PSA for anyone submitting to HCI conferences: Do not leave the "suggested reviewers" section blank. It is your greatest (and only) way to heighten the chances your paper will be reviewed by someone who really cares about your research topic. Plus, it helps the 1AC!

Looking forward to the open source release, but it sounds like they’re treating model weights as static variables in code rather than data in an ML library, which means the Rust compiler can optimize 1000x better

I had heard people at #CHI2026 say that they didn't want AI-generated podcasts to be made on top of their work. While this perspective is totally understandable, I thought the podcasts could potentially be useful. But after looking up one of mine, I can't believe this feature was allowed to launch.

“Everyone I met knew, at some level, that AI either means that nothing matters—a kind of creeping techno-nihilism—or that everything that has always mattered—humanism, human values—is all that ever mattered, and our tool tinkering had always been a distraction.” 🙏

the first paper from my phd project is now out and i'm presenting it tomorrow morning at #chi2026! it's an explorative design project about supporting players' rule experimentation through game design. you can read/download from this link dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The paper is now officially out in the #chi2026 proceedings! You can download the dataset, as well as the autoethnographic memos, as Supplementary Material dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Retweeting this, just because it seems not enough papers at #CHI2026 are declaring their relevance to AI: #makeit100percent #ensureAIrelevanceNow

“The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding.”

Stats for Evals is now live, and we got a site, too: statsforevals.com We'll be posting regular investigations across the summer. For now, we're starting with the basics: comparing models and prompts. Also has resources, principles, example code, and guidance for others:

It would be cool if HCI had: 1) an open reviewing platform, 2) a quid pro quo credit system like CritiqueCircle with added kudos by experts for quality reviews, 3) anonymization of reviewers (but where you can see fuzzy metrics of reviewer quality)

"you cheated not only the game but yourself" is not how i feel about video games at all but it is how i feel about people using LLMs to "write" essays for them

Montréal HCI is headed to sunny Barcelona for #CHI2026! ☀️ We’re presenting two exciting, rather unique papers and joining two workshops. Details below! 🧵 1/5

I've made a Substack for Stats for LLM Evals progress. We'll be releasing a website soon, but progress will be piecemeal (first release is focused on model comparison, prompt comparison, and model x prompt). Subscribe here for regular updates: substack.com/@statsforevals

I don't think people understand how hard it is to work in the video-game industry right now. If you've been laid off, it can take months if not years to find new work. If you haven't been laid off, you're anxious that you will be laid off. This week's column: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Submitting an AI-powered system paper to #UIST2026 ? Wish you could sense what reviewers were thinking, and how to maximize your chance of acceptance? Check out our #CHI2026 paper, “Reporting and Reviewing LLM-integrated Systems in HCI”, for tips and guidelines: arxiv.org/abs/2602.05128

now desk reject the papers of reviewers whose human-written reviews are worse than an LLM 😂 … #icml2026

I want my workflow to feel more like this. One big reconfigurable space for deep work

HCI summer research opportunity 📣 My group has two openings for research assistants this summer, both in scientific tools for thought. Applicants are welcome at any level. Please help me share the news! andrewhead.info/positions/20...

Writing an HCI paper about an AI-powered system to a venue like UIST 2026 or CHI 2027? Wondering what reviewers expect you to report, and how to approach paper framing and writing? Check out our reporting guidelines: medium.com/p/7c3ae86341...

#CHI2026 program (the draft) is out: programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/pro... a monster sized CHI that will definitely be fun and intellectually stimulating. Huge kudos to Pablo Cesar and Heloisa Candello, as well as our assistants for making this possible in such a short time ! Check it out!

To date, HCI researchers have had no support on signaling their paper's relevance to AI, esp. when that connection is tenuous at best. We introduce a systematic framework to ensure LLMs are mentioned at every stage of paper reporting—from framing, to evaluation, to implications.

Is AI all you’ve got? austinhenley.com/blog/dearres...

Did you have a qualitative paper rejected from #chi2026? As you're revising for your next submission, check out this crowdsourced document containing common critiques of qualitative research and ideas for responding -- and add any new critiques you've encountered: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I think I'd rather have an LLM review my paper.

companion robots are like zoom chats with the grandkids … it seems like progress, thank goodness it's there! yet, it just makes lack of community and real human connection that much easier to tolerate www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/u...

