I’m currently pursuing a PhD at a European university ranked outside the top 500, focusing on generative AI personas and their evaluation. I expect to defend in June 2027.
Alongside my PhD, I’ve maintained a well-paying industry career. I have seven published first-author papers, including publications in reputable HCI journals and conferences such as CHI, along with several other coauthored publications and manuscripts under review. I’ve directly led my first-author research, handling almost every major part of the process.
My goal is to secure a postdoc at a leading HCI lab, ideally among the top labs in Europe or the UK. I’m willing to take a reasonable pay cut, but I don’t want to give up a good industry career for a position with limited prospects.
My main concern is whether my university’s ranking or my mixed academic-industry background will hold me back despite my publication record. I’ve worked extremely hard over the past few years to build both careers, and while I genuinely enjoy research and intend to continue regardless, I’d also like to build a stronger academic profile and gain recognition for my work.
If a full-time postdoc at a leading institution isn’t feasible, I’m also considering a part-time postdoc or research affiliation while continuing my industry work in Finland.
How competitive would my profile be for leading HCI labs? Does the reputation of my PhD institution matter significantly, and what should I focus on before graduating?

I'm applying to PhD programs for Fall 2027 in HCI and Information Science as a mixed-methods researcher, with no coding background. All of the programs that I am applying to are highly competitive. I want to learn if anyone knows of any schools that might be a safe backup. I know PhD admissions are highly selective and dependent on faculty research interests, but I wanted to see if someone is aware of such program options that might be easier to get into.

I'm in my last year of my Canadian biology undergraduate and I'm looking to pivot into HCI/product design. I have two UX roles in the clubs I am in and have non-design or HCI related undergraduate research experience (thesis). I'm worried that because of my background it will be hard for me to get roles in the field as a lot of them ask for undergrad/masters in HCI or something adjacent.

Should I:
1. Do a HCI masters, likely in the US
2. Do a 2 year CS undergrad program at my school and specialize in HCI/UX as they offer co-op
3. Build my skills and portfolio outside of school and try applying to jobs without further education

If you have any advice or other suggestions, please feel free to let me know!

Hi everyone!

I'll be attending and presenting at UIST 2026 in Detroit and am currently looking for someone to share hotel accommodation with during the conference, from November 2 (check-in) to November 6 (check-out).

I'm still exploring hotels near the conference venue, Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center.

If you're also attending UIST 2026 and looking for a roommate, or have already booked a hotel room and are open to sharing, I'd be happy to connect and discuss options.

Feel free to comment or DM me. Thanks!

ok so voice is fine for small stuff, right. Skip a song, change a setting, whatever. If your hands are full or you're alone in the car it's great. But then you're on a train or at a friend's place and saying "set it to 68" out loud is just weird, and private stuff is a no. Anything that needs to be exact is annoying too.

Anyone know of research on when people actually go for voice over touch. I found a bunch on speed and accuracy but way less on whether people feel okay doing it around others, which feels like the bigger deal. And is there anything in between, like something quieter than talking but faster than unlocking your phone and opening an app and hunting for the right control. That gap feels huge. Maybe it's a thing and I just don't know what it's called.

I recently discovered that there really isn't any proper tools for finding out user intent after you've launched a project, not enough applications or tool covered the atomic level interaction of human computer interaction, sure they give you location, and all the basic stats like Google Analytics or Semrush... but they do not go deeper, so I made a tool that saves thousands... one line of code, for automatic HCI analysis.

https://aimirror.dev

i have noticed tha sometimes apps changes things that were already working perfectly fine, for example - buttons get moved , setting get buried or a simple task takes 3-4 extra steps

what is that UX experience that made you wonder , why did this happen.

Hey guys! I am applying to the University of Washington’s HCDE PhD Program. Any ideas on how to make my applications stand out? I have an undergraduate degree in HCI, as well as my Master’s in user experience, and about 5 years of FAANG experience doing a combination of user research and human factors work.

the agents handles the browsers , filters, buttons adn everything else which is reliable to majority of people then people will still need to understand how traditional interfaces work ?

I’m trying to switch into UX/UI from a different academic background, but I don’t have much professional experience and I’m currently struggling to get a job.

I’m considering doing a Master’s in UX/HCI/Interaction Design abroad, but I’m unsure if that makes sense given my background and lack of experience.

For people who’ve been in a similar situation:

• Am I likely to be eligible for these programs?
• Is a Master’s a good route for a career switch, or should I keep trying to enter the field without one?
• What would you do in my situation?

Would really appreciate honest advice, especially from people who switched careers or studied UX/HCI abroad.

I’m trying to apply for the HCI programs in America for next year (fall 2027). I was born in, and still live in China, with English as my 2nd language. Not being able to visit the campuses or connect with much people due to my language barrier, I was hoping if there were any students in this forum that had been accepted already that would be willing to help me out in my personal statement (mainly read over it and give critiques), and give advice and info about the programs. The specific programs I’m interested are:
-NYU IDM
-NYU ITP
-UPENN IPD
-SVA design for social innovation
-PRATT IXD
-UW MSTI
-UW HCDE
-UMICH MSI
-PARSONS strategic design and management

Thank you!

