Kai Lukoff

Dr. Kai Lukoff is an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University, leading the Human-Computer Interaction Lab in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He uses human-centered methods to research, design, and develop technologies with social impact.

Dr. Lukoff’s research investigates how digital interfaces impact user experience and sense of agency. He has conducted field experiments to evaluate how redesigned features of social media applications, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, impact digital wellbeing metrics.

Additionally, Dr. Lukoff is collaborating with Native American partners on a new interdisciplinary project to create an augmented reality tour showcasing the past, present, and future of the Ohlone Tribe on Santa Clara University campus.

His research has been published in top-tier academic venues such as CHI, CSCW, IMWUT, DIS, and Mindfulness Journal, and recognized with the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award from ACM SIGCHI. He is also an award-winning public speaker and storyteller. Dr. Lukoff earned his PhD in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, co-advised by Drs. Sean Munson and Alexis Hiniker. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a product manager at mobile internet startups in China for six years.

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Updates:

• Apr 11, 2023: Our SwitchTube paper was awarded a Best Paper Honorable Mention at the CHI 2023 Conference (top 5% of papers)!
• Mar 30, 2023: I was interviewed about my research on attention capture designs on The Conversation Weekly podcast.
• Mar 9, 2023: I teamed up with SCU Professors Amy Lueck (English) and Lee Panich (Anthropology) to submit a proposal that was awarded a 2023 Whitham Family Collaborative Scholarship Award for interdisciplinary research. The award ($30,000) will fund our creation of an augmented reality (AR) tour of the Santa Clara University campus that tells the story of the Ohlone, the Native Americans who have stewarded the land of our campus for hundreds of years. [Read more]
• Feb 14, 2023: I received the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award from ACM SIGCHI, the leading professional organization for human-computer interaction researchers and practitioners. The award citation states, “Kai’s dissertation has provoked, and will continue to provoke, conversations that have helped the HCI, social computing, and ubicomp fields gain a better understanding of what, exactly, we mean by digital wellbeing and how to achieve it.” [link to dissertation]
• Jan 13, 2023: Our paper has been conditionally accepted to the 2023 CHI Conference: “SwitchTube: A Proof-of-Concept System Introducing ‘Adaptable Commitment Interfaces’ as a Tool for Digital Wellbeing.” The pre-print manuscript is available here.
• Jan 13, 2023: Our paper has been conditionally accepted to the 2023 CHI Conference: “Defining and Identifying Attention Capture Deceptive Designs in Digital Interfaces.” The pre-print manuscript is available here.