Katie Seaborn
Associate Professor
Directs the Aspirational Computing Lab on human-computer interaction with voice assistants, social robots and other agents, including how people perceive gender and identity in computer voices.
Katie Seaborn's lab at Cambridge works on interfaces & interaction techniques, human-AI collaboration & trust and human-robot interaction & assistive robots. 50 papers since 2023, 12 at top venues, mostly CHI and IJHCS. 3 PhD students and 3 master's students. 13 alumni. Applications close .
At a glance
- papers, 2023–2026
- 13/ year
- at T1 venues
- 24%
- PhD students
- 3
- MS students
- 3
- alumni listed
- 13
Papers by yearfrom the lab homepage, 2023–2026
- 17 papers2026 · T1 7 · collecting
- 18 papers2025 · T1 3
- 14 papers2024 · T1 2
- 1 papers2023 · T1 0
T1 venuesOtherVenues: CHI, IJHCS, CSCW, HRI, ICMI
Research focuspaper titles that use each topic's words
- Human-robot interaction & assistive robots9 papers
- voice9 papers
- Human-AI collaboration & trust7 papers
- Interfaces & interaction techniques6 papers
- social robots1 paper
Paper list
From the lab homepage.
202617 papers
- CHI (T1)Access Over Deception: Fighting Deceptive Patterns through Accessibility (opens in a new tab)
- Nature (T1)Amend copyright licences to halt AI misuse and reassert human control (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '26Bridge Over Troubled Water: Aligning Commercial Incentives With Ethical Design Practice To Combat Deceptive Patterns (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Social RoboticsDeceptive design patterns in cute social robots impact user decisions (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the Participatory Design ConferenceDreaming with MAKOTO: Co-designing an "older adult" voice assistant intervention for implicit ageism (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI '26Is ChatGPT Gender-Neutral? Implicit Stereotyping Persists Over Time and With Experience (opens in a new tab)
- IJHCIKawaii Game Vocalics: How Audio and Visual Stimuli Influence Kawaii, Gender, and Age Perceptions of Game Characters (opens in a new tab)
- Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in PlayMapping Out Xジェンダー (X-Jendā / X-Gender) Euphoric Gaming Experiences (opens in a new tab)
- CSCW (T1)Measuring What Motivates Maldaimonia in Play with the Inventory on Maldaimonic Motivations in Player Experiences (IMPEX) (opens in a new tab)
- CHI (T1)Operationalizing Perceptions of Agent Gender: Foundations and Guidelines (opens in a new tab)
- HRI (T1)Persona Non Graphica: Visual Representation Biases in Human-Robot Interaction Research (opens in a new tab)
- CHI (T1)Radical Gender Neutrality: Agender Euphoria in Gaming and Play Experiences (opens in a new tab)
202518 papers
- Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25Anime SIG: Researching Japanese Animation From Technical, Cultural, and Industrial Perspectives (opens in a new tab)
- Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, CHI PLAY Companion '25Deceptively Intimate: The Threat of Romantic Mechanics in Video Games (opens in a new tab)
- CSCW (T1)First Contact with Dark Patterns and Deceptive Designs in Chinese and Japanese Free-to-Play Mobile Games (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25Global and Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design Practice: ダークパターンとひとをだますデザインに関する国際的かつ学際的な交流 (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI '25Hearing Ambiguity: Exploring Beyond-Gender Impressions of Artificial Ambiguous Voices (opens in a new tab)
- CHI (T1)Inter(sectional) Alia(s): Ambiguity in Voice Agent Identity via Intersectional Japanese Self-Referents (opens in a new tab)
- Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, CHI PLAY Companion '25Levelling Up the Literature: How Games Can Inspire Academic Reporting (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25More-than-Human Storytelling: Designing Longitudinal Narrative Engagements with Generative AI (opens in a new tab)
- International Journal of Social RoboticsMy Body, My Exoskeleton: Co-Designing Intersectional Visions of Robotic Augmentations through Drawings (opens in a new tab)
- Frontiers in PsychologyQuality and representativeness of research online with Yahoo! Crowdsourcing (opens in a new tab)
- ACM Transactions on Human-Robot InteractionSocial Identity in Human-Agent Interaction: A Primer (opens in a new tab)
- Aarhus Conference CiteStepford Twins and Potemkin Engineering: A Critique of Synthetic Personas in the Age of Generative AI (opens in a new tab)
202414 papers
- Mobilizing Research and Regulatory Action on Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design Practices Workshop at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, DDP CHI '24Another subtle pattern: Examining demographic biases in dark patterns and deceptive design research (opens in a new tab)
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human-Robot InteractionBots against Bias: Critical Next Steps for Human–Robot Interaction (opens in a new tab)
- IJHCSChatGPT and me: First-time and experienced users' perceptions of ChatGPT's communicative ability as a dialogue partner (opens in a new tab)
- Human Behavior and Emerging TechnologiesCoimagining the future of voice assistants with cultural sensitivity (opens in a new tab)
- Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI '24Cross-cultural validation of partner models for voice user interfaces (opens in a new tab)
- Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '24Deceptive, disruptive, no big deal: Japanese people react to simulated dark commercial patterns (opens in a new tab)
- ACM Transactions on Human-Robot InteractionFrom "made in" to mukokuseki: Exploring the visual perception of national identity in robots (opens in a new tab)
- ICMIJuicy text: Onomatopoeia and semantic text effects for juicy player experiences (opens in a new tab)
- Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '24Kawaii computing: Scoping out the Japanese notion of cute in user experiences with interactive systems (opens in a new tab)
- Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '24No joke: An embodied conversational agent greeting older adults with humour or a smile unrelated to initial acceptance (opens in a new tab)
- CHI (T1)Play across boundaries: Exploring cross-cultural maldaimonic game experiences (opens in a new tab)
- ACM Computing SurveysQualitative approaches to voice UX (opens in a new tab)
20231 paper
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction, HAI '23Interdisciplinary approaches in human-agent interaction (opens in a new tab)
Where alumni went13 listed
Apply to CambridgeMichaelmas 2027
PhD in Computer Science
- Round
- Funding round (8 Dec 2026)
- Opens
- GRE
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- English
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- Fee
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Confirmed on the program page.
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