VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Nitin "Nick" Sawhney
dblp:49/2662 · also Nitin Sawhney
· DBLP profile ↗
10ranked-venue papers
5as first author
3since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0002-8088-914XORCID · verified
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing · 9 · 5 first-author · 3 since 2021Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 1
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Into the Unknown: Leveraging Conversational AI in Supporting Young Migrants' Journeys Towards Cultural AdaptationabstractPublisher Copyright: © 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Sunok Lee, Dasom Choi, Nghiep Lucy Truong, Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Henna Paakki |
CHI | 4 |
| 2024 | Enhancing Conversations in Migrant Counseling Services: Designing for Trustworthy Human-AI CollaborationabstractMigrants often face a complex situation for navigating services and administrative processes to transition and integrate into a new environment. They rely on guidance from service advisors and informal peers like other migrants to assist them. Service advisors try to understand, explore, and resolve migrant concerns through conversational interaction, while often seeking advice from other domain experts. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated communication holds the potential for enhancing communication between migrants and service advisors while leveraging the expertise of service advisors and facilitating migrants' autonomy in the integration process. Our research investigates the social context, mental models, and challenges encountered in guidance counseling for migrants in Finland, while examining what role AI-mediated communication can play in supporting the process. Based on our findings, we propose design implications for improving shared understanding between service advisors and migrants through salient summarization of conversations and creating collaborative visual narratives. Our findings also indicate the crucial role of leveraging peer-based knowledge between (and within) service advisors, domain experts, and migrants, which can be facilitated by AI-based tools. Our exploratory research offers insights into human-centered AI integration in the migration process, as well as the opportunities and challenges of using AI-mediated communication to improve the migrant experience. Nghiep Lucy Truong, Sunok Lee, Nitin "Nick" Sawhney |
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact. | 3 |
| 2023 | Collaborative Sensemaking in Crisis: Designing Practices and Platforms for ResilienceabstractThe COVID-19 pandemic exemplified the complexity of the field of crisis communication, with multiple channels and streams of information and misinformation causing new challenges for the authorities and general public alike. This complexity requires better addressing the situated and interrelated aspects of sensemaking practices and platforms, and how different disciplines and organisations collaborate during a crisis to turn ambiguity into resilience, and complexity into comprehension. We use design research and participatory design methodology to draw on learnings from the Finnish context and response to COVID-19 and other crises. These insights are then used to create design principles that bridge crisis informatics theory with HCI knowledge to create speculative, diegetic artefacts, which embody new practices and platforms that can be used to encourage collaborative sensemaking to tackle complex, large-scale crises and therefore have a positive impact on the resilience of the society. Uttishta Sreerama Varanasi, Teemu Leinonen, Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Minttu Tikka, Rahim Ahsanullah |
Conference on Designing Interactive Systems | 3 |
| 2018 | Audio journaling for self-reflection and assessment among teens in participatory media programsabstractWe examine the use of "Audio Journaling" as a multi-faceted practice and participatory research method to engage young participants in forms of creative expression, self and peer-based reflection, and participatory assessment. We share our experiences from incorporating this approach in three different participatory media programs conducted with adolescents in Gaza, Jerusalem, and New York City since 2011. In prior work, audio diaries have been used as reflective probes with young adults for conducting social research, and with the visually impaired to elicit rich contextual experiences informing HCI design. Our findings illustrate how audio journaling can be used with adolescents in participatory media programs to capture spontaneous and introspective experience-focused accounts with emotional resonance, while revealing the process of sense-making in a lightweight and unobtrusive manner. We believe these practices can enhance participatory learning, co-creation, and peer-based evaluation of program outcomes. Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Cleve Graver, Emily Breitkopf |
IDC | 1 |
