Publications

* Mentored Student

Social VR

Wang, S., Jiang, W., Zhang, X., Freeman, G., & Je, S. (2026). "Similar-Self" vs. "AltSelf": How Avatar Customization Impacts Trust Formation in Social VR and Its Transfer to Face-to-Face between Unacquainted Individuals. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 25 pages.

Freeman, G., Li, L.*, & Schulenberg, K.* (2025). "I Have Abused Someone Who Abused Me": Understanding People Who Have Experienced Both Sides of Harassment Accusations in Social VR. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact, 9, 2, Article CSCW107 (May 2025), 26 pages. [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award: Top 3%]

Schulenberg, K.*, Freeman, G., Li, L.*, Knijnenburg, B. (2024). Does Who You Are or Appear to Be Matter?: Understanding Identity-Based Harassment in Social VR Through the Lens of (Mis)Perceived Identity Revelation. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 8, CSCW2, Article 384 (November 2024), 40 pages.

Freeman, G., Schulenberg, K.*, Li, L., Panchanadikar, R.*, & McNeese, N. (2025). "Comforting and Small Like a House Cat, Big and Intimidating Like a Bodyguard": How Women Perceive and Envision AI Companions as a New Harassment Mitigation Approach in Social VR. The 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'25). Acceptance rate: 23%

Freeman, G., Frommel, J., Mandryk, R.L., Gugenheimer, J., Li, L., Johnson, D., Aragon, C., Asif, S.A., Bailey, J., Barkallah, M., Burger, B., Cmentowski, S., Hancock, J., Hides, L., Hu, H., Hu, Y., Li, W., Panchanadikar, R., Sayadi, N., Tebbe, D., Wöhler, L., You, X., Zhang, Z., & Zytko, D. (2024.) Understanding and Mitigating New Harms in Immersive and Embodied Virtual Spaces: A Speculative Dystopian Design Fiction Approach. In Companion Publication of the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW Companion '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 288-295. https://doi.org/10.1145/3678884.3681865

Schulenberg, K.*, Li, L.*, Lancaster, C.*, Zytko, D., & Freeman, G. "We Don't Want a Bird Cage, We Want Guardrails": Understanding & Designing for Preventing Interpersonal Harm in Social VR through the Lens of Consent. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), CSCW. [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award: Top 5%]

Schulenberg, K.*, Freeman, G., Li, L.*, & Barwulor, C.* . "Creepy Towards My Avatar Body, Creepy Towards My Body": How Women Experience and Manage Harassment Risks in Social Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), CSCW. [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award: Top 5%]

Schulenberg, K.*, Li, L.*, Freeman, G., & McNeese, N. (2023). Towards Leveraging AI-based Moderation to Address Emergent Harassment in Social Virtual Reality. The 2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'23).

Li, L.*, Freeman, G., Schulenberg, K.*, & Acena, D.* (2023). "We Cried on Each Other's Shoulders": How LGBTQ+ Individuals Experience Social Support in Social Virtual Reality. The 2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'23). [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award: Top 3%]

Zamanifard, S.* & Freeman, G. (2023). A Surprise Birthday Party in VR: Leveraging Social Virtual Reality to Maintain Existing Close Ties Over Distance. iConference 2023. Acceptance rate: 35%.

Zheng, Q.*, Xu, S.*, Wang, L.*, Tang, Y.*, Salvi, R.*, Freeman, G., & Huang, Y. (2023). Understanding Safety Risks and Safety Design in Social VR Environments. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), CSCW.

Freeman, G., & Acena, D*. (2022). "Acting Out" Queer Identity: The Embodied Visibility in Social Virtual Reality. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, Article 263 (November 2022), 32 pages. https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3555153

Generative AI and Creativity

Panchanadikar, R.*, Hu, Y.* & Freeman, G. (2026). A Dual Role Collision: How Generative AI's Intertwining Productivity Support and Social Support Reshape Indie Game Developers' Creative Work. In Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '26').

Panchanadikar, R.* & Freeman, G. (2026). A Potential Teammate?: Understanding How Indie Game Developers Approach Generative AI's Involvement in Their SmallScale Creative Teamwork. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages.

