CMU at CHI 2026

March 25, 2026

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) authors from a wide variety of disciplines will showcase work at the international conference for human-computer interaction next month.

The prestigious Association of Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI, pronounced “kai”) will take place April 13 to 17, 2026, in Barcelona, Spain.

This year, authors from CMU contributed to 76 papers, including 3 recognized with Best Paper Awards and 9 with Honorable Mention Awards (jump down to view the list). 

In addition to paper presentations, CMU researchers contributed to 14 workshops, 4 posters, 2 interactivity sessions and more. A search for Carnegie Mellon in the CHI 2026 program returns a full list of involvement.   

“The interdisciplinary CHI conference encompasses the research of many of our faculty and students at the HCI Institute, and has historically been the premiere place to publish work in many areas of human-computer interaction,” said Brad Myers, Geschke Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and professor of HCI.

“We are delighted to see such a strong Carnegie Mellon presence this year. Authors from 15 different CMU departments contributed work to CHI 2026 on a variety of human-centered topics, representing areas of computer science, engineering, design and business,” Myers said.  

CHI 2026 received a record-breaking 6,700 paper submissions, which reflects the strength and creativity of the global HCI community, and is now ACM’s largest conference. The CHI awards are extremely competitive each year with Best Paper Awards recognizing the top 1% and Honorable Mentions the top 5% of accepted papers.

We celebrate the following awards and research affiliated with CMU authors at CHI 2026.

2026 SIGCHI Awards

Congratulations to the following 2026 SIGCHI award winners with ties to Carnegie Mellon or the HCII. They will be celebrated at the awards ceremony during the conference.  

• ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award: Lorrie Cranor, affiliated faculty
  📰 CyLab news: Cranor receives 2026 ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award 
• ACM SIGCHI Academy Class of 2026:
  Three HCII faculty and one alumnus will join the CHI Academy this year. 
  • Jeffrey P. Bigham, associate professor 
  • Laura Dabbish, professor
  • Chris Harrison, associate professor
  • Darren Gergle (HCII Ph.D. 2006), now faculty at Northwestern University     
     

Accepted Papers 

Carnegie Mellon University authors contributed to the following papers accepted to CHI 2026. This list is organized in alphabetical order by paper title. Award-winning papers are listed first and noted with icons and text. 

🏆 Best Paper Award
“I Don’t Think RAI Applies to My Model” – Engaging Non-champions with Sticky Stories for Responsible AI Work
Nadia Nahar (CMU S3D), Chenyang Yang (CMU S3D), Yanxin Chen, Wesley Hanwen Deng (HCII), Kenneth Holstein (HCII), Motahhare Eslami (HCII), Christian Kästner (CMU S3D)

🏆 Best Paper Award 
iTagPDF: Towards Finally Automating PDF Accessibility
Peya Mowar (CMU RI), Aaron Steinfeld (CMU RI), Jeffrey P. Bigham (HCII)

🏆 Best Paper Award
Towards Fluent Interaction with Cyber-Physical Architecture
Jesse T Gonzalez (HCII), Neeta M Khanuja (HCII), Michael Mingxuan Li (CMU), Maggie Guo (CMU Architecture), Layomi Olaitan (CMU ECE), Emily Lau (CMU Design), Jenny Pugh (CMU), Alexandra Ion (HCII), Scott E Hudson (HCII)

🏅Honorable Mention Award
EcoAssist: Embedding Sustainability into AI-Assisted Frontend Development
André Barrocas, Nuno Jardim Nunes, Valentina Nisi, Nikolas Martelaro (HCII)

🏅Honorable Mention Award
Evidotes: Integrating Scientific Evidence and Anecdotes to Support Uncertainties Triggered by Peer Health Posts
Shreya Bali (HCII), Riku Arakawa (HCII), Peace Odiase, Tongshuang Wu (HCII), Mayank Goel (S3D/HCII)

