Two of Our Papers Accepted at ACM CHI 2026 (Both Received Honourable Mention Awards!)

We’re thrilled to share the exciting news that two of our research submissions have been accepted for presentation at the upcoming ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026. This prestigious event will take place in Barcelona, Spain, around April 13th, 2026. Furthermore, we are incredibly proud to announce that both of these papers have been honored with an Honourable Mention Award!

This is a highly prestigious recognition granted to only the top 5% of all paper submissions, highlighting the exceptional quality of the research at the world’s premier conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This exciting event will take place in Barcelona, Spain, around April 13th, 2026.

Each of our award-winning papers delves into unique facets of HCI, particularly in the context of autonomous vehicle (AV) and pedestrian interactions. The first paper introduces a fast, low-cost evaluation method using Vision-Language Model (VLM) personas as a supportive tool to simulate human responses in embodied field studies.

The second paper presents the design and in-the-wild evaluation of a mobile smart pole interaction unit (SPIU) to deliver explicit and trustworthy cues to pedestrians during their encounters with AVs in shared spaces.

We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to present our work at CHI 2026 and for this remarkable double recognition. We are eager to share our innovative research with the global HCI community. Join us in Barcelona this April for a peek into the future of interactive systems and mobility!

Publication

• Peeking Ahead of the Field Study: Exploring VLM Personas as Support Tools for Embodied Studies in HCI
  Gui, Xinyue, Xia, Ding, Colley, Mark, Li, Yuan, Chauhan, Vishal, Anubhav, Anubhav, Zhou, Zhongyi, Javanmardi, Ehsan, Seo, Stela Hanbyeol, Chang, Chia-Ming, Tsukada, Manabu, Igarashi, Takeo. ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026, Barcelona, Spain, 2026, (Honourable Mention Award) [Proceedings Article]BibTeX
• Don’t Worry, Just Follow Me: Prototyping and In-the-Wild Evaluation of Smart Pole Interaction Unit with Mobility
  Chauhan, Vishal, Anubhav, Anubhav, Colley, Mark, Chang, Chia-Ming, Gui, Xinyue, Xia, Ding, Javanmardi, Ehsan, Igarashi, Takeo, Fujiwara, Kantaro, Tsukada, Manabu. ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026, Barcelona, Spain, 2026, (Honourable Mention Award) [Proceedings Article]BibTeX