Designing Conversational User Interfaces for Older Adults

A Workshop on Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical Design Perspectives on Designing CUIs for Older Adults 

Organizers

Cosmin Munteanu is an Associate Professor and Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Healthy Aging at the Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, and Director of the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully lab. They are a transdisciplinary scholar, drawing from a wide range of disciplines such as engineering, computing sciences, critical theory, and technology and society studies. Cosmin takes a primarily ethnomethodological approach to study how to design intelligent applications that improve access to information, support social connections late in life, and reduce digital marginalization for underrepresented groups such as older adults. Their work is situated at the intersection of user experience design, digital inclusion, aging, natural language processing, and ethics, primarily focusing on the sociotechnical design of inclusive interfaces with and for older adults.

Sayan Sarcar is a Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at the Birmingham City University, UK.  His research area includes Computational UI Design, Ageing & Accessibility, Input and Interaction.

Jaisie Sin is is a graduate student at the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully Lab and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the inclusive design of conversational interfaces for underrepresented users, with a primary focus on ageing. She is a Full Papers Co-Chair at the CUI 2023 conference. She has also been a co-organizer of the CUI conference series, related workshops at CHI ’19–’22, IUI ’20–’21, and CSCW ’20. She was also the lead organizer of the panel on age-based inclusivity at CHI '22.

Christina Wei is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Her research is at the intersection of conversational user interfaces and financial technology, on using CUIs to improve financial inclusion for marginalized communities such as older adults.

Sergio Sayago is a Lecturer in Interactive Systems and Languages at the University of Lleida (Spain). Since 2009, his research examines the everyday use of digital technologies by older adults from an interdisciplinary, mostly ethnographic—and qualitative—perspective. His long-term research goal is to understand and improve aging (and living) with digital technologies. He is the author of Cultures in Human-Computer Interaction (Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics, Springer) and editor of Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction Research with Older Adults (Human-Computer Interaction Series, Springer).