🏅Honorable Mention Award
HiFiGaze: Improving Eye Tracking Accuracy Using Screen Content Knowledge
Taejun Kim (HCII), Vimal Mollyn (HCII), Riku Arakawa (HCII), Chris Harrison (HCII)
 

🏅Honorable Mention Award
Large Language Models in Peer-Run Community Behavioral Health Services: Understanding Peer Specialists and Service Users’ Perspectives on Opportunities, Risks, and Mitigation Strategies
Cindy Peng (HCII), Megan Chai (HCII), Gao Mo (CMU MLD), Naveen Raman (CMU MLD), Ningjing Tang (HCII), Shannon Pagdon, Margaret Swarbrick, Nev Jones, Fei Fang (CMU S3D), Hong Shen (HCII)
📰 SCS news: PeerCoPilot Uses AI To Support Community Mental Health Care 

🏅Honorable Mention Award
MindfulAgents: Personalizing Mindfulness Meditation via an Expert-Aligned Multi-Agent System
Mengyuan Wu, Zhihan Jiang, Yuang Fan, Richard Feng, Sahiti Dharmavaram, Mathew Polowitz (CMU Psychology), Shawn Fallon, Bashima Islam, Lizbeth Benson, Irene Tung, David Creswell (CMU Psychology), Xuhai "Orson" Xu

🏅Honorable Mention Award
Privy: Envisioning and Mitigating Privacy Risks for Consumer-facing AI Product Concepts
Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee (HCII), Yu-Ju Yang, Matthew Bilik, Isadora Krsek (HCII), Thomas Serban von Davier (CMU SEI), Kyzyl Monteiro (HCII), Jason Lin, Shivani Agarwal (CMU III), Jodi Forlizzi (HCII), Sauvik Das (HCII)

🏅Honorable Mention Award
The Siren Song of LLMs: How Users Perceive and Respond to Dark Patterns in Large Language Models
Yike Shi (CMU CS), Qing Xiao (HCII), Diane Hu (CMU Design), Hong Shen (HCII), Hua Shen

🏅Honorable Mention Award
WELDAR: Augmenting Live Hands-On Training with In-Situ Guidance for Novice Learners
Chuhan (Franklin) Xu (CMU Design), Lia Sparingga Purnamasari (CMU Design), Zhenfang Chen (CMU Architecture), Daragh Byrne (CMU Architecture), Dina EL-Zanfaly (CMU Design)

🏅Honorable Mention Award
Will They Try Again? A Large-Scale RCT on Scaffolds that Support Persistence in an Intelligent Tutoring System
Michael W Asher (HCII), Yumou Wei (HCII), Adam Reynolds, Amy Ogan (HCII), Paulo F Carvalho (HCII)

 

A Design Space for Live Music Agents
Yewon Kim (CMU CSD), Stephen Brade, Alexander Wang (HCII), David Zhou, Haven Kim, Bill Wang, Sung-Ju Lee, Hugo F Flores Garcia, Anna Huang, Chris Donahue (CMU CSD)

ADCanvas: Accessible and Conversational Audio Description Authoring for Blind and Low Vision Creators
Franklin Mingzhe Li (HCII), Michael Xieyang Liu, Cynthia L. Bennett, Shaun K. Kane

Auditorily Embodied Conversational Agents: Effects of Spatialization and Situated Audio Cues on Presence and Social Perception
Yi Fei Cheng (HCII), Jarod Bloch (CMU SCS), Alexander Wang (HCII), Andrea Bianchi, Anusha Withana, Anhong Guo, Laurie M Heller (CMU Psychology), David Lindlbauer (HCII)

Behavioral Indicators of Overreliance During Interaction with Conversational Language Models
Chang Liu, Qinyi Zhou, Xinjie Shen, Xingyu Bruce Liu, Tongshuang Wu (HCII), Xiang 'Anthony' Chen

