Diego Garaialde

Assistant Professor in Computer Science · Human-Computer Interaction · University College Dublin

Assistant Professor in Computer Science with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction at University College Dublin. My research focuses on understanding how people use technology, particularly in terms of persuasive design, combating misinformation and deceptive design practices, using AI tools for extended cognition, and designing technology that supports human decision-making ability and motivation.

€252,500

Total Funding Awarded

1,291

Citations

10+

Years Research Experience

Research Experience

Assistant Professor in Computer Science (BDIC) — University College Dublin

July 2025 – Present

Research focus: Persuasive design, nudges, gamification, and decision-making theories in technology-based behaviour change and human-computer interaction.
Teaching: Developing and delivering modules on Computer Architecture and Computer Organisation to Beijing Technical University Software Engineering and IOT cohorts.
Supervision: Supervising PhD students in Persuasive Design and Technology for Behaviour Change, as well as final year IOT undergrad group projects.

Marie Curie Global Fellowship — Postdoctoral Researcher at UCD (CS)

July 2024 – July 2025

Fellowship: Awarded the prestigious Marie Curie Global Fellowship for a two-year project investigating assistive decision-making technology for healthcare shiftworkers with disrupted circadian rhythms — in collaboration with FutureNeuro, Insight, RCSI, UCL, and Maynooth University.
UCL placement: Collaborated with leading HCI researchers on mHealth, misinformation, and deceptive design. Presented at the UCLiC Seminar Series; recording reached 200 views in the first two months.
Methodology: Devised a novel approach for assessing subjective mental effort and motivation relative to circadian rhythms, providing insights into optimal times for complex decision-making.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow — UCD (CS)

July 2022 – July 2024

Scoping review: Executed a large-scale review of dual-process cognitive theories in HCI with manual data extraction from over 1,000 papers.
Module coordination: Coordinated Web App Development (COMP30680) for 95 students, covering assessment design, delivery, examination, quality assurance, and administration.

Freelance Consulting — Quiroz Design

September 2022 – November 2023

Industry research: Led the research arm of a multidisciplinary team providing analysis reports for industry partners without a statistics background.
Data analysis: Processed and analysed behavioural and survey data from over 50,000 customers of a multinational restaurant chain, providing critical insights and guidelines to improve data collection efficiency.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow — UCD (ICS)

January 2021 – June 2022

COVID-19 research: Conducted research on online teaching software issues during the pandemic, including interactive prototypes testing novel technological solutions.
Industry collaboration: Led the UX branch of a research project involving UCD, Trinity College, the Adapt Centre, Microsoft Ireland, and Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Research Assistant — UCD (ICS)

October 2015 – November 2020

Online research platform: Spearheaded the lab's move to online research through a new experiment platform, study design protocol, and data analysis method — significantly increasing output in lexical alignment, habit-building interfaces, and partner modelling.
Power analysis: Implemented a novel power analysis tool to standardise and improve experiment design across the lab.

Teaching Experience

8 courses

Deeply committed to high-quality teaching at graduate and undergraduate levels, with experience across a range of courses. Focus on research-based teaching with active learning activities and frequent supervised student-to-student interactions.

Module Co-ordinator & Lecturer

Intro to Computer Architecture (COMP1006J)
Principles of Computer Organisation (COMP2007J)
Web App Development (COMP30680)
Computer-Mediated Communication (IS20120)

Occasional Lecturer, Demonstrator & Tutor

Human-Computer Interaction
Quantitative Data Analysis
Digital Judgement
Data Visualisation

PhD & MSc Supervision

Supervising PhD students in Behaviour Change Technology
Overseeing final year group projects for BSc in IOT, with regular group meetings.
Supervised 10+ HCI MSc students over 4 years in experiment design, thesis write-up, and time management
Supported PhD students in advanced statistical analysis, robust experiment design, and high-impact academic writing
Managed and supervised a research assistant for the ADAPT Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Annual Survey, overseeing deployment, data analysis, and reporting.

Funding

€252,500 total awarded

€140,000

NeuroInsight Marie-Curie Global Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researcher

