LLooM: Weaving Stories and Probing Experiences of Language Technologies

This paper presents LLooM, a probe designed to capture situated, temporal, and contradictory experiences with language technologies such as voice assistants, chatbots, and LLMs. The design of LLooM draws on work in probes, feminist HCI, and storytelling to invite participants to write stories about their encounters with language technologies on fabric strips and weave them into looms. Through a public, researcher-facilitated, and collective participant deployment with 56 participants, LLooM enabled participants to share diverse perspectives on language technologies. This methodological approach makes two contributions to probe design in HCI: enabling participants to reshape the methodological assumptions underlying research and allowing participants' visible contributions to become provocations that support collaborative meaning-making across diverse experiences.