iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So dumb. Has anyone at Adobe studied actual UI, human work flow and cognitive processes? A pop-up is the worst of UI design, only for emergencies, and you think my potential lack of understand of what i just copied justifies this intellectual intrusion?! Grasping at straws to push integrated LLMs.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

One upside to AI slop, is you can really tell when a furniture company is also slop.

Screenshot from a furniture website that has ill-formed looking blocks, clock, plant and other objects on a desk suggesting it was made my an AI or LLM image generator.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Loveable little dive bar near my office clearly made an AI generated website. It.... did not go well. Did they still, uncritically, put the AI slop website out into the world? Take a gander at the sanity (and gravity) defying images for their bev menu and judge yourself.

AI generated website image showing full glasses of beer laying on their side and a beer bottle with no top.

AI generated website image showing full glass of wine and wine bottle laying on their sides on top of a plate.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Congrats to LIT Lab PhD candidate Veronica Grosso who presented at the first Robotics Seminar Series at UIC Engineering on resisting stereotypes to show competence and warmth in #HRI. Did we need to buy tiny toys and treats for bunnies to test these collaborative activities? Yes, dear reader, we did

Photo of Veronica speaking in front of an audience with final slide of presentation in background.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Big moment for UIC LIT lab. PhD student, Verona Grosso, just presented our work on collaborating with a robot. @hri-conference.bsky.social Robots need to dynamically demonstrate competence and advocate for choices.

Title slide of HRI presentation on human-robot collaboration

Depiction of study interaction with a robot

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Michael Xu from Wisconsin CS presents work on integrating robots into family life. Happy to be a collaborator on this messy real world exploration. @hri-conference.bsky.social #HRI

Opening slide to HRI talk with presenter to the side

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Abena Boadi-Agyemang from @cmu.edu with nuanced insights in accessibility needs for HRI. would love to see ASL inputs for more robots @hri-conference.bsky.social

Screenshot of key insights from HRI presentation

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

What the absolute shit is this? ACM using AI summaries instead of abstracts in search results?! So, if I understand correctly, instead of the author's own summary of the work (i.e. an abstract) we are better off with some regurgitated slop version of that summary instead? @chi.acm.org

Screenshot of an ACM Digital Library search result showing an AI-generated summary where an abstract of the article would usually appear.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Shell shocked at how ubiquitous turning in LLM writing is. Knew it would be a lot, but literally every paper (1-2 pages) I read today was fully authored by an LLM. I thought if I made it clear I just wanted ideas, thoughts, feeling, and didn't care about grammar or structure, it would help, but nope

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

The second explores an intuition I've had for some time - kids often tell us the robot didn't judge them. Lauren Wright's article, "Robotic reading companions can mitigate oral reading anxiety in children" demonstrates the actual impact of that feeling on reading anxiety.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Two fresh articles out in Science Robotics www.science.org/journal/scir..., and on the website banner! First is a focus article "How can educational robots enhance family life? Through careful integration." We look at what it will take for in-home robots to actually be adopted by families. #HRI #HCI

Figure depicting four challenges of in-home educational robot. The challenges are disruption of routines, replacement of activities and human participation, unclear roles and privacy concerns. The figure shows solutions including integrating into existing routines, augmenting existing educational experiences, clearly defining roles, and using privacy-preserving data collection and use

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

This summer, LIT Lab undergrads Gaeun Lee and Hope Jo presented their poster “You Can Grow Here” at ACM SIGGRAPH. Their project explored how anxiety-management techniques can be reimagined as immersive VR experiences that feel emotionally resonant and non-clinical. doi.org/10.1145/3721....

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Was a great place to meet new friends

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Announcers said he “missed his chance” but any good Cubs fan knows you don’t mess around with a ball down the left side. Ghost of Bartman lives.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Adorable animal shaped cookies in my captcha is the technological innovation I never knew I needed until now. Screwed up a few just to see some more.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Gearing up for my UX course at UIC this Spring, and I always try to gather examples of good and bad design. Maybe I'll regale you all with my findings. First up, the "its a fancy EV, so lets just plop an iPad in there for the center console" edition. Just wow... It's like Tesla but somehow lazier

Image of interior of a Ford Mustang EV that shows the center console as a large rectangular tablet. The image depicts how out of place and mis-proportioned the design of the console is.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Updating the lab website today. Out with the bad(X) in with the newsky for our social media links. Also, don't be shy about visiting. We're a small but mighty bunch of CS/LS folks working to integrate robots in learning without making a mess of it. www.uiclitlab.com #HRI #LearningSciences

Screenshot of UIC LIT Lab website showing six lab projects, STEMMates, PATHWiSE, MyTurn, Minnie, FIRST Robotics Interest, and FID Surveys. At the bottom social media links include the blue sky butterfly and linked in logos.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

So far as I can tell, Google's AI Overview is just warmed over Wikipedia? They sort of disclose that with the sources box to the right, but its almost always been Wikipedia. So, pretty much the first writing assignment I gave to a 9th grade chemistry class.

Top: Screenshot of AI Overview that states: A social interface is a point where different social fields, lifeworlds, or levels of social organization intersect. It's where social discontinuities are most likely to be found, based on differences in values, knowledge, power, and interests.

Bottom: Screenshot of similar Wikipedia post that states "A social interface is a critical point of intersection between different lifeworlds, social fields or levels of social organization"

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 01/10/2024

One thing I miss about the old ugly site... Comradery during conference deadlines. Anyone else running on fumes for the ACM HRI Deadline? #AcademicSky #HCIsky

GIF of zombie sitting at computer and banging on the screen

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 22/03/2024

Demo at #HRI2024 was fun showing off PATHWiSE teacher authoring tool to allow teachers direct access to creating their own robot-assisted lessons. GPT enhanced features to auto-suggest robot comments based on selected text and to auto-select a robot behavior from our custom suite of actions.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 05/01/2024

I guess I'm posting about my analysis journey for a paper I'm working on? Newest fun - working on a Thematic Analysis with 450 quotes from transcripts in Atlas.ti. I exported them to excel and copy/pasted to Mural. Sorting them into three/four major theme-y-ish groups took ~2.5 hours. efficiency!

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 22/12/2023

Had some fun making ridgeline plots today using ggrideges. I've been settling into a mix of ggplot in R and Illustrator to make my figures lately.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 12/12/2023

Final grades are in... this was one toooough semester.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

more wet snow today... I really need some GIFs on here to fully express the slog this review process has been. woof.

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 22/10/2023

Let's do this, Mingos! #USL#MingoPlayoffs

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Joe Michaelis @joemichaelis.bsky.social · 22/10/2023

The UIC LIT lab joined the first Midwest #HRI meetup this week. Our amazing hosts at uChicago put on a great day of connecting for students and PIs. Students organized the event to build community and it served as a needed bit of humanity. When you pick collaborators wisely good things hsppen.

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