Beyond Content Exposure: Systemic Factors Driving Moderators' Mental Health Crisis in Africa
Nuredin Ali, Tianling Yang, Shivani Kapania (HCII), Kauna Malgwi, Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan, Adio-Adet Dinika, Elaine Nsoesie, Milagros Miceli, Stevie Chancellor

Beyond Riding: Passenger Engagement with Driver Labor through Gamified Interactions
Jane Hsieh (HCII), Emily Regan, Jose Elizalde, Sophia Deng, Haiyi Zhu (HCII)

Black LLMirror: User (Self) Perceptions in Black American English Interactions with LLMs
Mikayla Campbell (CMU LTI), Joel Mire (CMU LTI), Mark Diaz, Maarten Sap (CMU LTI)

Botender: Supporting Communities in Collaboratively Designing AI Agents through Case-Based Provocations
Tzu-Sheng Kuo (HCII), Sophia Liu, Quan Ze Chen, Joseph Seering, Amy X. Zhang, Haiyi Zhu (HCII), Kenneth Holstein (HCII)

CalmReminder: A Design Probe for Parental Engagement with Children with Hyperactivity, Augmented by Real-Time Motion Sensing with a Watch
Riku Arakawa* (HCII), Shreya Bali* (HCII), Anupama Sitaraman (CMU S3D), Woosuk Seo, Sam Shaaban, Oliver Lindheim, Traci M. Kennedy, Mayank Goel (S3D/HCII)

Can GenAI Move from Individual Use to Collaborative Work? Experiences, Challenges, and Opportunities of Coordinating GenAI into Collaborative Newswork
Qing Xiao (HCII), Diane Hu (CMU Design), Jingjia Xiao, Hancheng Cao, Hong Shen (HCII)

Code with Me or for Me? How Increasing AI Automation Transforms Developer Workflows
Valerie Chen (CMU MLD), Ameet Talwalkar (CMU MLD), Robert Brennan, Graham Neubig (CMU LTI)

Do Teachers Dream of GenAI Widening Educational (In)equality? Envisioning the Future of K-12 GenAI Education from Global Teachers’ Perspectives
Ruiwei Xiao* (HCII), Qing Xiao* (HCII), Xinying Hou, Phenyo Phemelo Moletsane (HCII), Hanqi Jane Li, Hong Shen (HCII), John Stamper (HCII)

EchoScriptor: Automatic Lifelogging Narratives via Activity-Based Audio–Language Model
Kaylee Yaxuan Li, Xinghao Zhou, Haizhong Zheng (CMU ECE), Kang G. Shin, Alanson P. Sample

EdTech for Last Mile Learners in the Global South: Navigating Technological and Motivational Learning Insights with Radios and Mobile Phones
Christine Kwon (HCII), Dieyu Ouyang, Lingkan Wang (HCII), Debbie Eleene Conejo, Phenyo Phemelo Moletsane (HCII), John Stamper (HCII), Amy Ogan (HCII)

Exploring Texture-Level Creative Decisions with penPal, a Novel Handheld Actuated Drawing Tool
Tucker Rae-Grant, Luke Jimenez, Lea Albaugh (HCII), Ken Nakagaki
 

From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology 
JiWoong (Joon) Jang (HCII), Patrick Carrington (HCII), Andrew Begel (S3D)

From Selfie Stick to Virtual Cane: Enabling Blind Exploration through Mobile Virtual Reality
Hao Tang, HONG ZHAO, Xinpeng Liu (CMU Heinz), Zhenchao Xia, William Seiple, Zhigang Zhu

Funding AI for Good: A Call for Meaningful Engagement
Hongjin Lin, Anna Kawakami (HCII), Catherine D'Ignazio, Kenneth Holstein (HCII), Krzysztof Z. Gajos

How Does Delegation in Social Interaction Evolve Over Time? Navigation with a Robot for Blind People
Rayna Hata (CMU RI), Masaki Kuribayashi, Allan Wang, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa

