I am the Tang Family Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University’s HCI Institute. I’ve been designing human-AI interaction for more than twenty years, including work on TV show recommenders, decision support tools for clinicians implanting mechanical hearts, mobile health systems that detect the onset of major depression, smart classroom systems that watch instructors and provide feedback, and a system that keeps parents from forgetting to pick-up their children. I’m particularly interested in how AI systems for professionals can make them feel they are becoming better at their profession, moving more towards their idealized self for this role.

Much of my current work explores why AI systems are so challenging to design and why they have such a high failure rate. My team has been exploring how to improve the ideation of new AI products and services that are technically achievable, financially viable, ethical, and desirable to users.

I am also very interested in social robots and agentic agents. My team explores how intelligent social systems can and should engage with people, asking questions like when they should be honest and why they should prevaricate. As part of this work, we often explore agents and robots that have non-human capabilities, probing to find when this brings people comfort and when it raises concerns. I’m hoping that shortly, we can create more social agents and robots that demonstrate effective nunchi (눈치).

I teach courses on UX design, service design, lean startup, design theory, and on the design of AI products and services.