Ali Zaidi

About Me

Contact Me

Email: aliz2 AT illinois DOT edu

I am a final year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, advised by Professor Karrie Karahalios and Professor Ranjitha Kumar. My research is in the field of Human-Centered AI Design. I defended my Ph.D. in February 2026. I investigate how we can design AI to address underlying systemic issues by working directly with stakeholders. My work is interdisciplinary and spans the entire design process, from needfinding to building and evaluating solutions. I specialize in qualitative human-computer interaction (HCI) methods, such as interview, design probe, and participatory design approaches.

My dissertation is on how to design AI technologies to assist parents of children with special needs to more effectively advocate for their children in schools. In the past, I have also worked with doctors to understand how to design AI for concussion evaluation, as well as with UX designers to build ML-based systems to assist in user experience research. I have also conducted user-centered evaluations of existing IoT/Smart Home infrastructures.

I am on the job market! Looking for research, SWE, and MLE positions in industry.

Publications

(To Appear)Rethinking Objectivity in Clinical AI: A Qualitative Study of Concussion Evaluators
Ali Zaidi, Jessica Saw, Leigh Fu, Katherine Arneson, Inki Kim, Adam Cross, and Karrie Karahalios.
ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2026
(To Appear)Control in Context: How Smart Home Users Navigate Proxy-based Schemes
Ali Zaidi, Anna Karanika, Ti-Chung Cheng, Yi-Shyuan Chiang, Camille Cobb, Indy Gupta, and Karrie Karahalios.
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2026
From Sociotechnical Gaps to Solutions: Designing AI Tools with Parents to Address Special Education Advocacy Barriers in IEP Processes
Ali Zaidi and Karrie Karahalios.
ACM Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2025
Paper link
Learning Custom Experience Ontologies via Embedding-based Feedback Loops
Ali Zaidi, Kelsey Turbeville, Kristijan Ivančić, Jason Moss, Jenny Gutierrez Villalobos, Aravind Sagar, Huiying Li, Charu Mehra, Sixuan Li, Scott Hutchins, and Ranjitha Kumar.
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2023
Paper link
A User-Centric Evaluation of Smart Home Resolution Approaches for Conflicts Between Routines
Ali Zaidi*, Rui Yang*, Vinay Koshy, Camille Cobb, Indranil Gupta, and Karrie Karahalios.
ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (Ubicomp IMWUT), 2023
Paper link
App-Based Task Shortcuts for Virtual Assistants
Deniz Arsan, Ali Zaidi, Aravind Sangar, Ranjitha Kumar.
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2021
Paper link
System and method for custom label embedding
Ranjitha Kumar, Kristijan Ivancic, Kelsey Elizabeth Turbeville, Ali Hur Zaidi, Jenny Gutierrez Villalobos, Jason Matthew Moss
US Patent, 2024
Patent link