An OpenClaw agent makes a pull request to matplotlib. Mainter rejects PR. The OpenClaw agent authors a blog post accusing the maintainer of discrimination and gatekeeping. Maintainer responds theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

🎉 Thrilled to share that our paper "Reporting and Reviewing LLM-Integrated Systems in HCI: Challenges and Considerations" has been conditionally accepted to #CHI2026! A thread 🧵

Notations/languages/etc (natural/constructed/formal/etc) sit at the intersection of a lot of my interests from information theory & statistics to Borgesian literature & group/individual cognitive ergonomics. Self-recommending. by @zamfi.bsky.social @damienhci.bsky.social @ianarawjo.bsky.social et al

New talk abstract dropping. I just hope I can write a talk to live up to it by *checks watch* *gulp* Monday.

Over the past week, I've seen a lot of CHI authors announcing their papers on social media as "accepted." I get that it's exciting, but your work is "conditionally" accepted—saying it's flat-out "accepted" is a bit of counting chickens before they hatch. Wait a bit for the official sign-off, folks!

When my student Xiao came up with the concept of AI-Mediated Communication in 2017, she called it "Project Cyrano". Clay captures the current consequences, 9 years and ChatGPT later #AIMC www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...

Here's my new workflow: I write a short todo. Claude helps me turn it into a detailed spec, then into a task list, then works through the list. I check the kanban board, verify what's done, course-correct if needed.

NEW: I spoke to Jonathan Blow about his ambitious new puzzle game and why it took ten years to make. Then, days after the announcement, three designers came out denouncing Blow for his views on Trump (pro), vaccines (anti), and more. Here's the whole messy story: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Please help us publicize TEAL: Tools for Educational Activities in Logic, a workshop associated w/ FLoC26. We have a novel design, focused on demos, discussion, and generally high-quality interaction rather than weak papers. See full details on our site! teal.cs.brown.edu/floc2026/

Proud lab moment achieved. Our lab submitted two papers to CHI 2026—and both were conditionally accepted! That's a 100% rate 🥳 Congrats to collaborators Jingyue Zhang, Karla Felix Navarro, Eugene Syriani, @damienhci.bsky.social , @elglassman.bsky.social , and @zamfi.bsky.social . More info soon!

I play valorant with another professor so that if we talk about grant writing during gaming sessions it can count as work

Wrote a blog post on Splat, our light-weight, free affinity diagramming tool: ianarawjo.medium.com/splat-a-free...

What does a class on software development post LLM contain? Design? Syntax of common langs? Programmer thinking? Environments/libraries/bash? Debugging? References and texts especially welcome

Introducing Splat 🟨📌: Affinity diagramming in a single HTML file. Drag notes and organize ideas on a visual board. With semantic search and an agentic AI assistant. Open source and fully local. Check it out here: github.com/ianarawjo/sp...

The state of programming in 2025. Anyways, off to write a CLAUDE•md…

We're admitting PhD students! (Possible co-PIs include @zittrain.bsky.social or @ianarawjo.bsky.social if interests align.) We're excited about: docs.google.com/document/d/1... Interested? Fill out the linked form & apply to Harvard SEAS (listing me as faculty of interest) by Dec 15th!

I recently rewatched the documentary "Indie Game: The Movie" for an upcoming Triple Click bonus episode (don't miss it!) and it portrays Fez as a game in never-ending development hell, with fans wondering if it'd ever come out, because it had been in production for... 3 years. How quaint!

Big layoffs hitting Amazon as soon as tomorrow, including within the video-game division, sources tell Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

have you ever created a video game mod to make characters "look better" (whatever that means to you)? i want to talk to you for an article i'm writing! get at me via maddymyerswrites at gmail dot com. or repost this if it's not you and you just wanna help me spread the word. thanks <3

Maybe it is just post-deadline malaise, but I am becoming tired (again?) of a lot of work that is done in HCI. Who is the work for? What is the point? I wonder if we would be better off forgetting deadlines and just focusing on providing value to people.

#CHI2026 breaking records with 6.7k paper submissions! It's a lot of papers (last year was ~5k, now we are closing in on ~7k!). I know we all can be grumpy about things in HCI but the field is definitely growing and very much engaging with new ideas! I find it really inspiring.

Today at #uist2025 my student Jeffrey Tao presented our new paper "Answering Developer Questions with Annotated Agent-Discovered Program Traces" While it is too late to catch the talk, you can still find Jeff! I'm happy to make connections over email. Paper: andrewhead.info/assets/pdf/t...

LLM safety work often reasons over high-level policies (be helpful & polite), but must tackle on-the-ground cases (unsolicited money advice when stocks are mentioned). This can feel like driving on an unfamiliar road guided by a generic driver’s manual instead of a map. We introduce: Policy Maps 🗺️

I wrote about Silksong www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

I can’t think of any other time in modern video-game history that a game as highly anticipated as Silksong has arrived with no early reviews, impressions, leaks, guides, videos, or even forum teases. Soon, everyone will be playing Silksong for the first time. It’s unprecedented and kinda beautiful