Gary Hsieh

Ruoxi Shang, Gary Hsieh, Chirag Shah · uw

Trust is not just a cognitive issue but also an emotional one, yet the research in human-AI interactions has primarily focused on the cognitive route of trust development. Recent work has highlighted the importance of studying affective trust towards AI, especially in the context of emerging human-like LLMs-powered conversational agents. However, there is a lack of validated and generalizable measures for the two-dimensional construct of trust in AI agents. To address this gap, we developed and validated a set of 27-item semantic differential scales for affective and cognitive trust through a scenario-based survey study. We then further validated and applied the scale through an experiment study. Our empirical findings showed how the emotional and cognitive aspects of trust interact with each other and collectively shape a person's overall trust in AI agents. Our study methodology and findings also provide insights into the capability of the state-of-art LLMs to foster trust through different routes.

Donghoon Shin, Bingcan Guo, Jaewook Lee et al.

Although HCI research papers offer valuable design insights, designers often struggle to apply them in design workflows due to difficulties in finding relevant literature, understanding technical jargon, the lack of contextualization, and limited actionability. To address these challenges, we present ReFinE, a Figma plugin that supports real-time design iteration by surfacing contextualized insights from research papers. ReFinE identifies and synthesizes design implications from HCI literature relevant to the mockup's design context, and tailors this research evidence to a specific design mockup by providing actionable visual guidance on how to update the mockup. To assess the system's effectiveness, we conducted a technical evaluation and a user study. Results show that ReFinE effectively synthesizes and contextualizes design implications, reducing cognitive load and improving designers' ability to integrate research evidence into UI mockups. This work contributes to bridging the gap between research and design practice by presenting a tool for embedding scholarly insights into the UI design process.

Donghoon Shin, Gary Hsieh, Young-Ho Kim · uw

Creating personalized and actionable exercise plans often requires iteration with experts, which can be costly and inaccessible to many individuals. This work explores the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in addressing these challenges. We present PlanFitting, an LLM-driven conversational agent that assists users in creating and refining personalized weekly exercise plans. By engaging users in free-form conversations, PlanFitting helps elicit users' goals, availabilities, and potential obstacles, and enables individuals to generate personalized exercise plans aligned with established exercise guidelines. Our study -- involving a user study, intrinsic evaluation, and expert evaluation -- demonstrated PlanFitting's ability to guide users to create tailored, actionable, and evidence-based plans. We discuss future design opportunities for LLM-driven conversational agents to create plans that better comply with exercise principles and accommodate personal constraints.

Donghoon Shin, Lucy Lu Wang, Gary Hsieh · allen-ai, uw

Communicating design implications is common within the HCI community when publishing academic papers, yet these papers are rarely read and used by designers. One solution is to use design cards as a form of translational resource that communicates valuable insights from papers in a more digestible and accessible format to assist in design processes. However, creating design cards can be time-consuming, and authors may lack the resources/know-how to produce cards. Through an iterative design process, we built a system that helps create design cards from academic papers using an LLM and text-to-image model. Our evaluation with designers (N=21) and authors of selected papers (N=12) revealed that designers perceived the design implications from our design cards as more inspiring and generative, compared to reading original paper texts, and the authors viewed our system as an effective way of communicating their design implications. We also propose future enhancements for AI-generated design cards.

Ruican Zhong, Donghoon Shin, Rosemary Meza et al. · uw

This paper explores the integration of causal pathway diagrams (CPD) into human-centered design (HCD), investigating how these diagrams can enhance the early stages of the design process. A dedicated CPD plugin for the online collaborative whiteboard platform Miro was developed to streamline diagram creation and offer real-time AI-driven guidance. Through a user study with designers (N=20), we found that CPD's branching and its emphasis on causal connections supported both divergent and convergent processes during design. CPD can also facilitate communication among stakeholders. Additionally, we found our plugin significantly reduces designers' cognitive workload and increases their creativity during brainstorming, highlighting the implications of AI-assisted tools in supporting creative work and evidence-based designs.

Zhuoran Huang, Michael P. Berry, Christina Chwyl et al.

Automated coaching messages for weight control can save time and costs, but their repetitive, generic nature may limit their effectiveness compared to human coaching. Large language model (LLM) based artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, like ChatGPT, could offer more personalized and novel messages to address repetition with their data-processing abilities. While LLM AI demonstrates promise to encourage healthier lifestyles, studies have yet to examine the feasibility and acceptability of LLM-based BWL coaching. 87 adults in a weight-loss trial rated ten coaching messages' helpfulness (five human-written, five ChatGPT-generated) using a 5-point Likert scale, providing additional open-ended feedback to justify their ratings. Participants also identified which messages they believed were AI-generated. The evaluation occurred in two phases: messages in Phase 1 were perceived as impersonal and negative, prompting revisions for Phase 2 messages. In Phase 1, AI-generated messages were rated less helpful than human-written ones, with 66 percent receiving a helpfulness rating of 3 or higher. However, in Phase 2, the AI messages matched the human-written ones regarding helpfulness, with 82% scoring three or above. Additionally, 50% were misidentified as human-written, suggesting AI's sophistication in mimicking human-generated content. A thematic analysis of open-ended feedback revealed that participants appreciated AI's empathy and personalized suggestions but found them more formulaic, less authentic, and too data-focused. This study reveals the preliminary feasibility and acceptability of LLM AIs, like ChatGPT, in crafting potentially effective weight control coaching messages. Our findings also underscore areas for future enhancement.

Donghoon Shin, Daniel Lee, Gary Hsieh et al. · uw

Poster designing can benefit from synchronous feedback from target audiences. However, gathering audiences with diverse perspectives and reconciling them on design edits can be challenging. Recent generative AI models present opportunities to simulate human-like interactions, but it is unclear how they may be used for feedback processes in design. We introduce PosterMate, a poster design assistant that facilitates collaboration by creating audience-driven persona agents constructed from marketing documents. PosterMate gathers feedback from each persona agent regarding poster components, and stimulates discussion with the help of a moderator to reach a conclusion. These agreed-upon edits can then be directly integrated into the poster design. Through our user study (N=12), we identified the potential of PosterMate to capture overlooked viewpoints, while serving as an effective prototyping tool. Additionally, our controlled online evaluation (N=100) revealed that the feedback from an individual persona agent is appropriate given its persona identity, and the discussion effectively synthesizes the different persona agents' perspectives.