Diego Garaialde

Postdoctoral Researcher

• Email: diego.garaialde@ucd.ie
• Website: diegogaraialde.com
• Mobile: 089 488 2610

Postdoctoral research fellow in Human-Computer Interaction at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin. Research focused on using cognitive science theories to enhance our understanding of how people use technology, including areas such as nudges, combating misinformation and deceptive design practices, and designing technology that supports human decision-making ability and motivation.

Research Experience

Marie Curie Global Fellowship - Postdoctoral Researcher at UCD (CS): July 2024 - Present

• Awarded the prestigious Marie Curie Global Fellowship award for a two year project investigating the use of assistive decision-making technology in the context of healthcare shiftworkers and disrupted circadian rhythms. Fellowship awarded by FutureNeuro, Insight, and RCSI, in collaboration with University College London and Maynooth University.
• One year placement in University College London to collaborate with leading HCI researchers on cutting edge projects related to mHealth applications, misinformation, deceptive design practices, and the effect of LLM use on cognition. Visit included a presentation at the highly popular UCLiC Seminar Series.
• Devised and deployed a new methodology for assessing subjective mental effort and motivation to perform difficult cognitive tasks, collated in relation to circadian rhythms and sleep schedules. Data will provide insights into best times to make complex decisions and will allow assistive technology to aid healthcare workers, particularly those conducting shiftwork, to understand how to optimise their schedules for effective cognitive performance.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCD (CS): July 2022 - July 2024

• Coordinated Web App Development (COMP30680) module for 95 students, with responsibilities encompassing assessment design, module delivery, examination and assessment, quality assurance, and administration, demonstrating my ability to deliver high quality teaching at postgraduate level.
• Executed a large-scale scoping review of key dual-process cognitive theories in the field of HCI, with manual data extraction from over a 1,000 papers, organising and collating large databases, and synthesising into coherent and clear description of findings, highlighting ability to manage both research and teaching duties in parallel.

Freelance Consulting at Quiroz Design: September 2022 - November 2023

• Led research arm of multidisciplinary team to provide analysis reports relevant to industry partners without background knowledge in statistics or experiment design, demonstrating my ability to work as part of a team and my excellent interpersonal communication skills.
• Processed and analysed key behavioural and survey data of over 50,000 customers from a multinational restaurant chain, providing critical insights into important metrics, highlighting the impact of implementing new technology, and providing guidelines to improve efficiency of data collection, showing my expertise in managing a portfolio of research.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCD (ICS): January 2021 - June 2022

• Conducted research on issues experienced with online teaching software during the COVID19 pandemic from the perspective of tutors and students, including interactive prototypes that test novel technological solutions.
• Lead the UX branch of research project involving UCD, Trinity College, the Adapt Centre, Microsoft Ireland and Microsoft Research Cambridge.
• Developed extensive experience in designing and conducting both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (behavioural experiments) research.

Research Assistant at UCD (ICS): October 2015 - November 2020

• Spearheaded the lab's move to conducting research online through the development of a new experiment platform, study design protocol, and method for data analysis. Significantly increased the output for key research, which previously could only be performed in person, in the areas of lexical alignment, habit-building interfaces, and partner modelling.
• Implemented novel power analysis tool to improve experiment design across the lab, allowing for a standardised and repeatable way to select sample sizes.

Education

2020 - PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from UCD

• Thesis: How early rewards influence choice: targeting model-free processing through reward timing.
• Supervisor: Professor Benjamin Cowan

2016 - MSc in Cognitive Science from School of Computer Science, UCD

2014 - BSc in Psychology from Dublin City University

Mentoring & Supervision

• Supported PhD students in state-of-the-art statistical analysis, design of robut experiments, and writing high-impact academic papers.
• Supervised over 10 HCI MSc students over past 4 years in experiment design methodologies, thesis write-up and time management.
• Managed and supervised research assistant for ADAPT Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Annual Survey, overseeing deployment, data analysis, and reporting.

Teaching Experience

Deeply committed to high-quality teaching at graduate and undergraduate levels, with experience teaching across a range of courses.

Module Co-ordinator & Lecturer

• Web App Development (COMP30680)
• Computer-Mediated Communication (IS20120)

Occasional Lecturer, Demonstrator/Tutor

• Human-Computer Interaction (COMP47680)
• Quantitative Data Analysis (IS40730)
• Digital Judgement (IS10050)
• Data Visualisation (IS)

Publications

Published

Mildner, T., Clark, L., Doyle, P., Edwards, J., Garaialde, D., ... Cooney, O. (2024). Listening to the Voices: Describing Ethical Caveats of Conversational User Interfaces According to Experts and Frequent Users. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '24. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.

Peña, P. R., Doyle, P., Edwards, J., Garaialde, D., Rough, D., Bleakley, A., ... & Cowan, B. R. (2023). Audience design and egocentrism in reference production during human-computer dialogue. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 176, 103058.

Peña, P. R., Doyle, P. R., Garaialde, D., Wu, Y., McDonnell, R., & Cowan, B. R. (2023). Human Speakers Help Machine Listeners To Account For Visual Asymmetries in Dialogue. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (pp. 1-13). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3571884.3597124

Reverdy, J., Russell, S. O. C., Duquenne, L., Garaialde, D., Cowan, B. R., & Harte, N. (2022, June). RoomReader: A Multimodal Corpus of Online Multiparty Conversational Interactions. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (pp. 2517-2527).

