related Privacy Perceptions and Design Recommendations from Guardians, Pragmatists, and Cynics

Understanding Blind Screen Reader Users' Experiences of Digital Artboards

Would You Rather: A Focus Group Method for Eliciting and Discussing Formative Design Insights with Children

From Moral Panic to Systemic Change: Making Child-Centered Design the Default

Can Conversational Agents Change the Way Children Talk to People?

A Privacy-Focused Systematic Analysis of Online Status Indicators

'Otter this World': Can a Mobile Application Promote Children’s Connectedness to Nature?

User Experiences with Online Status Indicators

From Ancient Contemplative Practice to the App Store: Designing a Digital Container for Mindfulness

Parenting with Alexa: Exploring the Introduction of Smart Speakers on Family Dynamics

Assumptions Checked: How Families Learn About and Use the Echo Dot

Intentional Technology Use in Early Childhood Education

No Touch Pig! Investigating Child-Parent Use of a System for Training Executive Function

Lights, Music, Stamps! Evaluating Mealtime Tangibles for Preschoolers

Understanding Parents’ Perspectives on Mealtime Technology

'Everything's the Phone': Understanding the Phone’s Supercharged Role in Parent-Teen Relationships

Modeling the Engagement-Disengagement Cycle of Compulsive Phone Use

Laughing is Scary, but Farting is Cute: A Conceptual Model of Children’s Perspectives of Creepy Technologies

Communication Breakdowns Between Families and Alexa

Anchored Audio Sampling: A Seamless Method for Exploring Children’s Thoughts and Reactions During Deployment Studies

Let's Play! Digital and Analog Play Patterns between Preschoolers and Parents

The Stamp Plate and the Kicking Chair: Playful Productivity for Mealtime in Preschools

Why Doesn't It Work? Voice-Driven Interfaces and Young Children's Communication Repair Strategies

What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless?

Joint Media Engagement between Parents and Preschoolers in the U.S., China, and Taiwan

Coco’s Videos: An Empirical Investigation of Video-Player Design Features and Children's Media Use

Co-Designing with Preschoolers Using Fictional Inquiry and Comicboarding

It wasn't really about the Pokémon: Parents' Perspectives on a Location-Based Mobile Game

Plan & Play: Supporting Intentional Media Use in Early Childhood

Toward the Operationalization of Visual Metaphor

Evaluating an iPad Game to Address Overselectivity in Preliterate AAC Users with Minimal Verbal Behavior

Why Would You Do That? Predicting the Uses and Gratifications Behind Smartphone-Usage Behaviors

Screen Time Tantrums: How Families Manage Screen Media Experiences for Young Children

MyTime: Interventions to Support Intentional Smartphone Use

Hidden Symbols: How Informal Symbolism in Digital Interfaces Disrupts Usability for Preschoolers