Hybrid LLM-Embedded Dialogue Agents for Learner Reflection: Designing Responsive and Theory-Driven Interactions
Paras Sharma, Yueping Sha, Janet Bih, Brayden Yan, Jess A Turner (HCII), Nicole Balay, Hubert O. Asare, Angela E.B. Stewart, Erin Walker

“I followed what felt right, not what I was told”: Autonomy, Coaching, and Recognizing Bias Through AI-Mediated Dialogue
Atieh Taheri (HCII), Hamza El Alaoui (HCII), Patrick A. Carrington (HCII), Jeffrey P. Bigham  (HCII)

Identifying, Explaining, and Correcting Ableist Language with AI
Kynnedy Simone Smith (HCII), Lydia Chilton, Danielle Bragg

Inclusive Mobile Learning: How Technology-Enabled Language Choice Supports Multilingual Students
Phenyo Phemelo Moletsane (HCII), Michael W Asher (HCII), Christine Kwon (HCII), Paulo F. Carvalho (HCII), Amy Ogan (HCII)

InSense3D: Designing Smart 3D-Printed Structures Leveraging Ferromagnetic Filaments for Inductive Deformation Sensing
Rahul Bhaumik (HCII), Camilo Ayala-Garcia, Niko Münzenrieder, Michael Haller, Alexandra Ion (HCII)

Intelligent Reasoning Cues: A Framework and Case Study of the Roles of AI Information in Complex Decisions
Venkatesh Sivaraman (HCII), Eric Paul Mason (HCII), Mengfan Ellen Li, Jessica Tong, Andrew Joseph King, Jeremy M. Kahn, Adam Perer (HCII)

Investigating How Leaders Decide on AI Innovations: Opportunities for HCI
Shixian Xie (HCII), Sijia Xiao (HCII), Cindy Peng (HCII), Ganesh Mani (CMU Tepper), John Zimmerman (HCII), Motahhare Eslami (HCII)

"It just requires so much more creativity": Barriers and Workarounds to Gathering Information for AI Contestation
Sohini Upadhyay, Dasha Pruss, Alicia DeVrio (HCII), Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Naveena Karusala

Lost in Transcription: Subtitle Errors in Automatic Speech Recognition Reduce Speaker and Content Evaluations
Kowe Kadoma, Priyal Shrivastava (HCII), Mor Naaman

Lost in Translation: Understanding Autistic–Neurotypical Communication Style Differences in Job Postings
Huining Feng, Zinat Ara, Andrew Hundt (CMU RI), Slobodan Vucetic, John Joon Young Chung, Sungsoo Ray Hong

LubDubDecoder: Bringing Micro-Mechanical Cardiac Monitoring to Hearables
Siqi Zhang (CMU ECE), Xiyuxing Zhang, Duc Vu, Tao Qiang, Clara Palacios, Jiangyifei Zhu (CMU ECE), Yuntao Wang, Mayank Goel (S3D/HCII), Justin Chan (ECE/S3D)
📰 CMU ECE news: Earbuds that Listen to the Heart

My Money, Your Name: Challenges and Workarounds in ID-Required Mobile Money in East Africa
Edith T Luhanga (CMU Africa), Karen Sowon, Lorrie Faith Cranor (CMU S3D/EPP), Giulia Fanti (CMU ECE), Conrad Tucker (CMU MechE), Assane Gueye (CMU Africa)

Navigating Uncertainties: How GenAI Developers Document Their Models on Open-Source Platforms
Ningjing Tang (HCII), Megan Li (CMU S3D), Amy Winecoff, Michael Madaio, Hoda Heidari (CMU MLD), Hong Shen (HCII)

Not Everyone Wins with LLMs: Behavioral Patterns and Pedagogical Implications for AI Literacy in Programmatic Data Science
Qianou Ma (HCII), Kenneth Koedinger (HCII), Tongshuang Wu (HCII)