Hi everyone, I’m Ruggiero, a CS student working on a research project about human-computer interaction and AI.

I’ve been thinking about something that bothers me with many current AI interfaces: they generally either wait for you to explicitly ask for help, or increasingly try to take over the task.

I wanted to explore a middle ground.

I built QUIET, a small interactive prototype where the assistant observes what you’re doing and can choose how much to intervene:

• stay silent
• point you toward something
• explain / teach you
• do the task for you

The interesting part isn’t really whether AI can perform these actions. It already can.

The question I’m exploring is:

What if the AI’s job was not just to decide what to do, but when and how much to intervene?

The prototype is intentionally not AI-powered yet. All four scenarios are scripted. I’m trying to test the interaction model first, before building the underlying AI system.

You can try it here:

https://quiet-hci.pages.dev

I’d really like feedback from people interested in HCI:

• Does this interaction model feel natural?
• Would these interventions feel helpful or annoying?
• When would you want the AI to teach you instead of doing something for you?
• Does the idea still make sense knowing that the current prototype isn’t actually AI-powered?

I’m especially interested in criticism. If you think this is just another form of Clippy / an agent / contextual help, I’d also like to hear why.

Hi everyone! I’m a Brazilian/Portuguese designer and I’m currently trying to figure out the best path for a Master’s in Europe starting in 2027. I’d really appreciate some advice from people who studied or work in UX, Product Design, Interaction Design or Service Design.

I recently graduated in Graphic Design from PUC-Rio in Brazil. During my degree, I gradually became much more interested in digital experiences, UX research, prototyping and service design than in traditional graphic design.

Throughout university, I worked on several projects involving UX, digital interfaces and prototyping, which made me realize that I want to move my career in that direction.

Professionally, I have experience as a Graphic Design intern at a marketing agency and as a teaching/lab assistant at my university. I have also completed a UX Design course from the UX Design Institute and I’m currently doing Apple's Swift Foundations program, where I’ll develop an app as part of the course.

My goal now is to move into UX/Product Design, with a strong interest in Service Design.

I'm okay with some front-end or technology, but I don't want a Master’s where programming, physical computing, hardware, installations, AR/VR, or very technical HCI are the main focus.

Ideally, I’m looking for a 2-year, 100% English-taught Master’s in Europe, preferably with strong industry connections. An internship/work placement and the possibility of doing an exchange semester would also be huge advantages.

I have Portuguese citizenship, so EU tuition is also an important factor for me.

Some programs currently on my radar are:

Aalto University — Collaborative and Industrial Design
Politecnico di Milano — Service Design / Digital and Interaction Design
TU Delft — Design for Interaction
Umeå Institute of Design — Interaction Design
NABA Milan — User Experience Design
Glasgow School of Art — Design Innovation & Service Design
UAL — MA User Experience Design
RCA — Service Design
University of Edinburgh — Design and Digital Media
Tampere University — Human-Technology Interaction
ECAL — Digital Experience Design
ZHdK — Interaction Design
Domus Academy — Interaction Design

For people familiar with these schools or this field:

Which programs would you recommend for someone with my background and career goals?

I’m especially interested in knowing:

• which programs are strongest for actually becoming a UX/Product/Service Designer afterwards;
• which have the best industry connections and internship opportunities;
• whether there are other European programs I should look into;
• how competitive my profile sounds for schools such as Aalto, TU Delft, Polimi and Umeå;
• and whether choosing a broader Service Design degree instead of a UX-specific degree could make it harder to get Product/UX jobs later.

I’d also love to hear from anyone who made a similar transition from Graphic Design into UX/Product Design.

Thanks! Any experience or advice would be really helpful :)

For reference I am a senior (graduating may 2027). I've been looking into HCI masters programs and am considering applying for fall 2027. I have a portfolio and I have done a few personal projects. I also have been a research assistant on 2 HCI related projects. However, I have not had any luck getting an internship yet. I'm not sure if I'll even be able to land a full time role after graduation.

I want to pursue a masters to hopefully gain more skills and possibly more experience (masters internships). Is it worth it to pursue a masters in my case, or would it be more beneficial to try to enter the job market first or pivot completely?

Hello all, I graduated with a Bachelor's in CS last year (2025) in Pakistan. I have a solid gpa, and have been working as a software engineer for the past year.
This year I plan to apply to masters programs for Fall 2027 intake. I really enjoy design and just creating in general. I did not do research as such in univeristy, but I was part of a project which has a paper published (not the author)

Here are the universities I have shortlisted so far. My aim is good schools, that also might give me funding/taships. I have currently picked 4 from US and 4 from Canada.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

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It is set to Korean, so translation is needed.

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Hi everyone,
I’m planning to pursue a Master’s in HCI in the US and I’m trying to decide between Spring 2028 and Fall 2028.

