Welcome new PhD student Nicola Albans!

Nicola Albans is a PhD researcher and lecturer in the Nottingham School of Art & Design. With a background spanning visual effects and virtual production technologies, she holds a BSc in Visual Effects Technology, an MSc in Creative Technology, and a PGCTHE. Throughout her academic career, Nicola has taught both industry-standard software, including Autodesk Maya and Foundry Nuke, and broader subjects such as research methods, theory, and industry awareness.

Her interdisciplinary practice has led her to contribute to a wide range of courses, including Game Design, Visual Effects, and Content Creation. Guided by the ethos, "Question what seems obvious," Nicola is particularly interested in examining overlooked details and exploring the deeper questions that underpin accepted assumptions.

As part of her PhD studies, Nicola is undertaking the research project Crossing Boundaries: Understanding the Virtuality and Physicality of Virtual Production. Her research explores the evolving relationship between physical and digital environments in virtual production workflows, investigating how communication between these spaces influences both creative and technical practitioners. By examining the interactions between real-world and virtual assets, Nicola aims to better understand how immersive technologies shape user experience, collaboration, and creative practice. Ultimately, her work seeks to uncover how strengthening the connections between physical and digital worlds can enhance the uniquely human engagement with interactive and tangible environments.

CXL at BritCHI 2026 in London

CXL will have a number of activities at BritCHI '26, the British Computer Society’s Interaction Specialist Group’s 39th Conference.

Anh Pham and Lars Erik Holmquist will present the full paper Between Thought and Expression: How Generative AI and Brain Data Shape the Future of Creative Practice. This paper explores how EEG-derived brain signals can be integrated into Generative AI systems to support new forms of human-AI co-creation. Through three interconnected studies involving co-design workshops, expert interviews, and an exploratory EEG-modulated prototype, we examine how physiological data can influence generative visual experiences while maintaining human creative agency. The research introduces the Shared Neural Streams concept and highlights opportunities for developing more personalised, responsive, and transparent AI-supported creative interactions.

Pham and Holmquist will also present the short paper Beyond Generation: How Creative Practitioners Use GenAI to Articulate, Evaluate, and Preserve Creative Judgement. This paper investigates how experienced creative practitioners maintain critical thinking and creative autonomy when working with Generative AI. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eight experienced practitioners, our findings suggest that GenAI does not simply replace or preserve critical thinking. Instead, it can redistribute creative judgement across different stages of the creative process, from articulating intentions and developing prompts to evaluating, verifying, refining, and rejecting AI-generated outputs. We identify five design opportunities for developing GenAI systems that support reflective, practitioner-led creativity rather than simply automating content production.

Glyn Lawson and Yi Ning Chuah will present the short paper Trust Me, I'm Human! Comparing Attitudes Towards AI versus Human Junior Colleagues in Medical Device Design. This research explores how people perceive and trust design recommendations generated by AI compared with those provided by human colleagues in a safety-critical design context. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study found that participants were generally more willing to trust recommendations attributed to a human designer, even when the recommendations themselves were identical. The work contributes to growing discussions around human-AI collaboration, highlighting the importance of accountability, transparency, and trust in the adoption of AI technologies within regulated industries such as medical device development.

Wanqi Wang will participate in the BritCHI Doctoral Consortium, where she will present a PhD abstract outlining her research on designing an AI conversational partner to support inclusive engagement with contemporary art for visually impaired audiences. The consortium will provide an opportunity to receive feedback from researchers and experts, helping to further refine the project's direction and methodology.

Kevin Hunt, Sam Nemeth and Lars Erik Holmquist will present the alt.britchi paper AI is a Gungfly: Why We Need New Mental Models for LLMs. In this forum, aimed at challenging assumptions and surfacing overlooked perspectives, we will talk about how the view users have on AI models does not always match the reality of what these models do. Based upon a synthetic ethncography, we suggest users accept the data landscape of LLMs is not reliable terra firma, but more like a gungfly – a Swedish term for a place where the ground is unstable and changeable.

Lars Erik Holmquist will present a Community Showcase based on his article Intelligence on Tap: Artificial Intelligence as a New Design Material, originally published in 2017 in ACM Interactions. It predicted that AI would become available for designers to create new products without requiring advanced technical knowledge. This is now happening, but we are still only in the beginning of this revolution. The session will discuss the opportunities and risks of this new material, and how it is the responsibility of HCI researchers and educators to master it. 

