Irish Human Computer Interaction Symposium 2025
The 18th Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Symposium will be held on November 7th at University College Dublin, Dublin.
This one-day, in-person event will bring together leading voices from the field of HCI and provide an overview of HCI research on the island of Ireland and further afield.
Date
7th November, 2025
Time
9:00 AM
Registration fee
€30.00
Venue
Icon Theatre D, O’Brien Centre for Science
Keynotes
Pin Sym Foong
Dr. Foong is the Head of Design at the Telehealth Core, a research centre that supports and studies the design and development of patient-centred eHealth projects.
When Machines Care: Designing Proxy Authority in an Aging World
As populations age and caregiver-to-patient ratios plummet, nations are increasingly turning to AI systems to assume not just tasks, but decision-making roles and even emotional labor. This talk explores the rise of digital proxies—agents that act on our behalf, hold authority, and mediate care—and the profound design challenges they pose. How do we design systems that make us more humane when there are fewer humans?
Drawing on emerging work in HCI and human-centered AI, I’ll argue for a new design agenda around delegation, trust, and vulnerability. We’ll examine questions from decision support to surrogate decision-making, personalization to autonomy, and reflect on what “self-shifting” means in an era when care itself is increasingly automated.
John McCarthy
Prof. McCarthy is a Professor of Applied Psychology and an internationally recognised scholar whose research explores how emerging technologies shape lived experience to guide the design of usable and enriching technologies.
Throughout his distinguished career, he has been a driving force in advancing Human–Computer Interaction as a discipline in Ireland, including through his influential leadership as Secretary of the Irish Human Computer Interaction Group (iHCI).
HCI for Dementia Care
HCI for Dementia Care has made significant advances since I first worked in the area, with Kellie Morrissey, Mary Galvin and Sarah Foley, some ten or so years ago. Technological interventions since then have been classified in various ways, including: Assistive Technologies for managing daily life, Support with communication and social interaction, and Support with Caregiving. Some really interesting current AI research is aiming to develop a new generation of agents that will learn from experience and be able to leverage streams of experience to adapt to individuals health educational and other needs (Silver and Sutton, 2025). Useful though these technologies are, they often stop short of directly addressing experiences of dementia and dementia care, to my mind a gold standard. Without it, apprehension of the impact of technologies on the experienced quality-of-life of people with dementia is lacking.
Drawing on research from a variety of areas, including Public Health, Sociology of Healthcare, Psychotherapy, and HCI, I will explore some of the ways, in which appreciation of the multi-dimensional and often differently-dimensioned nature of human experience and selfhood is lacking in many of the advances in technology support for people with dementia. For example, how sense of self and agency among people with dementia may be qualitatively different from the cognitive form attributed to people in general, and how a generally assumed cognitive base for selfhood might hinder potential progress in technology support for people who live with dementia. Implications for HCI and Experience-Centred Design with people who are living with dementia will be discussed.
Academic Symposium in Memory of Liam Bannon
We warmly invite you to join us for an academic symposium in memory of our dear colleague, Liam Bannon, which will take place on November 6th 2025 at University College Dublin.
Liam Bannon (1953-2024) was a leader in human-centred computing, studying the role of technologies in people’s lives and championing the design of better interactive systems. His academic homes were the disciplines of human-computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work, which he was instrumental in establishing.
Across his body of work, his core argument was that human beings and their activities in the world must be a core concern of computer science.