"Not Human, Funnier": How Machine Identity Shapes Humor Perception in Online AI Stand-up Comedy
Xuehan Huang, Canwen Wang (HCII), Yifei Hao, Daijin Yang, RAY LC

One Body, Two Minds: Alternating VR Perspective During Remote Teleoperation of Supernumerary Limbs
Hongyu Zhou, Xincheng Huang, Winston Wijaya, Yi Fei Cheng (HCII), David Lindlbauer (HCII), Eduardo Velloso, Andrea Bianchi, Zhanna Sarsenbayeva, Anusha Withana

Passing Down Passwords: How Older Adults Approach Postmortem Account Access and Digital Estate Planning
Jenny Tang (CMU S3D), Xiaoyuan Wu (CMU S3D), Lujo Bauer (CMU S3D/ECE), Nicolas Christin (CMU S3D/EPP), Lorrie Faith Cranor (CMU S3D/EPP)

PointAloud: An Interaction Suite for AI-Supported Pointer-Centric Think-Aloud Computing
Frederic Gmeiner (HCII), John Thompson, George Fitzmaurice, Justin Matejka

PolicyPad: Collaborative Prototyping of LLM Policies
K. J. Kevin Feng, Tzu-Sheng Kuo (HCII), Quan Ze Chen, Inyoung Cheong, Kenneth Holstein (HCII), Amy X. Zhang

Prototyping Multimodal GenAI Real-Time Agents with Counterfactual Replays and Hybrid Wizard-of-Oz
Frederic Gmeiner (HCII), Kenneth Holstein (HCII), Nikolas Martelaro (HCII)

Regulating AI: Where U.S. State Policy and HCI (Mis)align
Alice Gao, Adinawa D. Adjagbodjou (HCII), Dhanaraj Thakur, Rene Just, Katharina Reinecke

Revisiting Worker-Centered Design: Tensions, Blind Spots, and Action Spaces
Shuhao Ma, John Zimmerman (HCII), Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes

Robot-Assisted Group Tours for Blind People
Yaxin Hu, Masaki Kuribayashi, Allan Wang, Seita Kayukawa, Daisuke Sato (CMU RI), Bilge Mutlu, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa

Robots that Evolve with Us: Modular Co-Design for Personalization, Adaptability, and Sustainability
Lingyun Chen, Qing Xiao (HCII), Zitao Zhang, Eli Blevis, Selma Šabanović

Simulating Human Audiovisual Search Behavior
Hyunsung Cho (HCII), Xuejing Luo, Byungjoo Lee, David Lindlbauer (HCII), Antti Oulsavirta

Situated, Dynamic, and Subjective: Envisioning the Design of Theory-of-Mind-Enabled Everyday AI with Industry Practitioners
Qiaosi (Chelsea) Wang (HCII), Jini Kim (HCII), Avanita Sharma (CMU Design), Alicia (Hyun Jin) Lee (HCII), Jodi Forlizzi (HCII), Hong Shen (HCII)

skCAD: A Design Tool for Solid Knitting with Automatic Pattern Generation
Yuichi Hirose (CMU RI), Maria Larsson, Takeo Igarashi

Sometimes You Need Facts, and Sometimes a Hug: Understanding Older Adults’ Preferences for Explanations in LLM-Based Conversational AI Systems
Niharika Mathur, Tamara Zubatiy, Agata Rozga, Jodi Forlizzi (HCII), Beth Mynatt

SonicSieve: Bringing Directional Speech Extraction to Smartphones Using Acoustic Microstructures
Kuang Yuan (CMU ECE), Yifeng Wang (CMU ECE), Xiyuxing Zhang, Chengyi Shen, Swarun Kumar (CMU ECE), Justin Chan (CMU ECE/S3D)
📰 CMU ECE news: Teaching Your Phone to Listen Like an Ear

SoundBubble: Finger-Bound Virtual Microphone using Headset/Glasses Beamforming
Daehwa Kim (HCII), Chris Harrison (HCII)