Finally, Seher Singh and Wanqi Wang will be student volunteers at the conference.

Summer activities

 The CXL PhD students have been very busy this summer!

EuroHaptics 2026 Summer School

Seher Singh recently attend the EuroHaptics 2026 Summer School held at the University of Siena, from 10-12th July. The program included a mix of seminars, industry talks as well as hackathons; all of which provided insight into haptics and touch, for all levels of experience. Some of Seher's hackathon projects involved creating a 3D printed ring with a soft actuator for tangible heartbeat, as well leveraging Google Pixel and Unity to create a simple 2D mobile game, with custom added haptic feedback for immersive play.

Device Prototyping Summer School 2026

Wanqi Wang attended the Device Prototyping Summer School 2026 organised by the pro2 network in Lancaster, UK, on July 14-17. Says Wanqi: "The summer school gave me the opportunity to learn from engineers and understand how their knowledge and current developments in technology could expand the possibilities of my own project. It encouraged me to think beyond my usual artistic approach and consider how interdisciplinary collaboration could bring new ideas and practical possibilities to my work. I also gained a better understanding of how different disciplines can learn from and support each other."

 

Demonstration at Creativity & Cognition 2026

Anh Pham demonstrated Shared Neural Streams: Generating Real-Time Immersive Experiences with EEG-Driven Generative AI at Creativity & Cognition 2026 on July 13-16 in London, UK. This interactive demo refers to the use of biological data, when language and cultural differences are optimally respected to be able to create an immersive and connected experience for many people use together in real time. The experience design mechanism integrates the power of GenAI and the an immersive environment to open a new approach to animation, which is continuously responded to in real-time. Combined with the EEG input, the output experience can provide a perspective on the user personalisation experience.

Demonstration at Creativity and Cognition in London

At Creativity & Cognition 2026, Anh Pham and Lars Erik Holmquist will be presenting the demonstration Shared Neural Streams: Generating Real-Time Immersive Experiences with EEG-Driven Generative AI. We use brain data and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to understand the connection between human mental states and physical experiences. The system combines prompts in StreamDiffusion with Electroencephalography (EEG) data to create visual and interactive elements in an Unreal Engine environment in real time. The demo showcases the concept process we have called the closed-loop immersive model. The intention is to allow users to understand each other with non-verbal interaction. 

Please come and try it out at C&C 2026 in London on July 13-16!

Guest Lecture Event: Prof Damian Murphy - XR Stories

We are very happy to welcome Professor Damian Murphy from University of York to give a guest lecture at NTU! He will talk about his experience from the XR Stories R&D cluster.

Time: Wednesday, 27 May 2026 from 12:30 to 14:15

Place: NTU Newton, NEWN34

The event will start with lunch followed by the talk and Q&A.

"XR Stories XR Stories: Building and Supporting a Creative Industries R&D Cluster – What We Did and What We Learned.

In 2018 the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council invested more than £50m in Wave 1 of the Creative Industries Cluster Programme, supporting economic growth in nine locations around the UK through collaborative, University-led R&D, targeted at specific sectors of the creative industries. XR Stories was one of these projects. It was led by the University of York to deliver next generation immersive and interactive digital storytelling experiences for the Yorkshire and Humber region, representing more than £6m people and 600 businesses across film, TV, games and related media.

Over six years XR Stories delivered more than 110 projects, 16 studentships, and 80 internships, and delivered training and support for creative industries businesses and individuals wanting to break into technology-driven creative storytelling. This included a new £1.25m investment in a business facing R&D lab facility within our city centre to act as a front door to future collaboration with our University researchers. Since 2024 XR Stories has refocused its activities and supports projects both nationally and locally, in the latter case as a key innovation intermediary as part of the newly formed Mayoral Combined Authority of York and North Yorkshire.

 

This presentation will highlight some of the highlights, successes, challenges and learning from the XR Stories project and look to what is emerging next for our work in the context of creative sector R&D across the UK.

Bio:

Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing at the AudioLab in the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology at the University of York, UK, where his research focuses on the development and creative application of immersive audio and virtual acoustic modelling. He is an active sound artist, and the Director of the XR Stories Creative Industries R&D Partnership and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council XR Network+ project, both exploring the next generation of convergent immersive and interactive media technologies for the UK’s creative industries and wider digital economy.

Pictures and publications from CHI 2026 in Barcelona

We had a great time at CHI, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona, the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Members from CXL presented 4 posters, took part in workshops and the Student Mentoring Program, and gave 2 talks at the pre-CHI Fringe event organised by Northumbria University. 

