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arxivcs.HC2026-07-10

Living Inside the Black Box: Behavioral Probing and Adaptation in Mandatory Wearable Sensing

Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Ruiqi Chen, Xiaolan Ding, Shuai Ma

Wearable sensing systems in high-stakes institutional contexts translate behavioral data into consequential judgments, yet wearers have little access to how those judgments are made. We present a qualitative study of 24 individuals who experienced mandatory electronic monitoring in China's community corrections system. We show that participants built what we term sensor literacy under constraint, a practical form of risk-oriented knowledge developed through uncertainty, behavioral probing, and adaptation. We identify two orientations across rule domains. Where participants had mapped system behavior, they sometimes regained limited flexibility. Where uncertainty remained costly, they contracted movement and discretionary activity beyond formal rules. Some former wearers described residual habits of calculation after device removal. We discuss design implications for making institutional sensing intelligible to wearers, including sensor uncertainty, usable documentation, and evaluation after device wearing.

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Reading the Same Data Differently: Interpretive Labor Across System Boundaries in Electronic Monitoring

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arxivcs.HC2026-07-09

HeadRoom: Lightweight, Edge-deployable Pipeline for Adaptive Notification Routing

Dinithi Dissanayake, Prasanth Sasikumar, Suranga Nanayakkara

Emerging wearables, such as smart glasses, can deliver notifications through multiple sensory channels, but there is still a limited understanding of how to choose the right channel at the right moment. We propose HeadRoom, a lightweight, edge-deployable pipeline that estimates t…

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