Hu, Y.* & Freeman, G. (2026). Beyond a Conventional Chatbot: How AI Streamers Transcend Live Streaming Experiences from Viewers' Perspectives. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages.

Hu, Y., Panchanadikar, R*, & Freeman, G. (2025). Beyond Traditional Gaming: Understanding How Social VR Streaming Creates New Forms of Play. In Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (pp. 15-22).

Hu, Y.*, Freeman, G., & Panchanadikar, R.* (2025). "Grab the Chat and Stick It to My Wall": Understanding How Social VR Streamers Bridge Immersive VR Experiences with Streaming Audiences Outside VR. The 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'25). Acceptance rate: 23%

Redesigning Democratized Technology

Freeman, G. , Li, L.*, McNeese, N., & Schulenberg, K.* (2023). Understanding and Mitigating Challenges for Non-Profit Driven Indie Game Development to Innovate Game Production. The 2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'23).

Li, L.*, Freeman, G., & McNeese, N. (2022). Channeling End-User Creativity: Leveraging Live Streaming for Distributed Collaboration in Indie Game Development. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, Article 282 (November 2022), 28 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555173

Lopez, J.* & Freeman, G. (2022). To Tag or Not To Tag: The Interplay of the Twitch Tag System and LGBTQIA+ Visibility in Live Streaming. The 2022 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2022).

Freeman, G., & McNeese, N. (2021). A Tale of Creativity and Struggles: Team Practices for Bottom-Up Innovation in Virtual Game Jams. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact, 5, CSCW1, Article 76 (April 2021), 27 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3449150

Bardzell, J., Freeman, G., Bardzell, S., & Chen, P. Y. (2020). Join.Love: A Sociotechnical Genealogy of the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage. The 2020 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'20), paper 476, 13 pages. Acceptance rate: 24%

Freeman, G., McNeese, N., Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S.(2020). "Pro-Amateur"-Driven Technological Innovation:Participation and Challenges in Indie Game Development. Proc. ACM Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 4, GROUP, Article 4 (January 2020), 22 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3375184

Freeman, G. & McNeese, N. (2019). Exploring Indie Game Development: Team Practices and Social Experiences in A Creativity-Centric Technology Community. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices, 28(3), 723-748.

Freeman, G., Bardzell, J., Bardzell, S., & McNeese, N. (2019). The Innovation ecology: Collaborative information, community support, and policy in a creative technology community. The 2019 iConference. In N.G. Taylor et al. (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), 11420, pp. 614-624. Springer. Acceptance rate: 30% [The 2019 Lee Dirks Award for Best Full Research Paper Nomination: Top 5 out of 133]

Freeman, G. , Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2019). Open Source, open vision: The Makerpro network and the broadening of participation in setting Taiwan's IT vision agenda. Human-Computer Interaction, 34 (5-6), 506-540.

Freeman, G. , Bardzell, S., & Bardzell, J. (2018). Bottom-up imaginaries: The cultural-technical practice of inventing regional advantage through IT R&D. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'18), paper 325, pp.1-11. New York: ACM. [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award: Top 5%]

Games, Social Media, Live Streaming, & AI

Panchanadikar, R.*, Hu, Y. *#, Guo, K. *#, Hall, A. L.*, Hu, H., Vishwamitra, N., & Freeman, G. (2026). Beyond Age-Based Restrictions: Rethinking Children's Online Safety Through Comparing Parent-Child Perspectives of Risks in User-Generated Content Games. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages.

Duan, W., Freeman, G., & McNeese, N. (2026). Beyond a Neutral Tool or Teammate: Envisioning AI Interventions for Women's Equity in Male-Dominated Teams. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26), ACM, New York, NY, USA.

Li, L.#, Wang, G.#, & Freeman, G. (2025). "It's about Research. It's Not about Language": Understanding and Designing for Mitigating Non-Native EnglishSpeaking Presenters' Challenges in Live Q&A Sessions at Academic Conferences. The 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'25). (#: Equal contributions) Acceptance rate: 23%