Here are some pictures and below are links to the publications in the open-access ACM Digital Library.

 

  

CHI 2026 Posters

Malindu Ehelagasthenna, Lars Erik Holmquist, Carlos Oliveira, Arash M. Shahidi, Pasindu Lugoda, and Theo Hughes-Riley. 2026. Haptic Pillow Sleeve: Enhancing Sleep Quality by Providing Vital Sound Awareness Through Vibrotactile Feedback. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 361, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3798362

Yifan Kang, Glyn Lawson, and Xu Sun. 2026. How Self-Confidence and Gender Shape Training Experience in Mixed Reality: A Case Study in Flight Simulator Training. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 379, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3798560

Anh Thi Ngoc Pham. 2026. The Inclusive Metaverse: Using Self-discrepancy Theory and Artificial Intelligence to Create Personalized Immersive Experiences. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 908, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3799197

Seher Singh, Richard Bibb, and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2026. Between Curiosity and Clunkiness: Why Virtual Museums Still Fall Short. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 117, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3798315

CXL at CHI 2026

The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. CHI 2026 will take place in Barcelona at the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona. CXL and the Nottingham School of Art and Design will participate at CHI in several ways.

PhD student Seher Singh will present the poster Between Curiosity and Clunkiness: Why Virtual Museums Still Fall Short, co-authored with Richard Bibb and Lars Erik Holmquist. The research looked at the modern virtual museum experience through a comparative, user centered lens. Analysis showed three main findings - that the quality and design of the virtual museums make or break the experience, the user expectations when viewing the different platforms influence their perception, and that they have strong potential to complement physical museum visits. The research suggests virtual museums must be intentionally designed experiences that not just replicate but also compliment the physical visits.

PhD student Anh Pham will participate in the CHI 2026 Dissertation Research Roundtable and present her thesis work in the poster The Inclusive Metaverse: Using Self-discrepancy Theory and Artificial Intelligence to Create Personalized Immersive Experiences. She is a second-year PhD student and her doctoral research examines the relationship between AI and user EEG data through studies exploring user needs in hybrid interactive experiences.

PhD student Malindu Ehelagasthenna will present the poster Haptic Pillow Sleeve: Enhancing Sleep Quality by Providing Vital Sound Awareness Through Vibrotactile Feedback, co-authored with Lars Erik Holmquist, Carlos Oliveira, Arash M. Shahidi, Pasindu Lugoda and Theo Hughes-Riley. Sleeping environments—particularly shared or noisy ones—often disrupt rest, while solutions like earplugs or sleep masks help only to an extent and can reduce awareness of critical sounds (e.g., fire alarms, baby crying), creating safety risks. To address this, we developed an interactive pillow sleeve that delivers quiet, personalized vibrotactile feedback during sleep, supporting better sleep quality without relying on audible and visual cues. Because the system can be easily added to an everyday object (a standard pillow), it enhances usability and also provides significant safety benefits for individuals with hearing impairments.

Yifan Kang, PhD student at University of Nottingham, will present the poster How Self-Confidence and Gender Shape Training Experience in Mixed Reality: A Case Study in Flight Simulator Training co-authored with Glyn Lawson and Xu Sun. This poster examines how self-confidence and gender influence learning experiences in an MR-based flight simulator. The performance of sixteen participants was monitored before they completed subjective ratings of self-confidence and other User Experience (UX) indices. The result shows that self-confidence level differed significantly between genders and was negatively associated with Situation Awareness and User Satisfaction. 

Click here to see details of all CXL presentations in the CHI 2026 program!

Additionally, researchers from CXL will take part in a number of workshops and meet-ups. Also, Lars Erik Holmquist was Associate Chair for the Blending Interaction papers track, and will be a mentor in the Student Mentorship Program and Dissertation Research Roundtable.

We hope to see you there!

Talk by Professor Yvonne Rogers: Human-Computer Interaction in a Crisis

We are very happy to welcome the world-leading human-computer interaction researcher Professor Yvonne Rogers from University College London to give a talk at NTU!

