About

Shashank Ahire is a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover, supervised by Prof. Michael Rohs. He is inspired to develop a voice assistant that could help information workers perform their tasks productively and efficiently. Further, he is determined to build a human-like interaction in smart speakers, which could enable users to have a seamless and human-cognition convenient conversation. Also, he is motivated to build a smart speaker suitable to the requirements of non-mainstream users.
He pursued his master's in research (MRes) in Computing and Future Interaction Technologies at Swansea University under the supervision of Prof. Matt Jones. While pursuing his master's, he researched "Integrating Human and Artificial Intelligence Answers for the Smart Speakers".
He worked as a Research Associate under Prof. Anirudha Joshi at IDC IIT Bombay. During this tenure, he researched in the area of Text Input, Accessibility, and Emerging technologies. In collaboration, he has published research papers at international conferences like CHI, MobileHCI, INTERACT, and IndiaHCI.
He also reviews papers for CHI, CUI, IndiaHCI and Frontiers Psychology Journal.
Updates
May 2022- Second full paper of PhD, "Ubiquitous Work Assistant: Synchronizing a Stationary and a Wearable Conversational Agent to Assist Knowledge Work" will be published at "CHIWORK'22" conference.
April 2022- He will be supervising Master student Miquel Llaneras. Miquel is an Erasmus fellow under semester exchange program from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona.
April 2022- He will be assisting for the course 'Mobile Interaction' during Summer semester 2022.
August 2021- First full paper of PhD, " How Compatible is Alexa for Dual-task? — Design Recommendations for Building Dual-task Compatible Intelligent Personal Assistance " was accepted at 9th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI '21)
July 2021- Succcessfully completed a course on "Promotion plus (PhD and beyond)"
August 2020- Awarded certificate of completion for Master of Research in Computing and Future Interaction Technologies.
July 2020- Provocation paper "Tired of Wake Words? Moving Towards Seamless Conversations.." is published at CUI 2020.
July 2020 - He will be assisting for the course 'Seminar' focusing on the topics of Conversational User Interface and Machine Learning.
Publications
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 |
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 Honorable Mention award at CHI 2019 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 Best paper award at Interact 2017 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 Honorable Mention award at CHI 2017 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 Best paper award IndiaHCI 2015 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 |