Shashank Ahire

About

Hi, I’m Shashank Ahire.

I’m a UX researcher finishing my PhD in Human–Computer Interaction at Leibniz University Hannover. I study how people interact with wearable and voice-based systems, with a focus on comfort, well-being, and ergonomics in everyday work environments.

My research explores proactive interventions that support desk workers’ health — including hydration, stress recovery, and movement — evaluated through mixed-methods studies, longitudinal deployments, and real-world workplace testing. I also work with adaptive, data-driven systems that personalize timing and interaction to reduce cognitive effort and improve adherence.

I bring over 4.5 years of applied UX research experience from IDC, IIT Bombay, where I worked on inclusive interfaces and accessibility for Indian-language users. During my MRes at Swansea University, I designed a Human–AI smart speaker for emergent users, improving interaction efficiency in low-resource environments.

My work has been recognized at CHI, INTERACT, and IndiaHCI, and I contribute to the HCI community as a reviewer for CHI, CUI, IMWUT, and IndiaHCI. I’m committed to research-driven, human-centered design that creates measurable positive impact in everyday experience.

Updates

July 2025: Co-organized and co-led the workshop “Conversational Health Interfaces in the Era of LLMs: Designing for Engagement, Privacy, and Well-being” at CUI 2025, exploring design implications of large language models for health-focused voice interfaces.

June 2025: The paper “Designing for Inclusion: Key Considerations for Voice Interfaces for Emergent Users” was accepted at the Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) 2025 conference.

October 2024: Selected as a member of the ACM CUI 2025 organizing committee .

August 2024: Our paper “H2Office: A Smartwatch and Water-Gauge System for Facilitating Hydration of Knowledge Workers” was accepted at the EAI Pervasive Health conference, demonstrating measurable behavior change in hydration through auditory interventions.

July 2024: The paper “WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge Workers” was published at CUI 2024, showcasing the real-world impact of conversational health interventions in the workplace.

July 2024: The paper “Dual-Mode Interventions: Giving Agency to Knowledge Workers in Proactive Health Interventions” was published at CUI 2024, investigating interaction models for shared control between users and agents.

May 2024: Marked my 10-year milestone as a researcher in HCI, spanning inclusive design, conversational agents, and workplace well-being.

May 2024: Co-organized and conducted the workshop “CUI@CHI 2024: Building Trust in CUIs — From Design to Deployment” at CHI 2024, focusing on ethical and user-centered conversational system design.

November 2022: My master’s research “Designing a Smart Speaker for Emergent Users: Human Plus AI Response” was published at IndiaHCI 2022, contributing to inclusive voice interface design.

May 2022: The paper “Ubiquitous Work Assistant: Synchronizing a Stationary and a Wearable Conversational Agent to Assist Knowledge Work” was published at CHIWORK 2022, exploring coordinated multi-agent interaction for various workplace use cases.

Portfolio

All
Voice Interfaces
HCI4D & Emergent Users
Text Entry & Keyboards

WorkFit

Proactive voice assistance for the health and well-being of knowledge workers (CUI ’24).

Dual-Mode Interventions

Shared control between workers and agents in proactive health interventions (CUI ’24).

Ubiquitous Work Assistant

Synchronizing stationary and wearable CAs to support knowledge work (CHIWORK ’22).

Dual-Task Compatible Alexa

Design recommendations for dual-task compatible voice assistants (HAI ’21).

StreetWise

Smart speakers vs human help in public slum settings (CHI ’19).

Private smart speaker in public environment

Private Smart Speakers in Public Slums

Revisiting “Hole in the Wall Computing” for emergent users (CHI ’18).

Accessible Indic Gesture Keyboard

Gesture-based text input for visually impaired Indic-language users (INTERACT ’17).

Human plus AI smart speaker for emergent users

Human+AI Smart Speaker

Designing a smart speaker for emergent users in India (IndiaHCI ’22, IVA ’25).

Prediction in Marathi Text Input

Longitudinal evaluation of prediction for Marathi text entry (MobileHCI ’16).

Better Together

Disaggregating mobile services for emergent users (MobileHCI ’17).

Mumbai context for virtual keyboard protocol study

Evaluating Virtual Keyboards

Protocol for assessing virtual keyboards for Indian languages (IndiaHCI ’15).

Interaction Design for Indian Needs

Lab profile and vision for locally relevant HCI (interactions ’15).

Make Yourself at Phone

Reimagining mobile interaction architectures with emergent users (CHI ’18).

Chameleon Devices

More secure and discreet mobile interactions via active camouflaging (CHI ’17).