Garaialde, D., Cox, A., & Cowan B. R. (2021). Designing Gamified Rewards to Encourage Repeated App Selection: Effect of Reward Placement. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 102661. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102661

Gould, S. J., Chuang, L. L., Iacovides, I., Garaialde, D., Cecchinato, M. E., Cowan, B. R., & Cox, A. L. (2021, May). A Special Interest Group on Designed and Engineered Friction in Interaction. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-4).

Garaialde, D., Bowers, C. P., Pinder, C., Shah, P., Parashar, S., Clark, L., Cowan, B. R. (2020). Quantifying the Impact of Making and Breaking Interface Habits. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. DOI:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102461

[Honourable Mention] Clark, L., Doyle, P., Garaialde, D., Gilmartin, E., Schlögl, S., Edlund, J., ... R Cowan, B. (2019). The state of speech in HCI: trends, themes and challenges. Interacting with Computers, 31(4), 349-371. doi:10.1093/iwc/iwz016

Cowan, B. R., Doyle, P., Edwards, J., Garaialde, D., Hayes-Brady, A., Branigan, H. P., ... Clark, L. (2019). What's in an accent? The impact of accented synthetic speech on lexical choice in human-machine dialogue. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces - CUI '19 (pp. 1-8). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/3342775.3342786

[Honourable Mention] Clark, L., Munteanu, C., Wade, V., Cowan, B. R., Pantidi, N., ... Garaialde, D., Murad, C. (2019). What makes a good conversation? challenges in designing truly conversational agents. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors In Computing Systems - CHI '19, 112. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.

Future Output - In Preparation or Under Review

Shen, R., Garaialde, D., Doherty, K. (Under revision). Cross Platform Gaming: More Than the Sum of Its Parts? ACM CHI Games 2024.

Garaialde, D., Edwards, J., Coyle, D. (Under Review). Use of Dual-Process Theories in HCI: A Scoping Review. Computing Surveys

Garaialde, D., Cooney, O., Reverdy, J., O'Connor Russel, S., Harte, N., Rintel, S., & Cowan, B. R. (Under Review). Understanding the Experience of Tutorials Through Videoconferencing: A Tutor and Student Perspective. Computers in Education.

Doyle, P. R., Gessinger, I., Edwards, J., Clark, L., Dumbleton, O., Garaialde, D., ... Cowan, B. R. (Under Review). The Partner Modelling Questionnaire: A validated self-report measure of perceptions toward machines as dialogue partners. TOCHI.

Didion, J., Garaialde, D., & Coyle, D. (In Preparation). Judgement and the Feeling of Agency When Instructing a Computer to Act. TOCHI.

Edwards, J.,Janssen, C., Gould, S., Garaialde, D., Cowan, B. R. (In preparation). Speech Interruptions and Natural Breakpoints in Continuous Complex Tasks. JEP-Applied.

Funding

NeuroInsight Marie-Curie Global Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researcher: July 2024

• Awarded €140,000 for 2 year project in collaboration with Univeristy College London, and Maynooth University.

Behaviour Change and Future of Work Symposium: October 2022

• Awarded UCD Seed funding for flights and accommodation for two speakers.
• Sponsor funding for food and refreshments (BCPP Research Group)

NUI Travelling Studentship Grant for PhD Education: November 2017

• Awarded €72,000 full stipend and fees grant for 3 years.

UCD iSchool PhD Scholarship

• Awarded €28,500 in fees with contract for 8 hours work a week for stipend (over 4 years). Was superseded by grant above.

Roles & Responsibilities

Committee Member & Representative

• Recruitment and Retention Team for the Insight Equality Diversity and Inclusion Committee 2024 - Present
• Survey Lead at ADAPT Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee 2022 - 2024
• Associate Chair for CHI 2022 & 2023
• HCI @ UCD Seminars Organiser, 2022-2023
• SIG on Designed and Engineered Friction in Interaction, CHI 2021
• DCU Psychology Society, 2011 - 2014 (Founding Member) and Co-organiser of the 36th Annual Congress of Psychology Students, DCU 2014
• Class Representative for MSc Cognitive Science, 2016 and Class Representative for BSc Psychology, 2011 - 2014

Conference & Journal Reviewer

• Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI), 2018 - 2023
• International Journal of Human Computer Studies (IJHCS), 2019 - 2020, 2024, 2025
• Conversational User Interfaces Conference (CUI), 2019 - 2021
• Computer (IEEE Journal), 2022

Additional Skills

Programming Proficiency: Highly proficient in coding languages including Python, PHP, JavaScript, and R. Also proficient in HTML, CSS, and MySQL.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: Proven ability to work across disciplines, exhibited through various research projects and consultancy roles, integrating design, user-experience methods, computer science and programming skills, along with mixed-methods research approaches.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: Member of the Insight GEDI committee, and previously involved in the delivery of an annual survey to find key issues faced by members of the institution so we can develop support systems for them. Also engaged with a diverse student body through lecturing, tutoring, and mentoring roles, always fostering an inclusive learning environment, due to my extensive experience teaching and supervising the highly multicultural HCI Masters programme.

Industry Engagement: Frequently collaborated with industry partners like Microsoft Ireland and a San Francisco-based EdTech startup Cerego, illustrating a bridge between academic research and practical industry solutions.

Mixed-Methods Research Proficiency: Extensive experience in qualitative and quantitative research methods, encompassing interviews, behavioural experiments, and data analysis, contributing to a well-rounded research skill set.

Professional Community Engagement: Active involvement in professional communities, as evidenced by roles as Associate Chair for CHI 2022 & 2023, ADAPT Citizen Assembly, and HCI @ UCD Seminars Organiser, showcasing engagement in research professional communities outside the university setting.