Designer HCI Researcher
Open to PhD positionsUnderstanding how people
and intelligent systems
work together.
I use design as a method of inquiry into how people understand, coordinate with, and adapt alongside intelligent systems. Drawing on cognitive psychology and human factors, I explore these relationships through models, prototypes, and simulations—learning through their construction, use, and iterative development.
Explore my research
How does coordination between people and intelligent systems develop, break down, and recover?
I want to understand how interaction history, task demands, and system capabilities shape trust, judgement, and shared control. I’m particularly interested in changes that overall performance can conceal: reduced verification, shifting responsibility, or a declining ability to recover when something goes wrong.
Through design and empirical inquiry, I aim to develop knowledge, models, and interventions that improve human–system integration across complex systems and workflows.
How do people and intelligent agents develop patterns of coordination over time? I’m interested in trust, reliance, ownership, and the sharing of initiative and responsibility—including how AI participation changes collaboration between people.
How are tasks, capabilities, intentions, uncertainty, and shared work represented and understood? I’m interested in mental models and computational representations that help explain how people anticipate behaviour, interpret situations, and coordinate action.
How do attention, workload, expertise, and control change as people work with intelligent systems? I want to investigate when adaptation supports effective performance, when it conceals emerging difficulties, and what enables recovery.
Designing to understand.
Making to ask better questions.
My approach centres on Research through Design (RtD). I develop artefacts that make ideas about human–system relationships tangible and open to investigation. Making, studying, and revising them helps me question assumptions and discover possibilities. Experiments and behavioural analysis deepen this inquiry, while reflection connects individual design decisions to broader insights.
These activities form a recurring cycle: what I learn through making, use, and reflection can reshape both the artefact and the research question. I aim to share reusable tools alongside design rationale, limitations, and insights that others can examine and build on.
Experimental infrastructure
A browser-based experimental environment for investigating how people manage concurrent tasks. FLIDIS combines continuous manual control with multimodal secondary tasks, bringing together control measures, interaction events, and participant reports to examine task interference and behavioural strategies.
Inquiry through design: Configurable tasks and modalities make alternative interaction arrangements tangible and comparable, creating a way to investigate how design choices shape concurrent activity.
Public release in preparation
A dedicated project page and a cleaned-up version that researchers can run locally are planned.
ICMI 2026 / Accepted demonstration / To be published
28th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction · Napoli, Italy · October 2026
DOI assigned: 10.1145/3776574.3832527 · Publication pending
HCII 2026 / Student Design Competition
28th HCI International Conference · Montréal, Canada · July 2026
A presentation and hands-on introduction to FLIDIS as an environment for investigating flight deck interaction.
Open research toolkit
Measuring visual attention in context. AREA aligns gaze with task events from AR headsets and desktop eye trackers, with tools for heatmaps, fixation measures, and areas-of-interest analysis to examine how attention unfolds during an activity.
Inquiry through design: Bringing gaze, task context, and analysis together creates a basis for exploring how choices about representing attention shape what researchers can observe and interpret.
Explore the projectAn airport ground-traffic simulation for studying automation trust and decision-making during conflict scenarios.
Proposed research question: How do automation reliability, conflict demands, and interaction history shape verification, decisions, and intervention?
Planned design exploration: Develop and iterate conflict scenarios and automation behaviours to make different conditions of human–automation coordination available for study.
A Multiple Resource Allocator and workload management layer for a simulated adaptive flight deck interface.
Proposed research question: When does automated resource allocation support human performance, and how does it affect awareness, control, and recovery?
Planned design exploration: Prototype alternative resource-allocation strategies and feedback arrangements, then use their behaviour and participants’ experiences to refine both the design and the research question.
I spent more than eight years designing digital products and services across industries, from financial services to healthcare and learning. Along the way, I co-founded Spire, a UX research and product testing startup, and raised $100k in pre-seed funding.
That practice continues to shape how I investigate the relationship between people and technology. I bring ideas into tangible form, explore alternatives, and use what emerges to ask further questions about understanding, performance, and human capability.
I studied Safety & Human Factors in Aviation at Cranfield University (MSc, 2025–2026), where I developed FLIDIS for my thesis, supervised by Dr. James Blundell and mentored by Dr. Wen-Chin Li. My thesis is now submitted, and I’m looking towards doctoral research.
Away from research, I make time for running, raising money for causes I care about, and sharing what I’ve learned with design and tech communities.
Running & fundraising
I took up running in 2025. It became a way to reset, challenge myself, and turn a personal goal into something that helps other people.
From evening races to half-marathon finish lines, I run to support heart research, HIV care, and children’s safety.
Speaking, community & mentorship
I’ve been part of design and tech communities throughout my career. I enjoy conversations that connect practice with new ideas, whether on a panel, in a workshop, or one-to-one.
I also mentor early-career designers and founders where I can. Sharing the lessons, questions, and occasional wrong turns is part of the work.
Invite me into the conversation
Professional communitiesRoyal Aeronautical Society · CIEHF · BCS
I’m interested in thoughtful collaborations across research, design, prototyping, and community work.
Tell me about the problem, who it matters to, and where you think I could contribute. A short outline is enough to start a conversation.
Paid projects, non-profit work, and pro bono proposals are welcome. We can work out the scope and fit together.
Prefer email?Open to PhD positions
I’d love to hear from potential supervisors and collaborators working on human–AI teaming, representation and sensemaking, human performance, and adaptation in complex systems.
hello@charlesnjoku.com
Based in the United Kingdom