Gilly Leshed

I am a Teaching Professor and the Director of the MPS program in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. My teaching and research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), in which I use quantitative and qualitative methods and technology design to examine how individuals and groups accomplish tasks and socialize and the roles that information technology play in these interactions. I supervise the Cornell Digital Tech & Innovation Project Team.

I received my PhD in Information Science in 2009 from Cornell. My Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees are from the Technion – Israel Institution of Technology in Industrial Engineering and Information Management Engineering, respectively. I worked several years in the industry as an HCI expert for commercial flight-deck avionics system and command and control systems.

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Contact me

Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: Monday 3:00-5:00pm, 285 CIS Building, when the semester is in session.

Teaching

Human-Computer Interaction Design
INFO/COMM 3450 / INFO 5355 Undergrad & grad
2015-2025

Qualitative User Research and Design Methods (formerly Advanced Human-Computer Interaction)
INFO/COMM 4400/5400/6400 Undergrad & grad
2011-2026

Detecting Xenophobia Online
INFO 4940/5940/6940 Undergrad & grad
2022

MPS Project
INFO 5900 Grad
2017

Crowds, Communities, and Technology (Online Communities)
INFO/COMM 3460 Undergrad
2010-2014

Values in Human-Computer Interaction Design
INFO 4940 Undergrad
2013

Computer-Mediated Communication
INFO/COMM 4450/6450 Undergrad & grad
2011-2012

Technology in Collaboration
INFO/COMM 3560 Undergrad
2012

Digital Technology Immersion Practicum
INFO/NBA 6480 Grad
2016-2017

Research

Google scholar & ACM Digital Library

Journal articles & Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings

Tuan-he Lee & Gilly Leshed (2026). Understanding Remote Mental Health Supporters’ Help-Seeking in Online Communities. Accepted to CHI ’26. Best Paper Honorable Mention.

Serena Ge Guo, Nayeon Kwon, Jingjin Li, Andrea Stevenson Won, Gilly Leshed, Keith Evan Green (2026). Co-Designing Environment-Based Strategies with Neurodivergent Individuals for Sensory-Inclusive Dental Visit Experiences. Accepted to CHI ’26. Best Paper Honorable Mention.

Serena Ge Guo, Raquel Cañete, Jenny Yu, Gilly Leshed, Ian Walker, Keith Evan Green (2026). Reconfiguring the Home: Co-Designing the Future of Adaptive Domestic Environments. Accepted to CHI ’26.

Serena Ge Guo, Qi Yang, Jenny Yu, Wenqian Niu, Yunting Yan, Guy Hoffman, Gilly Leshed, Keith Evan Green (2026). “When We’re Looking at the Robot, We See Each Other”: A Comparison of Robotic, Mirror-Based, and Hybrid Interventions for Stranger Interaction. Accepted to CHI ’26.

Serena Ge Guo, Jenny J. Yu, Wenqian Niu, Yifei Gao, Guy Hoffman, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Evan Green. 2026. Robot-Mediated Mutual Gaze: How a Mobile Robot with Actuated Mirrors Facilitates Encounters between Strangers. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 275–284. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3785647. Best Design Paper.

Tuan-He Lee, Keertana Nambiar, Hoi Ki Jenny Wong, and Gilly Leshed. 2025. Supporting from afar: Exploring Practices and Challenges of Remote Support-Giving for Mental Health. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 7, Article CSCW481 (November 2025), 26 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757662

Ge (Serena) Guo, Raquel Cañete, Jenny Yu, Gilly Leshed, Ian Walker, Keith Evan Green. 2025. When the Robot Surrounds Us: Co-Designing a New Human-Robot Interaction in a Full-Scale, “Robot-Room” Rapid Prototype. 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).

Serena Ge Guo, Hsin-Ming Chao, Huong Pham, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Green. 2025. Unraveling Strangers’ Interaction: An Analytical Framework Developed in a Field Study of a Socio-Spatial Interface. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. Just Accepted (June 2025). https://doi.org/10.1145/3742857

Daye Kang, Jingjin Li, Gilly Leshed, Jeffrey M Rzeszotarski, and Xi Lu. 2025. Towards Hormone Health: An Autoethnography of Long-Term Holistic Tracking to Manage PCOS. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 319, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713619. Best Paper Award.

Jingjin Li, Karen Anne Cochrane, and Gilly Leshed. (2024). Beyond Meditation: Understanding Everyday Mindfulness Practices and Technology Use Among Experienced Practitioners. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 8, CSCW2, Article 484 (November 2024), 29.

Jingjin Li, Shaomei Wu, Gilly Leshed. (2024). Re-envisioning Remote Meetings: Co-designing Inclusive and Empowering Videoconferencing with People Who Stutter. DIS ’24: Designing Interactive Systems Conference, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, July 2024.

Khonzoda Umarova, Oluchi Okorafor, Pinxian Lu, Jialin Shan, Alex Xu, Ray Zhou, Jennifer Otiono, Beth Lyon, Gilly Leshed. (2024). Xenophobia Meter: Defining and Measuring Online Sentiment Toward Foreigners on Twitter. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2024). pp 1517-1530. June 2024, Buffalo, NY, USA. (summary of the research)

Shaomei Wu, Jingjin Li, and Gilly Leshed. (2024). Finding My Voice over Zoom: An Autoethnography of Videoconferencing Experience for a Person Who Stutters. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages.