Publications

Conversational Health Interfaces in the Era of LLMs: Designing for Engagement, Privacy, and Wellbeing Shashank Ahire, Melissa Guyre, Bradley Rey, Minha Lee, Heloisa Candello CUI '25: Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Designing for Inclusion: Key Considerations for Voice Interfaces for Emergent Users Shashank Ahire IVA '25: Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
H2Office: A Smartwatch and Water-Gauge System for Facilitating Hydration of Knowledge Workers Shashank Ahire, Simon Benjamin, Michael Rohs EAI PervasiveHealth '24: Proceedings of the International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare
WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge Workers Shashank Ahire, Simon Benjamin, Michael Rohs CUI '24:Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Dual-Mode Interventions: Giving Agency to Knowledge Workers in Proactive Health Interventions Shashank Ahire, Saeid Othman, Michael Rohs CUI '24:Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Ubiquitous Work Assistant:Synchronizing a Stationary and a Wearable Conversational Agent to Assist Knowledge Work Shashank Ahire, Michael Rohs, Simon Benjamin CHIWORK '22: In Proceedings of Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work
Designing a Smart Speaker for Emergent Users: Human Plus AI Response Shashank Ahire IndiaHCI '22: In Proceedings of the 13th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
How Compatible is Alexa for Dual-task? — Design Recommendations for Building Dual-task Compatible Intelligent Personal Assistance Shashank Ahire, Aaron Priegnitz, Oguz Önbas, Michael Rohs, Wolfgang Nejdl HAI '21: In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction
Tired of Wake Words? Moving Towards Seamless Conversations with Intelligent Personal Assistants Shashank Ahire, Michael Rohs CUI '20: In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Streetwise: Smart Speakers vs Human Help in Public Slum Settings Jennifer Pearson, Simon Robinson, Thomas Reitmaier, Matt Jones, Shashank Ahire, Anirudha Joshi, Deepak Sahoo, Nimish Maravi, Bhakti Bhikne CHI '19: In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Sustainabot – Exploring the Use of Everyday Foodstuffs as Output and Input for and with Emergent Users Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Mark D Holton, Shashank Ahire, Matt Jones CHI '19: In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Revisiting “Hole in the Wall Computing”: Private Smart Speakers and Public Slum Settings Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Shashank Ahire, Rini Ahirwar, Bhakti Bhikne, Nimish Maravi, Matt Jones CHI '18: In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Make Yourself at Phone: Reimagining Mobile Interaction Architectures With Emergent Users Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Thomas Reitmaier, Shashank Ahire, Matt Jones CHI '18: In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Performance of Accessible Indic Gesture-based Keyboard Pabba Anu Bharath, Charudatta Jadhav, Shashank Ahire, Manjiri Joshi, Rini Ahirwar, Anirudha Joshi Interact '17: IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Chameleon Devices: Investigating More Secure and Discreet Mobile Interactions via Active Camouflaging Jennifer Pearson, Simon Robinson, Matt Jones, Anirudha Joshi, Shashank Ahire, Deepak Sahoo, Sriram Subramanian CHI '17 Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Does prediction really help in Marathi text input?: empirical analysis of a longitudinal study Girish Dalvi, Shashank Ahire, Nagraj Emmadi, Manjiri Joshi, Anirudha Joshi, Sanjay Ghosh, Prasad Ghone, Narendra Parmar MobileHCI '16: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
Shift+Tap or Tap+LongPress?: The Upper Bound of Typing Speed on InScript Sanjay Ghosh, Anirudha Joshi, Manjiri Joshi, Nagraj Emmadi, Girish Dalvi, Shashank Ahire, Swati Rangale CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A Protocol to Evaluate Virtual Keyboards for Indian Languages Girish Dalvi, Shashank Ahire, Nagraj Emmadi, Manjiri Joshi, Nirav Malsettar, Debasis Samanta, Devendra Jalihal, Anirudha Joshi IndiaHCI'15: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on HCI, IndiaHCI 2015
Interaction design for Indian needs lab, IIT Bombay Shashank Ahire, Girish Dalvi, Manjiri Joshi, Anirudha Joshi Interactions: Volume 22 Issue 5, September-October 2015
Better Together: Disaggregating Mobile Services for Emergent Users Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Matt Jones, Anirudha Joshi, Shashank Ahire MobileHCI '17: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
Media player for Semi-illiterate users Shashank Ahire, Charudatt Surve, Bharat Prajapati, Yogesh Parulekar IndiaHCI '14: Proceedings of the India HCI 2014 Conference on Human Computer Interaction