Rui Zhang 0119

dblp:60/2536-119 · DBLP profile ↗
← Back
8ranked-venue papers
4as first author
7since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0002-0902-1364ORCID · conflict

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing · 7 · 3 first-author · 6 since 2021Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 2 · 1 first-author · 2 since 2021
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2025 Piecing Together Teamwork: A Responsible Approach to an LLM-based Educational Jigsaw Agent
Emily Doherty, Margaret Perkoff, Sean von Bayern, Rui Zhang 0119, Indrani Dey, Michal Bodzianowski, Sadhana Puntambekar, Leanne M. Hirshfield
CHI4
2024 Empirically Understanding the Potential Impacts and Process of Social Influence in Human-AI Teams
abstract
In the coming years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be applied as a teammate that works alongside and collaborates with humans. Prior research in teaming and CSCW has shown that teammates have the ability to change the thoughts and behaviors of each other through simple interactions in a process known as social influence. However, to date, research has yet to identify the social influence that AI teammates could have in these human-AI teams, which has led to a limited understanding of how AI teammates will change the behaviors of their human teammates. To remedy this gap, we conduct a mixed-methods study (N=33) with young individuals to explore how humans could behaviorally adapt and perceive their behavioral adaptation due to interaction with an AI teammate. Qualitative results report that perceived three unique stages they had to experience for the social influence of their AI teammate to lead to adaptation (i.e., perceiving a sense of control, identifying a technological or performative justification, and gaining first-hand experience). Quantitative results validate and illustrate the results of this perceived process, as results show that participants adapted their behaviors to complement the behaviors of different types of AI teammates. This study contributes to the CSCW/HCI field by developing an initial understanding of AI teammates' social influence in human-AI teams, which will be a pivotal design and research consideration in future efforts.
Christopher Flathmann, Wen Duan, Nathan J. McNeese, Allyson I. Hauptman, Rui Zhang 0119
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.5
2024 Verbal vs. Visual: How Humans Perceive and Collaborate with AI Teammates Using Different Communication Modalities in Various Human-AI Team Compositions
abstract
As AI becomes more advanced in natural language processing, the research on AI's communication in teaming environments is getting more attention in CSCW/HCI. Even though AI's communication serves as an essential part of facilitating team coordination and shaping team outcomes, the impact of AI's communication modality on human-AI teamwork is still understudied. Using a mixed-design experiment and follow-up group interviews with 100 participants, we investigate the impact of AI's communication modality, one of AI's most essential communication characteristics, on team coordination and team outcomes in two different human-AI team compositions, human-human-AI teams, and human-AI-AI teams. Our findings highlight the trade-offs between AI's verbal communication and visual communication, which inspire two design recommendations on how to apply AI's verbal and visual communication to support human-AI coordination effectively. Our study generates an initial understanding of the role that AI's communication will have in ensuring team effectiveness in human-AI teams in the CSCW/HCI field.
Rui Zhang 0119, Wen Duan, Christopher Flathmann, Nathan J. McNeese, Bart P. Knijnenburg, Guo Freeman
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.1
2024 I Know This Looks Bad, But I Can Explain: Understanding When AI Should Explain Actions In Human-AI Teams
abstract
Explanation of artificial intelligence (AI) decision-making has become an important research area in human–computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported teamwork research. While plenty of research has investigated AI explanations with an intent to improve AI transparency and human trust in AI, how AI explanations function in teaming environments remains unclear. Given that a major benefit of AI giving explanations is to increase human trust understanding how AI explanations impact human trust is crucial to effective human-AI teamwork. An online experiment was conducted with 156 participants to explore this question by examining how a teammate’s explanations impact the perceived trust of the teammate and the effectiveness of the team and how these impacts vary based on whether the teammate is a human or an AI. This study shows that explanations facilitate trust in AI teammates when explaining why AI disobeyed humans’ orders but hindered trust when explaining why an AI lied to humans. In addition, participants’ personal characteristics (e.g., their gender and the individual’s ethical framework) impacted their perceptions of AI teammates both directly and indirectly in different scenarios. Our study contributes to interactive intelligent systems and HCI by shedding light on how an AI teammate’s actions and corresponding explanations are perceived by humans while identifying factors that impact trust and perceived effectiveness. This work provides an initial understanding of AI explanations in human-AI teams, which can be used for future research to build upon in exploring AI explanation implementation in collaborative environments.
