Hi!👋 I'm Howard Han

I am a PhD Student at Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute. I am fortunate to be advised by Nikolas Martelaro. I work on projects related to Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction, Design, Responsible AI, and HCI in general.

My research goal is to advance bidirectional Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction drawn from fields like Design, HCI, HRI, and AI. I am interested in tools and processes to augment the design process with a specific focus in robot design.

From Design to Human-Agent Interaction: Specifically, I work on projects on Public Space Service Robots, involving community members, especially people with mobility disability, in the initial co-design, simulation-based evaluation, and robot policy development for more socially inclusive and compliant robot deployment. Works from this line of research has been published at CHI and ASSETS (see and ), and covered in TechXplore and Triblive, a Pittsburgh local daily news outlet.

From Human-Agent Interaction to Design: Another line of research is to develop Design Agents that spark human creativity, critical thinking, and adaptability, built upon theories from Human-Robot Interaction.

Before starting my PhD, I completed a research-based master's at CMU, advised by Daragh Byrne, Sarah Fox and Ken Holstein. I hold a Bachelor's degree in Urban Planning from Tongji University, where I conduct research in urban computing and GIS.

Below are my publications and ongoing research projects.