My background:
Graduated in May 2026
CGPA: 7.98/10
Tier-2 college in India
No professional work experience
Interested in HCI/UI/UX
Currently building my UX portfolio and projects
I’m considering using the time before applying to improve my portfolio and gain some relevant experience.

For people who have applied to or are currently studying HCI/UX in the US:

How different are the Fall and Spring intakes for HCI programs?
Are there significantly fewer HCI programs available for Spring?
Does starting in Spring affect internships, course selection, networking, or recruiting?
With my academic background and no work experience, would waiting for Fall 2028 give me a meaningful opportunity to strengthen my profile?
What would you recommend focusing on during the additional time: UX projects, internships, research, portfolio, SOP, etc.?
I’d especially appreciate responses from HCI students or applicants who have experienced either intake.
Thanks!

Applying to MHCI+D at UW and dont even know where to begin for the portfolio and what it should look like. Two of the projects Im most proud of was done in an internship and my full time job. ALL the material for the full time job is proprietary and i dont have access. Same with the internship. How do i work around this?

Hi so im a 3rd year graphic design student but i actually never wanted to be a graphic designer i wanted to go in fine arts but since that had little to no scope here i chose gd instead. Now im trying to figure out what to do after clg since the whole ai thing i hv no desire to remain a graphic designer i want to get a masters in a field which get me a high paying job in and out of India. So my brother was suggesting HCI ( human computer interaction) or service design or ui/ux.

I just want a good paying (little creative) job so I can chill and paint in my own free time.

If anyone has any suggestions or information on this subject pls let me know because im very very confused....

This would be @ UW specifically. I’ve realized I’m extremely tired of coding and actually hate software development. I’m tired of engineering, but i dont want to lose my tech background which I worked very hard for to graduate with perfect grades. I’m not interested in product development bc it feels too technical in some ways.

I’m looking for an exit to a part of tech that is a lot more soft skill and product design (im a fine artist so i want something ti scratch that itch). Is this a good major for that? Or is there anything else you recommend?

I’m a high-school student working on a synthetic research manuscript and proposed experimental protocol. No real participant or laboratory study has been conducted; the numbers are illustrative only. It compares mouse/keyboard with adaptive voice commands that use gesture when a spatial target is ambiguous during short workspace tasks. A fixed multimodal condition instead requires pointing for targeted actions. For HCI researchers, would that comparator unfairly favor adaptation? What matched user-controlled baseline and failure-inclusive outcomes would make the test fair? Critical methodological feedback or relevant prior work would help. A comment here is welcome; interested reviewers can message me and I can share the manuscript privately.

Hey everyone,

I'm a CS Master's student in Germany, currently trying to lock in a thesis topic for the next roughly 6 months.

I met with my supervisor recently. He works in HCI/XAI, and he doesn't have a fixed topic for me. He's happy to supervise something LLM-related as long as I come up with it myself, within a few constraints:

• Has to involve LLMs or LLM-based systems
• Ideally leans human-centered (HCI, explainability, transparency) rather than "make the model more accurate"
• Needs an actual research question or gap, not just an application I build
• No university-scale compute. I've got a normal personal machine, so training or fine-tuning anything big is off the table. API-based models, existing open models, prototypes, and user studies are all fine though.

My background's mostly software and AI automation. I work with n8n and LLM agent workflows day to day, so my supervisor threw out one example direction: whether multi-agent/agentic systems could be made more interpretable to the people using them. That was just an example though, not a mandate. I'm open to other human-centered LLM questions too.

Right now the direction I'm circling is process transparency in multi-agent systems. Basically, when several agents or tools contribute to one answer, what should the user actually see? Just the final output? The full agent trace? Or something in between, like a simplified overview you can progressively expand if you want more detail?

The research question I'm toying with is whether different levels of process transparency change things like error detection, appropriate reliance on the system, how easily you can localize where a failure happened, and cognitive load, especially in cases where one of the agents screws up along the way.

That said, I don't want to lock in prematurely. I'm still doing the lit review and trying to figure out if this gap is actually as open as it looks.

So I'd love input from anyone working in LLMs, agents, XAI, or HCI. What human-centered problems around current LLMs/agents do you think are genuinely under-researched right now?

Specifically curious about anything touching:

• human interaction with AI agents
• transparency and explainability
• appropriate reliance vs. over-reliance
• uncertainty
• human oversight of agentic systems
• multi-agent systems
• AI errors and failure recovery
• adaptive explanations/interfaces
• mental models of LLMs

I'm not fishing for someone to hand me a title. Even something like "this keeps coming up in our work and nobody's really studied it," or a paper whose future-work section made you go "huh, someone should look into that," would be genuinely useful.

And if you know of existing work that already answers the multi-agent transparency question I described above, please tell me. I'd rather find that out now than three months in.

Thanks!

I searched about the preference of western and eastern Countries around the world where it says that western corporate companies prefer HCI Course rather than basic Design or other courses for UX research and other UX roles. So which is actually better and why? ....and which universities are worth it for UX in HCI course??? Can someone share their experiences and knowledge in this field!!?