Time:

Thursday, February 26

12:30-1 PM – Lunch

1-2:15 PM – Talk and Q&A

Location:

Nottingham Trent Newton & Arkwright building, ARK009

Human-Computer Interaction in a Crisis 

Human-Computer Interaction is facing a crisis. Like many other disciplines, we are being confronted with having to decide how, what and when to use AI in our research and practice. As we are discovering, GenAI can now competently perform all manner of UX tasks and research activities previously done by human practitioners and human researchers.  Not only can it do extensive desk research at lightning speed it can also simulate users, run hypothetical experiments, create synthetic data, conduct thematic analysis, design new apps, and even write an impressive CHI paper. What should we as a field be doing about these developments? Do we embrace all the changes afoot or try to put our foot down and resist? In my talk, I will put forward what it means for us as a community as our field lurches ever more towards being AI-enabled HCI. 

Yvonne Rogers is a Professor of Interaction Design at University College London. Her research is concerned with designing interactive technologies that can empower humans, especially human-centred AI, and how to develop AI tools to think with. Central to her work is a critical stance towards how visions, theories and frameworks shape the fields of HCI, cognitive science and ubiquitous computing. She been instrumental in promulgating new theories (e.g., external cognition), alternative methodologies (e.g., in the wild studies) and far-reaching research agendas (e.g., “Being Human” manifesto). She has received various awards including the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Research Award, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Robin Milner Medal for computer science. She is one of the authors of the definitive textbook on Interaction Design and HCI now in its 6th edition, that has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide.

Welcome new PhD student Wanqi Wang!

Wanqi Wang is a PhD researcher at the Nottingham School of Art and Design. She holds a BA in Communication Studies and Art History from St. Lawrence University in 2020 and an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Working as an interdisciplinary artist and performance maker, Wanqi’s practice spans multiple media and is informed by cultural inquiry, inclusive design, and audience experience. Her work explores how meaning is produced beyond visual dominance, particularly within the abstract, conceptual, and multisensory nature of contemporary art. Alongside her artistic practice, she has professional experience as a museum tour guide in London, which shaped her interest in public engagement and accessibility within cultural institutions.

Her PhD research, Creating an AI Discussion Partner for Contemporary Art Galleries for Visitors with Sight Loss, investigates how conversational AI can facilitate inclusive, non-visual engagement with contemporary art. It focuses on supporting visitors with sight loss to navigate the abstract, conceptually rich, and multimodal nature of contemporary artworks. Rather than functioning as a simple descriptive tool, the AI acts as a conversational partner, fostering dialogue, reflection, and imaginative exploration. By integrating AI with human-centred design, the research aims to enhance accessibility, deepen understanding, and offer practical insights for galleries and inclusive cultural experiences.

Funded PhD project in Virtual Production and Mixed Reality interfaces

Do you want to join CXL? We are looking for an excellent candidate for a fully funded PhD project in Virtual Production (VP) and Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces (UK candidates only). This project will combine in situ user studies and technical prototyping to lay the groundwork for a new VP architecture, where physical and real assets are integrated seamlessly. We will take advantage of Nottingham Trent's professional-grade VP facilities (pictured) and work with partner studios across the UK. More information here:

Crossing Boundaries: Understanding the virtuality and physicality of Virtual Production

Talk: Understanding Untruth in Artificial Intelligence Through Synthetic Ethnography

Lars Erik Holmquist will give a talk at KTH The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and online on research about untruth in AI. Large Language Models (LLMs) have many practical uses in areas like journalism, search, coding and more. However, a growing concern is that they are also prone to presenting incorrect information. This is sometimes called “hallucinations”, but a more correct term would be “bullshit”, i.e. text produced without concern for its truth. In this study, we are not interested in what specific untruths LLMs presents, but how they do it. We used synthetic ethnography, a method for the qualitative study of generative models, to study two LLMs with different size and capability. We collected 3 cases where LLMs presented incorrect information and observed the strategies they used to justify this. From these observations we can start to form an understanding of what happens when an LLM reaches the edge of its knowledge-base and takes corrective action. Our conclusion is that the interfaces should be better designed to reveal this tendency of LLMs to “fill in” information they are missing, but that this ability may also be one of their strengths.

Time: Friday, October 31, 11.00-12.00 CET.

Information on how to join online or in person.

Related paper:

Holmquist, L.E. and Nemeth, S. 2025. “Don't believe anything I tell you, it's all lies!”: a synthetic ethnography on untruth in large language models. In CHI EA '25: extended abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Talk by Lars Erik Holmquist on XR and Virtual Production

Time: Tuesday September 9, 13.15 CET

Lars Erik Holmquist will give an online talk in the series Positive Technology Visions organised by the Department of Applied IT at University of Gothenburg. The title is Liberated Pixels and Virtual Production: A Framework and a Test Case for XR Beyond Glasses, and it will be about how tangible interaction, extended reality and other advanced user interface concepts could be developed to support advanced film and media production. 