Rui Zhang 0119, Christopher Flathmann, Geoff Musick, Beau G. Schelble, Nathan J. McNeese, Bart P. Knijnenburg, Wen Duan
ACM Trans. Interact. Intell. Syst.1
2023 Investigating AI Teammate Communication Strategies and Their Impact in Human-AI Teams for Effective Teamwork
abstract
Recently, AI is integrating into teams to collaborate with humans as a teammate with the goal of achieving unprecedented team outcomes. Much of the coordination between humans and AI teammates relies on human-AI communication, which is challenging due to AI's limitations on natural language communication. Thus, it is essential to identify and develop effective communication strategies for AI teammates in human-AI teams to facilitate the coordination process. Through interviews with 60 participants who collaborated with an AI teammate in a multiplayer online game, in this paper, we explore communication strategies that humans expect AI teammates to apply to support human-AI coordination and collaboration in dyadic teaming environments, and how the AI teammate's communication can impact teaming processes. Our findings highlight four communication strategies AI teammates should apply to support their coordination with humans in dyadic teaming environments. We also find that AI teammates' proactive communication with humans could facilitate the development of human trust and situation awareness, whereas AI lacking such proactive communication is often not perceived as a teammate. Our study extends the current CSCW/HCI research on human-AI communication in teaming environments by shedding light on how communication should be structured in dyadic human-AI teams for effective and smooth collaboration.
Rui Zhang 0119, Wen Duan, Christopher Flathmann, Nathan J. McNeese, Guo Freeman, Alyssa Williams
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.1
2021 Modeling and Guiding the Creation of Ethical Human-AI Teams
abstract
With artificial intelligence continuing to advance, so too do the ethical concerns that can potentially negatively impact humans and the greater society. When these systems begin to interact with humans, these concerns become much more complex and much more important. The field of human-AI teaming provides a relevant example of how AI ethics can have significant and continued effects on humans. This paper reviews research in ethical artificial intelligence, as well as ethical teamwork through the lens of the rapidly advancing field of human-AI teaming, resulting in a model demonstrating the requirements and outcomes of building ethical human-AI teams. The model is created to guide the prioritization of ethics in human-AI teaming by outlining the ethical teaming process, outcomes of ethical teams, and external requirements necessary to ensure ethical human-AI teams. A final discussion is presented on how the developed model will influence the implementation of AI teammates, as well as the development of policy and regulation surrounding the domain in the coming years.
Christopher Flathmann, Beau G. Schelble, Rui Zhang 0119, Nathan J. McNeese
AIES3
2021 Leveling Up Teamwork in Esports: Understanding Team Cognition in a Dynamic Virtual Environment
abstract
A large body of research has underscored the importance of the cognitive process of team cognition and its relation to team performance. However, little research has focused on applying such an important teamwork process to computer-mediated collaboration within a fast-paced virtual environment. In this paper, we use esports as a research platform to address this limitation due to its fast-paced nature and its heavy reliance on teamwork. We report the experience and perceptions of 20 players with regard to their descriptions of team cognition within esports. We found that esports players relied on their game experience and understanding of role interdependencies in order to develop team cognition with strangers. We also found that experienced teams utilized a mutual understanding of teammate skills and personalities in order to predict responses and limit the verbal communication required to make quick team decisions. We contribute to CSCW by extending the cognitive understanding of computer-mediated collaboration and by advancing research on team cognition and how it can occur within a fast-paced virtual environment.
Geoff Musick, Rui Zhang 0119, Nathan J. McNeese, Guo Freeman, Anurata Prabha Hridi
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.2
2020 "An Ideal Human": Expectations of AI Teammates in Human-AI Teaming
abstract
Driven by state-of-the-art AI technologies, human-AI collaboration has become an important area in computer-supported teamwork research. While human-AI collaboration has been investigated in various domains, more research is needed to explore human perceptions and expectations of AI teammates in human-AI teaming. To achieve an in-depth understanding of how people perceive AI teammates and what they expect from AI teammates in human-AI teaming, we conducted a survey with 213 participants and a follow-up interview with 20 participants. Considering the context-dependency of teamwork, we chose to study human-AI teaming in the context of multiplayer online games as a case study. This study shows that people have mixed feelings toward AI teammates but hold a positive attitude toward future collaboration with AI teammates in general. Our findings highlight people's expectations for AI teammates in a rapidly changing collaborative environment (e.g., instrumental skills for in-game tasks, shared understanding between humans and AI, communication capabilities, human-like behaviors and performance), as well as factors that impact people's willingness to team up with AI teammates (e.g., pre-existing attitudes toward AI, previous collaboration experience with humans). We contribute to CSCW by shedding light on how AI should be structured in human-AI teaming to support highly complex collaborative activities in CSCW environments.
Rui Zhang 0119, Nathan J. McNeese, Guo Freeman, Geoff Musick
Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.1