About
जय भीम, नमस्ते, Hallo, Hi, I’m Shashank Ahire.
I'm an HCI researcher completing my PhD at Leibniz University Hannover (defense scheduled for March 2026), with over ten years of experience designing AI systems that operate in complex real-world environments—from corporate workplaces to underserved communities in Mumbai. My research explores proactive, context-aware agents that sense human behavior and adapt autonomously to support healthier and more sustainable work practices. I design and evaluate these AI agents through longitudinal field deployments, participatory design, and mixed-methods studies with 118+ participants. My goal is to build AI agents that are both technically rigorous and socially acceptable—ones that know when to intervene, when to stay quiet, and how to earn trust over time.Beyond the lab, I have conducted fieldwork in Dharavi (Mumbai), co-designed technologies with marginalized communities across India, and contributed to accessibility standards through collaboration with policymakers. I also founded Fit@Desk, a research-to-practice initiative that won a regional innovation competition. My work has been published at venues including CHI, CUI, and INTERACT.
I am currently seeking postdoctoral opportunities where research impact is measured not only by publications, but by whether it changes something that matters.Updates
- March 2026: Submitted my PhD dissertation titled Designing Proactive Voice Assistants for the Health and Well-being of Knowledge Workers at Leibniz University Hannover. The dissertation defense is scheduled for 24 March 2026.
- 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.
Portfolio
- All
- AI & Voice Interfaces
- HCI4D & Emergent Users
- Text Entry & Accessibility
Publications
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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 |
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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 |
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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 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 |
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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 |