Research Overview
My research interest is data-driven approaches to Human-Engaged Computing (Read more). We aim to achieve a state of optimal, balanced synergism between humans and technological systems. For example, we explore how to promote human-AI synergy (Read more).
We use 'interactors' to denote human users and technological systems that form a 'symbiotic mutualism' relationship on the path towards a shared goal. The concept of 'engagement' reflects the affordance of each interactor in the process of achieving mutual enhancement.
Engagement is a state of consciousness made up of "what has been understood so far, what the interactors are each (or together) attending to, evidence of their waning connectedness, and evidence of their desire to disengage" [Sidner et al., 2005].
We take a user-centric, data-driven, computational approach to studying engaged humans and engaging technologies.
Inference and prediction of human engagement:
- Sensing social signals, physiological signals, and behavioral signals
- Modeling the dynamicity of attentional, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement
- Understanding humans' conscious application of mental and/or physical capabilities
- Mining engaging factors from online and offline activities with physical and virtual entities in functional and/or social contexts
- Translating and conveying the engagement of technology (e.g., resources, process, competence, and resilience) to human users via interpretable cues
- Exploring technology designs that close the gulf of execution and evaluation
Our research topics can be categorized by three means (click to see more details):
- The type of high-order thinking activities (e.g., decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, and collaboration) that human and technology engage in
- The application domains (e.g., wellbeing, education, design, social/crowd computing, and ubiquitous computing)
- The form of technology (e.g., AI, data, and XR)