| 2009 | Voices beyond walls: the role of digital storytelling for empowering marginalized youth in refugee campsabstractIn this paper we consider the role of digital storytelling for creative empowerment of marginalized youth, through a threeyear program of workshops conducted in the context of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We highlight the current situation regarding arts education and cultural production, and the challenging environment experienced by the youth there. We then describe the Voices Beyond Walls program and key lessons learned to suggest novel tools and practices that may support broader adoption of digital storytelling programs for marginalized youth in diverse global settings. Nitin "Nick" Sawhney |
IDC | 1 |
| 2001 | Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces
Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Sean Wheeler, Chris Schmandt |
Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. | 1 |
| 2000 | Nomadic radio: speech and audio interaction for contextual messaging in nomadic environmentsabstractMobile workers need seamless access to communication and information services while on the move. However, current solutions overwhelm users with intrusive interfaces and ambiguous notifications. This article discusses the interaction techniques developed for Nomadic Radio, a wearable computing platform for managing voice and text-based messages in a nomadic environment. Nomadic Radio employs an auditory user interface, which synchronizes speech recognition, speech synthesis, nonspeech audio, and spatial presentation of digital audio, for navigating among messages as well as asynchonous notific ation of nely arrived messages. Emphasis is placed on an auditory modality as Nomadic Radio is designed to be used while performing other tasks in a user's everyday environment; a range of auditory cues provides peripheral awareness of incoming messages. Notification is adaptive and cntext sensitive; messages are presented as more or less obtrsive based on importance inferred from content filtering, whether the user is engaged in conversation and his or her own recent responses to prior messages. Auditory notifications are dynamically scaled from ambient sound through recorded voice cues up to message summaries. Iterative design and a preliminary user evaluation suggest that audio is an appropriate medium for mobile messaging, but that care must be taken to minimally intrude on the wearer's social and physical environment. Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Chris Schmandt |
ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. | 1 |
| 1999 | Nomadic Radio: Scaleable and Contextual Notification for Wearable Audio MessagingabstractMobile workers need seamless access to communication and information services on portable devices. However current solutions overwhelm users with intrusive and ambiguous notifications. In this paper, we describe scaleable auditory techniques and a contextual notification model for providing timely information, while minimizing interruptions. Users actions influence local adaptation in the model. These techniques are demonstrated in Nomadic Radio, an audio-only wearable computing platform. Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Chris Schmandt |
CHI | 1 |
| 1997 | Dynomite: A Dynamically Organized Ink and Audio NotebookabstractDynomitc is a portable electronic notebook for the capture and retrieval of handwritten and audio notes.The goal of Dynomitc is to merge the organization, search, and data acquisition capabilities of a computer with the benefits of a paper-based notebook.Dynomite provides novel solutions in tour key problem areas.First, Dynomite uses a casual, low cognitive overhead interface.Second, for content indexing of notes, Dynomite uses ink properties and keywords.Third, to assist organization, Dynomite's properties and keywords define views, presenting a subset of the notebook content that dynamically changes as users add new information.Finally, to augment handwritten notes with audio on devices with limited storage, Dynomite continuously records audio, but only permanently stores those parts highlighted by the user. Lynn Wilcox, Bill N. Schilit, Nitin "Nick" Sawhney |
CHI | 3 |
| 1996 | Teaching and Learning as Multimedia Authoring: The Classroom 2000 ProjectabstractWe view college classroom teaching and learning as a multimedia authoring activity. The classroom provides a rich setting in which a number of different forms of communication co-exist, such as speech, writing and projected images. Much of the information in a lecture is poorly recorded or lost currently. Our hypothesis is that tools to aid in the capture and subsequent access of classroom information will enhance both the learning and teaching experience. To test that hypothesis, we initiated the Classroom 2000 project at Georgia Tech. The purpose of the project is to apply ubiquitous computing technology to facilitate automatic capture, integration and access of multimedia information in the educational setting of the university classroom. In this paper, we discuss various prototype tools we have created and used in a variety of courses and provide an initial evaluation of the acceptance and effectiveness of the technology. We also share some lessons learned in applying ubiquitous computing technology in a real setting. Gregory D. Abowd, Christopher G. Atkeson, Ami Feinstein, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Rob Kooper, Sue Long, Nitin "Nick" Sawhney, Mikiya Tani |
ACM Multimedia | 7 |