Jingjin Li, Jiajing Guo, and Gilly Leshed. (2024). Meditating in Live Stream: An Autoethnographic and Interview Study to Investigate Motivations, Interactions and Challenges. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 8, CSCW1, Article 140 (April 2024), 33 pages.

Leshed, L. (2024). An In-Class Activity for Recognizing and Practicing the Power of Iteration in Human-Centered Design. EngageCSEdu. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages. Educational resource files.

Li, J., Kwon, N., Pham, H., Shim, R., & Leshed, G. (2023). Co-designing Magic Machines for Everyday Mindfulness with Practitioners. DIS ’23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. July 2023, pp 1630–1647, Pittsburgh, PA.

Leshed. G. (2023). Making Prototyping Decisions: Engaging students in considering decisions when developing prototypes for their designs. In EduCHI 2023: 5th Annual Symposium on HCI Education (EduCHI ’23), April 28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany.

Guo, G., Leshed, G., & Green, K. (2023). “I normally wouldn’t talk with strangers”: Introducing a Socio-Spatial Interface for Fostering Togetherness Between Strangers. Honorable mention. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 272, 1–20. Best paper honorable mention.

de Aguiar, C., Leshed, G., Pinch, T., & Green, K.E. (2022). Evaluation of communIT, a Large-Scale, Cyber-physical Artifact Supporting Diverse Subgroups Building Community. Journal of Smart Cities and Society 1 (2022) 165–178. IOS Press.

de Aguiar, C. A., Green, K. E., Leshed, G., Pinch, T., Guo, K., & Jo, Y. (2021) Designing and Building communIT . Media Architecture Biennale (MAB20), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2021.

Leshed, G., Rosca, M., Huang, M., Mansbach, L., Zhu, Y., & Hernandez-Aguilera, J.N. (2018). CalcuCafé: Designing for Collaboration Among Coffee Farmers to Calculate Costs of Production. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2, CSCW, Article 149 (November 2018). ACM, New York, NY. 26 pages.

McInnis, B., Leshed, G., & Cosley, D. (2018). Crafting Policy Discussion Prompts as a Task for Newcomers. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2, CSCW, Article 121 (November 2018), 23 pages.

de Aguiar, C. A., Leshed, G., Bernard, A., McKenzie, J,, Andrews, C., & Green, K. E. (2018) CoDAS, a Method for Envisioning Larger-Scaled Computational Artifacts Connecting Communities. 4th International Conference on Universal Village (UV), Boston, MA, USA, 2018, pp. 1-6.

McInnis, B., Cosley, D., Baumer, E., & Leshed, G. (2018). Effects of Comment Curation and Opposition on Coherence in Online Policy Discussion. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork (GROUP ’18), Sanibel Island, FL.

Epstein, D. & Leshed, G. (2016). The magic sauce: Practices of facilitation in online policy deliberation. Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 4.

McInnis, B., Nam, C., Cosley, D., & Leshed, G. (2016). Taking a HIT: Designing around rejection, mistrust, risk, and workers’ experiences in Amazon Mechanical Turk. Proceedings of CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, 2271-2282.

McInnis, B., Murnane, E., Epstein, D., Cosley, D., & Leshed, G. (2016). One and done: Factors affecting one-time contributors to ad-hoc online communities. Proceedings of CSCW 2016, San Francisco, CA, 609-623.

Voykinska, V., Azenkot, S., Wu, S., & Leshed, G. (2016). How blind people interact with visual content on social networking services. Proceedings of CSCW 2016, San Francisco, CA, 1584-1595.

Goyal, N., Leshed, G., Cosley, D., & Fussell, S. (2014). Effects of implicit sharing in collaborative analysis. Proceedings of CHI 2014, Toronto, Canada, 129-138.

Leshed, G., Håkansson, M., & Kaye, J. J. (2014). “Our life is the farm and farming is our life”: Home–work coordination in organic farm families. Proceedings of CSCW 2014, Baltimore, MD, 487-498.

Goyal, N., Leshed, G., & Fussell, S. (2013). Effects of visualization and note-taking on sensemaking and analysis. Proceedings of CHI 2013, Paris, France, 2721-2724.

Leshed, G., & McLoed, P.L. (2012). Metaphors for social relationships in 3D virtual worlds. Proceedings of CSCW 2012, Seattle, WA, 593-602.

Smith, M.E., Nguyen, D., Lai, C., Leshed, G., & Baumer, E. (2012). Going to college and staying connected: communication between college freshmen and their parents. Proceedings of CSCW 2012, Seattle, WA, 789-798.

Leshed, G., & Sengers, P. (2011). “I lie to myself that I have freedom in my own schedule”: Productivity tools and busyness experiences. Proceedings of CHI 2011, Vancouver, Canada, 905-914.

