I've got a full team of lovely undergraduate mentees! The only downside is not having the space to advise more at the moment.
Still, I am delighted to meet with folks interested in HCI + creativity support, especially if you are considering grad school and/or a career in research or art.
For some asynchronous advice, I wrote a blog post about getting into hci research, and how it's basically like getting into hyperpop.
here is my semi-frequently updated collection of cool projects and people that I often share.
I'm dreaming of collaborating with more students and researchers studying art-history (especially those with interest in combining art history + data science + interaction design...) If that sounds like you, please reach out! :3
Labor, Power, and Belonging: The Work of Voice in the Age of AI Reproduction
Shm Almeda, Robin Netzorg, Isabel Li, Ethan Tam, Skyla Ma, Bob Tianqi Wei
🏛️ To Appear @ FAccT 2025 |
📄 Paper (PDF) |
How is Speech AI impacting voice actors and their community?
A study with 15 professional voice artists, investigating how Speech AI development practices are impacting their work. We call for researchers and developers to center and honor the voice community's uniquely human, situated expertise – as creative performers, and as experienced organizers and negotiators of creative rights in the face of exploitative labor practices – towards an equitable and community-led future for creative voice work.
Creativity Supportive Ecosystems: A Framework for Understanding Function and Disruption in Online Art Worlds
Shm Garanganao Almeda, Joy Kim, Bjoern Hartmann
🌸 Full Paper @ CHI2025 |
📄 Paper (PDF) |
How can we support artists navigating the online art world in times of disruption?
Creativity support tool (CST) research in HCI has focused on supporting art-making, not art-sharing – despite the fact that distribution activities characterize a bulk of creative labor for online artists today. How might we better understand the way technology systems – including generative AI systems – support or disrupt online creative communities, at a network level? Through interviews with 25 artists, data scientists, and data artists, we develop the Creativity Supportive Ecosystem: a framework for understanding the function of the online art world, and the roles that system designers can take to better empower artists against creative community threats, like non-consensual reuse and genAI-driven displacement.
Reimagining misuse as creative practice: impressions and implications of usage norms on digital artists
Isabel Li*, Ace Chen*, Eric Rawn, Shm Garanganao Almeda, Bjoern Hartmann, Jingyi Li
🌸 Full Paper @ CHI2025 |
📄 Paper (PDF) |
How do artists perceive "misuse" of digital tools, and what does that mean for [mis]user-centered CST design?
A deep dive into the notion of creatively "misusing" digital tools via thematic analysis of interviews with 20 artists – towards an understanding of "misuse" and "use" as the same motions, framed by different cultural perspectives and norms.
Generating Visual Aids to Help Students Understand Graphic Design with EKPHRASIS
Bob Tianqi Wei*, SHayne Shen*, Shm Garanganao Almeda, Bjoern Hartmann
🌸 LBW, To Appear at CHI2025! |
📄 Paper (PDF) |
Learning graphic design terms can be a complex and exclusionary experience. How might we make it more accessible?
Through thematic analysis of interviews with 11 designers, we identify key language barriers present in graphic design education. We develop EKPHRASIS, an AI-supported interactive system that provides real-time visual aids, towards a multimodal design language learning experience for novice designers.
The nth Death of Painting:
The Work of Art in the Age of Generative AI Reproduction
Shm Garanganao Almeda, Bjoern Hartmann (under review...shh 🤫!)
📄 Pictorial Preprint (PDF) |
How might AI image generation change the cultural meaning of visual art and imagery?
We consider how once-emergent technologies (e.g. printing, photography, conceptual & computational art) have historically transformed artistic value and culture, applying critical feminist- and medium-theory lenses to the contemporary question of GenAI's impact on imagery, content, and art. Informed by critical art and image history, we make recommendations for medium-conscious, data-conscious, and power-conscious design of AI systems.
How can artists use Text-to-Image models to achieve reliable results?
To study this, we developed DreamSheets, a design probe Text-To-Image “sandbox” in a spreadsheet. We observed novice and expert artists use the tool as a computational substrate – developing their own TTI interfaces as "sheet-systems" that exemplified a variety of sensemaking strategies and creative exploration styles.
The Influence of Decentralized Systems on the Development of Novel Online Creative Communities and Cooperative Practices
Shm Garanganao Almeda, Bjoern Hartmann
Parametric RGB color mixing system for digital painting that enables a novel color-mixing experience, advised by Jose Echevarria & Stephen Diverdi.
Enables real-time adjustments to color-mixing behavior while digitally painting, sampling color-blends from a parameterized Bezier curve in 3-D (RGB) Space.
How can we optimize oligonucleotide chain design to minimize the cost of protein synthesis?
Algorithms that optimize oligonucleotide chain design to minimize the cost of synthesizing proteins, towards more effective protein variant library design; implemented as a web application, designed for the needs of a team of protein designers at Princeton.
Accessible American Sign Language Recognition with the Leap Motion Controller, advised by Andrea Salgian