July 2024 · 2-year project

€72,000

NUI Travelling Studentship Grant for PhD Education

November 2017 · 3-year stipend

€28,500

UCD iSchool PhD Scholarship — fees and part-stipend

Superseded by NUI grant above

Football Cooperative Research Grant — Funded by the Smart D8

€10,000 · January 2026

Behaviour Change and Future of Work Symposium — UCD Seed Funding + sponsorship

€2,000 · October 2022

Publications

12 published · 2 under review All publications and materials →

Published

Doyle, P. R., Gessinger, I., Edwards, J., Clark, L., Dumbleton, O., Garaialde, D., Rough, D., Bleakley, A., Branigan, H. P., & Cowan, B. R. (2025). The Partner Modelling Questionnaire: A Validated Self-Report Measure of Perceptions toward Machines as Dialogue Partners. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 32(4), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1145/3729170
Shen, R., Garaialde, D., & Doherty, K. (2025). Cross Platform Gaming: More Than the Sum of Its Parts? ACM Games: Research and Practice, 3(4), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3774417
Mildner, T., Cooney, O., Meck, A.-M., Bartl, M., Savino, G.-L., Doyle, P. R., Garaialde, D., Clark, L., Sloan, J., Wenig, N., Malaka, R., & Niess, J. (2024). Listening to the Voices: Describing Ethical Caveats of Conversational User Interfaces According to Experts and Frequent Users. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–18). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642542
Peña, P. R., Doyle, P., Edwards, J., Garaialde, D., Rough, D., Bleakley, A., Clark, L., Henriquez, A. T., Branigan, H., Gessinger, I., & Cowan, B. R. (2023). Audience design and egocentrism in reference production during human-computer dialogue. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 176, Article 103058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103058
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., O’Connor Russell, S., Duquenne, L., Garaialde, D., Cowan, B. R., & Harte, N. (2022). RoomReader: A Multimodal Corpus of Online Multiparty Conversational Interactions. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022) (pp. 2517–2527). European Language Resources Association (ELRA). https://doi.org/10.63317/4z5a7ocx4enp
Garaialde, D., Cox, A. L., & Cowan, B. R. (2021). Designing gamified rewards to encourage repeated app selection: Effect of reward placement. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 153, Article 102661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102661
Gould, S. J. J., Chuang, L. L., Iacovides, I., Garaialde, D., Cecchinato, M. E., Cowan, B. R., & Cox, A. L. (2021). 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). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3450404
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, 142, Article 102461. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102461
Honourable MentionClark, L., Doyle, P., Garaialde, D., Gilmartin, E., Schlögl, S., Edlund, J., Aylett, M., Cabral, J., Munteanu, C., Edwards, J., & Cowan, B. R. (2019). The State of Speech in HCI: Trends, Themes and Challenges. Interacting with Computers, 31(4), 349–371. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwz016
Cowan, B. R., Doyle, P., Edwards, J., Garaialde, D., Hayes-Brady, A., Branigan, H. P., Cabral, J., & 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 (pp. 1–8). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3342775.3342786
Honourable MentionClark, L., Pantidi, N., Cooney, O., Doyle, P., Garaialde, D., Edwards, J., Spillane, B., Gilmartin, E., Murad, C., Munteanu, C., Wade, V., & Cowan, B. R. (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 (pp. 1–12). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300705

Under Review

Garaialde, D., Edwards, J., & Coyle, D. (Under review). Use of Dual-Process Theories in HCI: A Scoping Review. Manuscript submitted to Computing Surveys.
Garaialde, D., Cooney, O., Reverdy, J., O'Connor Russell, S., Harte, N., Rintel, S., & Cowan, B. R. (Under review). Understanding the Experience of Tutorials Through Videoconferencing: A Tutor and Student Perspective. Manuscript submitted to Computers in Education.

Education

2020

PhD in Human-Computer Interaction — University College Dublin

Thesis: How early rewards influence choice: targeting model-free processing through reward timing. Supervisor: Professor Benjamin Cowan
2016

MSc in Cognitive Science — School of Computer Science, UCD
2014

BSc in Psychology — Dublin City University

Roles & Responsibilities

Committee Member & Representative

2025–PresentSustainability Committee, UCD Computer Science
2024–2025Recruitment and Retention Team, Insight Equality Diversity and Inclusion Committee
2022–2024Survey Lead, ADAPT Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee
2011–2016Class Representative for MSc Cognitive Science (2016) and BSc Psychology (2011–2014)

Conference & Journal Participation

2025–PresentEditor, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS)
2022–2025Associate Chair, CHI
2018–PresentReviewer for CHI, IJHCS, CUI, and Computer (IEEE)

Event Organisation

2022–2023HCI @ UCD Seminars Organiser
2021SIG on Designed and Engineered Friction in Interaction, CHI
2011–2014DCU Psychology Society, Founding Member & Co-organiser of the 36th Annual Congress of Psychology Students

Additional Skills

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Proven ability to work across disciplines through various research projects and consultancy roles, integrating design, UX methods, computer science, and mixed-methods research.

Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Sustainability

Head of Recruitment and Retention in Insight EDI; previously head of Survey Analysis for ADAPT GEDI. Member of the Computer Science Sustainability Committee. Data-first, practical approach to providing measurable impact for students and staff.

Community Engagement

Involved in community-based research programmes and public outreach in research. Creating content that communicates research findings to general audiences, bridging the gap between academic work and the public engagement.

Industry Engagement

Collaborated with industry partners including Microsoft Ireland and EdTech startup Cerego, bridging academic research and practical industry solutions.

Mixed-Methods Research

Extensive experience in qualitative and quantitative methods: interviews, behavioural experiments, and data analysis.

Programming Proficiency

Highly proficient in Python, PHP, JavaScript, and R. Also proficient in HTML, CSS, and MySQL.

Invited Talks & Public Engagement

Garaialde, D. & Edwards, J. Antisocial Scientists Podcast.↗ youtube
Garaialde, D. (2025). Dual-process Theories in HCI. UCLiC Seminar Series.↗ recording
Kaplan, M. (2022). Understanding Rewards Effectiveness: Q&A with Dr. Diego Garaialde. InMOBI.↗ article
Garaialde, D. (2015). Measuring the Effect of Gaming Principles in the Motivation of College Students. Undergraduate Awards.↗ video
O'Reilly, Q. (2014). How this project took inspiration from Pacman to help students study better. The Journal.↗ article