Leshed, G., Perez, D., Hancock, J.H., Cosley, D., Birnholtz, J., Lee, S., McLeod, P.L., & Gay, G. (2009). Visualizing real-time language-based feedback on teamwork behavior in computer-mediated groups. Proceedings of CHI 2009, Boston, MA, 537-546.

Nomura, S., Birnholtz, J., Rieger, O., Leshed, G., Gay, G., & Trumbull, D. (2008). Cutting into collaboration: understanding coordination in distributed and interdisciplinary medical research. Proceedings of CSCW 2008, San Diego, CA, 427-436.

Leshed, G., Haber, E. M., Matthews, T., & Lau, T. (2008). CoScripter: Automating & sharing how-to knowledge in the enterprise. Proceedings of CHI 2008, Florence, Italy, 1719-1728. Best Paper Nominee.

Leshed, G., Velden, T., Rieger, O., Kot, B., & Sengers, P. (2008). In-car GPS navigation: engagement with and disengagement from the environment. Proceedings of CHI 2008, Florence, Italy, 1675-1684. Best Paper Award.

Leshed, G., Hancock, J., Cosley, D., McLeod, P., & Gay, G. (2007). Feedback for guiding reflection on teamwork practices. Proceedings of GROUP 2007, Sanibel Island, Florida, 217-220.

Shami, N.S., Leshed, G., & Klein D. (2005). Context of use evaluation of peripheral displays (CUEPD). Proceedings of Interact 2005, Rome, Italy, 579-587.

Other Refereed Publications

Ge (Serena) Guo, Qi Yang, Yunting Yan, Xiaoman Yang, Guy Hoffman, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Evan Green. 2025. MirrorBot: Exploring Socio-Spatial Interactions that Foster Serendipitous Human Connections Through Robotic Mirrors. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 736, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3721176

Li, J., & Leshed, G. (2022). Beyond Meditation: Everyday Mindfulness and Technology Use. CHI EA ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. April 2022, Article No.: 233, pp 1–6.

Guo, G., Leshed, G., Pinch, T. & Green, K.E. (2022). SocialStools: A Playful, Socio-Spatial Interface for Fostering Togetherness Across Strangers. CHI EA ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. April 2022, Article No.: 173, pp 1–5.

Leshed, G., Mansbach, L., & Huang, M. (2018). Designing for Transparency of Coffee Production Costs. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’18). Montreal, Canada.

Kaplan, M., Leshed, G., & Kutnick, T. (2013). Public Spheres: Ideas taking shape. CSCW 2013 Extended Abstracts (Work in Progress), San Antonio, TX.

Cheng, J., Bapat, A., Thomas, G., Tse, K., Nawathe, N., Crockett, J. & Leshed, G. (2011). GoSlow: designing for slowness, reflection and solitude. CHI 2011 Extended Abstracts (alt.chi), Vancouver, Canada, 429-438.

Leshed, G., Cosley, D., Hancock, J. T., & Gay, G. (2010). Visualizing language use in team conversations: designing through theory, experiments, and iterations. CHI 2010 Extended Abstracts (Case Study), Atlanta, GA, 4567-4582.

Diamant, E.I., Echenique, A., Lim, B., Leshed, G., & Fussell, S.R. (2009). Supporting intercultural collaboration with dynamic feedback systems: preliminary evidence from a creative design task. CHI 2009 Extended Abstracts (Work in Progress), Boston, MA, 3997-4002.

Leshed, G., & Kaye, J. (2006). Understanding how bloggers feel: recognizing affect in blog posts. CHI 2006 Extended Abstracts (Work-in-Progress), Montréal, Québec, Canada, 1019-1024.

Book Chapters

Leshed, G., & Hakansson, M.. (2014) “Rainy days work best for us”: Lessons from home-based family interviews. In T.K. Judge & C. Neustaedter (Eds.). Studying and designing technology for domestic life: Lessons from home. Waltham, MA: Elsevier.

McLeod, P.L., & Leshed, G. (2011) As long as they don’t know where I live: information disclosure strategies for managing identity in Second Life. In A. Peachy & M. Childs (Eds.). Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds. New York, NY: Springer.

Cypher, A., Drews, C., Haber, E., Kandogan, E., Lin, J., Lau, T., Leshed, G., Matthews, T., & Wilcox, E. (2010). Collaborative Scripting for the Web. In A. Cypher, J. M. Dontcheva, T. Lau, & J. Nichols, (Eds.) No Code required: giving users tools to transform the web (pp. 85-104). Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Leshed, G. (2009). Silencing the clatter: removing anonymity from a corporate online community. In T. Davies & S. P. Gangadharan (Eds.) Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice (pp. 243-251). Stanford University: CSLI.

Magazine Articles

McInnis, B. & Leshed. G. (2016). Running user studies with crowd workers. interactions magazine, Volume 23 Issue 5, September + October 2016.

Leshed. G. (2012). Slowing down with personal productivity tools. interactions magazine, Volume 19 Issue 1, January-February 2012.

Dissertation

Leshed, G. (2009). Automated language-based feedback for teamwork behaviors (6.1 MB). Ph.D. Dissertation, Information Science, Cornell University.