Yi Wen

New Anthropic research: Natural Language Autoencoders. Models like Claude talk in words but think in numbers. The numbers—called activations—encode Claude’s thoughts, but not in a language we can read. Here, we train Claude to translate its activations into human-readable text.

Announcing the #ICLR2026 Outstanding Paper Awards 🏆 Congratulations to:

📢 Call for Papers! Join our #AIED2026 workshop on Next-Gen Learning Interfaces (AI × HCI × Learning Sciences) 📍 South Korea 🔗 extendedhorizon.com/aied2026ws-ai-… Please share or submit! @HCI_Prof_YC @QiaoJin5 @yshi0526 @pauldenny @DrTiffanyBarnes @qingsongedu @vincentaleven

While AI has the potential to automate semi-structured interviews, it falls short in perceiving nonverbal cues, building rapport, and strategically steering long-horizon conversations. At the same time, qualitative researchers often want to conduct interviews themselves, as doing so helps them better understand participants and may lead to deeper insights. Instead of asking whether AI should replace interviewers, we asked: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆? In our #CHI2026 paper, we introduce InterFlow, an unobtrusive form of AI assistance that supports interviewers in managing interview flow and facilitates real-time data sensemaking. InterFlow features ambient visualizations, mixed-initiative information capture, and process-oriented AI suggestions grounded in empirical knowledge of semi-structured interviewing. Our user evaluation showed that InterFlow reduced cognitive load and helped interviewers keep track of both the big picture and important emerging details during interviews. Huge thanks to my collaborators Yu Zhang, Sriram Suresh, and to my advisors @luzc08 , @canlhci , and @Iriskie_Xia! Full paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2602.06396

‼️Position: AI coding agent research needs recalibration. We've heavily optimized for solo autonomy, and far less for designing agents that empower the humans using them. It’s time to build human-centered coding agents. 🧵

Hello, we are a research team at Northeastern University conducting a paid remote study on human–AI collaboration in coding workflows. We are currently looking for developers to participate in testing these workflows. Eligibility: Software engineering experience in software or website development Familiar with AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) Proficient with GitHub/GitLab, VS Code, and code review workflows Study Details: Collaborate with an AI agent to develop and review code (~4 hours in total) Compensation ($25/hr) via digital gift cards Participation is entirely voluntary. Interested? Sign up here: forms.gle/sUuFbyn5KnGZVd… Contact me if you have any questions!

@tao_yujie Such a creative idea! Love it😻

In this all-too-distracting digital world, how can technology reconnect users with everyday interactions? In a new paper, we introduce a wearable that amplifies sounds produced by ongoing manual actions (e.g., cooking, writing), fostering attention and curiosity toward sensory details that are often overlooked. IMWUT paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37… (audio on👇) @ubicomp

🎓 PhD Recruitment | Texas A&M CS I am seeking 1–2 PhD students for Fall 2026 in Human–AI Interaction, with a focus on AI for education. ✅ Motivated and responsible ✅ CS background ✅ Full-stack development or LLM fine-tuning experience is a plus 📅 Deadline: Dec 15, 2025

@ryosuzk @heyyoungsoul @CUBoulder @CUEngineering @AndreaHCI Congrats Ryo and @heyyoungsoul !

🎉🎉🎉Congratulations to Hye-Young Jo (@heyyoungsoul), my first PhD student at @CUBoulder @CUEngineering and previously an MS student at KAIST with @AndreaHCI, for winning the prestigious Google PhD Fellowship in the Human-Computer Interaction category! research.google/programs-and-e…

@XinyueChenn Great work! Congrats Xinyue!!

Ever wondered if more AI help actually makes us learn or think less? I’ll be talking about this at #CSCW2025 — AI & Writing Session🗓️ Tue, Oct 21 | 11:00 AM Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.114…

I rushed to move to the US on Saturday, so it is a pity that I cannot attend either UIST or Ubicomp this year. Hope to meet HCI people in some future conferences! Feel free to help me spread the word that I am looking for new PhD students to start my lab at Utah! #UIST #Ubicomp

@sangho_suh @allen_ai Exciting!! Congrats Sangho!

🎉 Excited to share that I’ll be joining the Allen Institute for AI (@allen_ai) as a 🔬 Research Scientist this 🗓️ September ! 🙏 Many thanks to my mentors, collaborators, and friends for their support and 👋 looking forward to meeting old and new friends in ⛰️ Seattle!

@adigunturu @BenThePearman @bryanhaoenwang @rubaiat @ryosuzk So cool🤩

What if you could bring maps to life by telling a story? At #UIST2025, we will present MapStory🗺️, an animation prototyping tool that lets you create story-driven, editable map animations with LLM agents. With @BenThePearman, Keiichi, Morteza, @bryanhaoenwang, @rubaiat, @ryosuzk

@KeqiangY @Princeton Congrats!!

I am pleased to share that I will be joining CS @Princeton University as a Postdoctoral researcher. Look forward to working on foundational problems at the intersection of AI, LLMs, and science.

@adigunturu @viv_lavida 😅😅

@viv_lavida Generative existential crisis

I asked Gemini for a user interface feature but I got back an identity matrix

@EmilyKuang8 @kristenshino @mingming_fan @jeffjianzhao @nlprit @GarrethTigwell @YorkUniversity Congrats Emily!

I’ve successfully defended my PhD dissertation! 🎓Huge thanks to my amazing committee: @kristenshino, @mingming_fan, @jeffjianzhao, Cecilia Alm @nlprit, and @GarrethTigwell, and collaborators for your guidance and support! This fall, I will join @YorkUniversity as an AP in EECS!

@YueJiang_nj @UUtah Congrats again!

I am excited to join the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor this Fall. I will be hiring 2 Ph.D. students starting in Spring/Fall 2026. I will continue to work on UI optimization/generation and eye tracking-related research. I’d love suggestions for a lab name! @UUtah

@nandizhang_ Looking forward to the presentation😍

I’m presenting it on Tuesday 11:58 am-12:10 pm in the XR Experience session. Let’s chat about overreliance on AI and what kind of digital reality we want to build for humans!

#CHI2025 We will present "From Following to Understanding: Investigating the Role of Reflective Prompts in AR-Guided Tasks to Promote User Understanding" led by @nandizhang_ and @YukangYan PDF: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37… Video: youtu.be/QH7lpkRQcs0 Talk: 4/29 (Tue) 11:10-12:40

@Stefania_druga @tknearem Would love to join!😍

Who is coming to #chi2025 ? Would love to catch-up. Together with @tknearem we made a WhatsApp group with other grad students, researchers and faculty to share scoops on gatherings/events taking place during the conference ping us if you want to join 🌸