Supporting Informed Self-Disclosure: Design Recommendations for Presenting AI-Estimates of Privacy Risks to Users
Isadora Krsek (HCII), Meryl Ye (CMU S3D), Wei Xu, Alan Ritter, Laura Dabbish (HCII), Sauvik Das (HCII)

TALES: A Taxonomy and Analysis of Cultural Representations in LLM-generated Stories
Kirti Bhagat, Shaily Bhatt (CMU LTI), Athul Velagapudi, Aditya Vashistha, Shachi Dave, Danish Pruthi

TaskAudit: Detecting Functiona11ity Errors in Mobile Apps via Agentic Task Execution
Mingyuan Zhong, Xia Chen (CMU), Davin Win Kyi, Chen Li (CMU), James Fogarty, Jacob O. Wobbrock

‘The plan is just survival': Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment
Shivani Kapania (HCII), Tianling Yang, Nuredin Ali, Morgan Scheuerman, Milagros Miceli, Alex Taylor, Sarah Fox (HCII)

The Three Praxes Framework - A Thematic Review and Map of Social Accessibility Research
JiWoong (Joon) Jang (HCII), Patrick Carrington (HCII), Andrew Begel (CMU S3D)

Toolset Action Coding System: A Generalized Method for Tool Measurement
Moshe Mahler (CMU ETC), Yuchen Liu (CMU), Jodi Forlizzi (HCII)

Towards Accessible Mobility Support: User-Centered Design of a Passive, Multi-Functional, Low-Cost Knee Exoskeleton
Yuyu Lin (HCII), Yujia Liu (HCII), Emma Kim (CMU MSE/BME), Alexandra Ion (HCII)

Tracing Creativity: A Design Space For Creative Activity Traces in HCI
Noor Hammad (HCII), David Chuan-En Lin (HCII), Amy Smith, Max Kreminski, Erik Harpstead (HCII), Jessica Hammer (HCII)

Understanding Nature Engagement Experiences of Blind People
Mengjie Tang, Xinman Li, Juxiao Zhang, Franklin Mingzhe Li (HCII), Zhuying Li

Understanding the Sociocultural Role of Makerspace Infrastructure When Developing Community-based Technology-rich Learning Programs
Erin Higgins (CMU Library), Jennifer Posada, Marie Sakowicz, Quinlan O Kimble-Brown, Andrew Coy, Foad Hamidi

Values Across Contexts: Understanding How Older Adults Enact What Matters Through Technology
Hugo Simão, David Gonçarves, Neeta Khanuja (HCII), Valentina Nisi, Alexandre Bernardino, Tiago Guerreiro, Jodi Forlizzi (HCII)

Vipera: Blending Visual and LLM-Driven Guidance for Systematic Auditing of Text-to-Image Generative AI
Yanwei Huang, Wesley Hanwen Deng (HCII), Sijia Xiao (HCII), Motahhare Eslami (HCII), Jason I. Hong (HCII), Arpit Narechania, Adam Perer (HCII)

When Your Boss Is an AI Bot: Exploring Opportunities and Risks of Manager Clone Agents in the Future Workplace
Diane Hu (CMU Design), Qing Xiao (HCII), Hancheng Cao, Hong Shen (HCII)
📰 SCS news: When an AI Bot Becomes Your Boss

Worker Discretion Advised: Co-designing Risk Disclosure in Crowdsourced Responsible AI (RAI) Content Work
Alice Qian (HCII), Ziqi Yang (CMU), Ryland Shaw, Jina Suh, Laura Dabbish (HCII), Hong Shen (HCII)

Xspine: Integrating Motion Sensing Capability into Dynamic Structures Using Multi-material FDM 3D Printing
Mingming Li, Dingning Cao, Xiang Chang, Karla Sahin (CMU ECE), Stefanie Mueller, Jiaji Li