EmpathiCH 2026
Proceedings of the EmpathiCH'26 Workshop

This volume contains papers presented at the 4th EmpathiCH Workshop --- (Re-)Thinking Empathy's Materiality in HCI --- held on April 14, 2026, in Barcelona, Spain, co-located with the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'26).

This year we received 27 paper submissions from across the world, of which 21 high-quality papers were accepted and published in these proceedings. Each contributed paper was peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers drawn from the workshop's program committee. Building on three prior iterations of the EmpathiCH series --- at CHI'22 (New Orleans, USA), CHI'23 (Hamburg, Germany), and CHI'24 (Honolulu, USA) --- this fourth edition consolidates and advances the community's ongoing inquiry into empathy's role in HCI research and practice. Where previous editions examined empathy as a design methodology and scrutinized its application across diverse user groups and contexts, this edition takes a step back to situate empathy within a sociomaterial framework. Papers and workshop discussions were organized around three constitutive dimensions: (1) empathic technologies, their materialities and affordances; (2) social practices of empathy in design and research; and (3) the context, situatedness, intentionality, and temporality of empathy. Through this lens, the workshop worked toward co-developing a sociomaterial taxonomy for empathy in HCI, offering conceptual clarity and practical guidance for researchers and practitioners.

The success of EmpathiCH'26 depends on the contributions of many individuals. We thank all authors who submitted their work, and the members of our program committee for their careful reviews and constructive feedback. We also thank the broader EmpathiCH community, including members of our Slack platform and podcast series Conversations on Empathy-Centric Design, for the sustained engagement that makes this workshop series possible. Finally, we thank all participants for their presence, openness, and contribution to the collective discussions that are at the heart of EmpathiCH. We hope this edition marks a meaningful step toward a more coherent and critical understanding of empathy in HCI.

The EmpathiCH'26 Organizing Committee
May, 2026