This study explored the role of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered conversational agents in human-computer interaction, particularly in the post-coronavirus (COVID-19) era, where digital technologies are central to healthcare, customer service, and education sectors. The research investigated the disruption of context continuity when users…

My dissertation elucidates how art practice can be a useful and helpful model for learning, teaching, and conducting research for HCI and the broader STEM fields. It focuses on "improvisation", a fundamental strategy and skill often used in the broader genres of arts, including cool jazz and the avant-garde. To achieve this goal, this…

Theory has been an object of interest for HCI researchers working on questions related to disciplinary identity and maturity. And recently there have been empirical studies of theory use in HCI research publications. These recent studies are crucial for enriching our understanding of how HCI researchers use theoretical knowledge objects like…

Embodiment is a concept that has gained widespread usage within the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community in recent years. In a general sense, embodiment is the notion that cognition arises not just from the mind, but also through our bodies' physical and social interactions with the world around us. HCI has employed this body-centric…

An Ambient Intelligence Environment is meant to sense and respond to the presence of people, using its embedded technology. In order to effectively sense the activities and intentions of its inhabitants, such an environment needs to utilize information captured from multiple sensors and modalities. By doing so, the interaction becomes more natural…

Learning occurs when content is accessed in a recursive process of awareness, exploration, reflection and resolution within one's social context. With the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, mobile learning (m-Learning) researchers should incorporate aspects of mobile human-computer interaction research into the instructional design process.…

While interactivity is regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of computer technology, the explanation on its impact remains in its infancy. The present research investigates what it means to provide a more (or less) interactive computer interface design by attempting to uncover its cognitive influences on the user's expectation of outcome and…

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) have been used as virtual conversational partners in interpersonal skills training applications such as medical interviews, military decision making, and cultural training. Ideally, in interpersonal skills training users will perceive and treat the ECAs the same as they would real people. The perception and…

This study reports findings from a controlled experiment evaluating the benefits of structuring design advice as patterns. Over the years, the pattern concept from architecture has become a native within the HCI community and its related discussions on sharing design knowledge. It is argued that the context-rich, and tangible, nature of patterns…

The use of information technology is a vital part of everyday life, but for a person with functional impairments, technology interaction may be difficult at best. Information technology is commonly designed to meet the needs of a theoretical "normal" user. However, there is no such thing as a "normal" user. A user's capabilities will vary over…

The concept of usefulness has implicitly played a pivotal role in evaluation research, but the meaning of usefulness has changed over time from system reliability to user performance and learnability/ease of use for non-experts. Despite massive technical and social changes, usability remains the "gold standard" for system evaluation.…

With the advent of ubiquitous computing, interaction design has broadened its object of inquiry into how smart computational artifacts inconspicuously act in people's everyday lives. Although user-centered design approaches remains useful for exploring how people cope with interactive systems, they cannot explain how this new breed of…

The context for this work is two-agent team decision systems. An "agent" is an intelligent entity that can measure some aspect of its environment, process information and possibly influence the environment through its action. In a collaborative two-agent team decision system, the agents can be coupled by noisy or noiseless interactions…

The juxtaposition of classic sociological theory and the, relatively, young discipline of human-computer interaction (HCI) serves as a powerful mechanism for both exploring the theoretical impacts of technology on human interactions as well as the application of technological systems to moderate interactions. It is the intent of this dissertation…

Mixed-initiative clustering is a task where a user and a machine work collaboratively to analyze a large set of documents. We hypothesize that a user and a machine can both learn better clustering models through enriched communication and interactive learning from each other. The first contribution or this thesis is providing a framework of…