Nottingham School of Art and Design has a state-of-the-art virtual production studio in our Design and Digital Arts building, which is used by students and staff for creating amazing environments and special effects. The picture to the right shows a recent filming of a Blade Runner-inspired dystopian short film which features a flying car! 

Click here for full information and joining instructions!

Device Prototyping Summer School at Lancaster University

CXL PhD students Seher Singh and Anh Pham attended the 2025 Device Prototyping Summer School, held at Lancaster University from 15-18 June and sponsored by the pro² network+.

The event itself was a great mix of presentations, demos, tutorials, panels, and hands-on activities, such as soldering components on a printed circuit board and getting to grips with CAD software. The students were able to connect with other brilliant minds across this space, including established researchers such as Steve Hodges and Lorraine Underwood, as well as students from universities across the world. The summer school was very useful in helping the students understand how devices are made and how to scale up their production, and both of them really enjoyed and appreciated this opportunity. 

Seher Singh was also awarded with a prize worth £200 for her prototype idea Tomadoro: a gamified pomodoro device.

You can find more information about the summer school as well as the student papers here: https://prosquared.org/2025-summer-school/

Masterclass with Elizabeth Churchill, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

We have the privilege of hosting a session with Professor Elizabeth Churchill, one of the top scientists in the world in human-centred digital technology, with experience from some of the largest companies in the world. She is currently Department Chair of Human Computer Interaction at MBZUAI, the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, in Abu Dhabi, UAE. 

Time: Wednesday July 23, 14.00-16.00

Place: Waverley 129 (City Campus) – please ask at reception for access

Details:

Dr Elizabeth F. Churchill is Professor and founding Department Chair of Human Computer Interaction at MBZUAI (the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. She was formerly a Senior Director of User Experience at Google. She is an Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow, a member of the ACM’s CHI Academy, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker. She has built research teams at Google, eBay, Yahoo, PARC and FujiXerox.

Professor Churchill is an applied social scientist, interactive technology designer and social communications researcher. She has a background in psychology (neuro, experimental, cognitive and social), AI, and cognitive science. For the past 20+ years, she has drawn on social, computer, engineering and data sciences to create innovative end-user applications and services. For the past few years, she has been most active in the areas of ubiquitous and mobile computing, social media, computer mediated communication, locative media and internet/web sciences. During this time, Professor Churchill designed and evaluated enterprise and consumer-facing information/communication applications and services for desktop, mobile, tablet and large screen devices.

https://elizabethchurchill.com

https://mbzuai.ac.ae/study/faculty/elizabeth-churchill/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethfchurchill/

At this Masterclass, we will have a discussion, led by Professor Lars Erik Holmquist, about Dr. Churchill’s experience as a researcher crossing industry and academia, and working at the frontline of many of the world’s top tech companies. The session will be very interactive, and we invite everyone, in particular PhD students and early career researchers, to take part!

Hope to see you there!

Design Studios and Cosy Games at ARPPID 2025

CXL have two presentations at ARPPID 2025, a new Working Conference on Academic Research and Professional Practice in Interaction Design taking place in London on July10-11.

Lars Erik Holmquist and Sam Nemeth will present the Case Study The Design Studio of the Future: Insights from A Practical Experiment in Remote Collaboration. In this project, which was partly carried out during the Covid pandemic, we aimed to recreate the positive features of a design studio in an educational and workplace setting using distance-spanning digital technology. Inspired by Conjoint Control, we constructed realistic solutions using off-the-shelf hardware and software that afforded novel and efficient ways of blending co-located and distance collaboration. From this we learned that although much of the required hardware already exists, it is not generally being used to its full potential, and that the standard meeting software is often not fit for this kind of creative collaboration settings.

Also at ARPPID, Anh Pham and Lars Erik Holmquist will present a poster titled From Cosy Games to Metaverse: Deriving Positive Interaction Qualities through Netnography. To gain design guidelines for a more welcoming Metaverse experience, we examined cosy games, which offer a non-violent and relaxing experience. Through netnography and thematic analysis we identified two main aspects of the positive user experience: positive emotional experiences and anticipation experiences. The findings will serve as the foundation for exploring the future potential and create design frameworks for creating more inclusive Metaverse applications.