Donald McMillan

Associate Professor (Docent) in the Stockholm Technology Interaction Research (STIR) group at Stockholm University.


Current Research

Nordic Perspectives on Collaborative AI for Blue-collar Work (CAI-BLUE)

Nordforsk Project
In collaboration with Azar Raoufi (Stockholm University), Kaisa Väänänen, Thomas Olsson, Maria Hartikainen (Tampere University), Niels van Berkel, Rune Møberg Jacobsen (Aalborg University), Marit Christensen, Leon De Beer (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

CAI-BLUE investigates how collaborative AI agents - adaptive, interactive systems that work alongside human teams - can support communication, learning, and shared understanding in blue-collar workplaces. CAI-BLUE advances the field of Responsible AI by promoting AI systems that align with Nordic traditions of participation and inclusivity. Rather than replacing human activities, AI agents are designed to support workers' communication, collaboration, shared cognition, and wellbeing - ensuring that technological progress can empower all kinds of workers.

AnthroTech Cluster of Excellence (ACE)

Vetenskapsrådet Network Planning Grant
In collaboration with Airi Lampinen (Stockholm University), Asreen Rostami (RISE), Madeline Balaam, Iolanda Leite (KTH), Thiemo Voigt (Uppsala University)

The aim of the grant is to support a constellation of researchers in preparing a future large scale application to establish world leading excellence clusters.
The name AnthroTech reflects the recognition that we are living in the Anthropocene. Technological systems are deeply entangled with human activity and increasingly shape the social, political, and ecological conditions of life. As intelligent systems become embedded in homes, transport, education, hospitals and governance, the consequences of their design and deployment become more significant. AnthroTech adopts a relational understanding of intelligent systems. Success is not defined solely by computational performance. Instead, it depends on the capacity of these systems to be socially legible, culturally responsive, and procedurally accountable. These qualities cannot be engineered in isolation. They emerge through interaction in real contexts, which raises important questions of control, responsibility, and relationality that current frameworks of design and governance struggle to address.

Exploring Extended Reality for Aphantasics

The University of Manchester, KTH and SU Joint Research Seed Fund
In collaboration with Luis Quintero (Stockholm University), Sarah Clinch, David Petrescu (University of Manchester), Andrii Matviienko, Xiaoyan Zhou (KTH)

Most people can easily form visual images in their minds, allowing them to recollect and reimagine familiar environments, pasts, and futures; to engage in meditation or relaxation; and to lose themselves in worlds created in response to music, literature, art, and film. Almost 4% of people lack this visual mental imagery (a condition called aphantasia), requiring them to adopt alternative cognitive strategies to accomplish these tasks.
This project examines how immersive extended reality (XR) technologies (i.e., augmented and virtual reality) can be used to understand and enhance aphantasics' cognitive strategies on different tasks, supporting them to create vivid visual representations. Exploratory work will be used to develop a portfolio of research directions for larger grant applications around cognitive augmentation and inclusive design for aphantasia. Human participants' empirical work with immersion and visual imagery ability as independent variables will be used as proof-of-concept, producing a publishable paper and dataset.



Past Projects

Advanced Adaptive Intelligent Systems

KTH Digitalisation Project
In collaboration with Iolanda Leite, Jonas Beskow, Britt Östlund, Joakim Gustafson and Christian Smith

This project is focused on the development of socially assistive robots in people's homes, education or health-care settings, as well as robots working alongside workers in small-scale manufacturing environments.
The proposed project can be seen as an example of Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) or Intelligence Augmentation (IA). The aim is to develop adaptive social robots that can understand humans’ communicative behaviour and task-related physical actions, and adapt their interaction to suit. We aim to investigate and demonstrate fluid and seamless adaptation of intelligent systems to users’ context, needs or preferences.

Designing New Speech Interfaces

VR Grant

This project is focused around understanding non-system directed audio (such as ordinary conversation and environmental, ambient audio) as well as not only what the user says to the system, but HOW they say it in order to design new user interfaces with more interesting interactions.
While this audio is much less constrained than dialogic speech directed at a device, and as a consequence, extremely challenging to recognise and model, it offers a rich potential resource for system input and human computer interaction that has been almost entirely neglected. Indeed, while speech research has been an active area of computer research, human-computer interaction research on speech has been given much less focus - potentially limiting the opportunities for applications of speech, but also for research understandings of how speech systems can fit with user activity and system use. We hope to open up new opportunities for human computer interaction using audio detection and processing.



Leveraging Eyegaze for Voice Assistant Interaction

In collaboration with the the University of Tokyo and the University of Tsukuba, Japan

In this project we are developing and testing voice assistants able to track, respond to, and reciprocate the gaze of the users interacting with it. We hope that this line of research will not only provide a more fluid interaction with such assistants, but will also help them better fit into the busy, messy, everyday contexts that define real work use.



Implicit Interaction: Creating a new interface model for the Internet of Things

SSF project lead by Prof. Kristina Höök & Prof. Barry Brown

With the growth in ubiquitous- and IoT-based systems there is now the opportunity to make significant improvements in how technology benefits everyday life. Yet existing systems are beset with manifest human interaction problems. Each individual system has been designed with a particular, limited, interaction model: the smart lighting system in your apartment has not been designed for the sharing economy, the lawn mower robot might run off and leave your garden. Different parts of your entertainment system turn the volume up and down and fail to work together. Each smart object comes with its own form of interaction, its own mobile app, its own upgrade requirements and its own manner of calling for users' attention. Interaction models have been inherited from the desktop-metaphor, and sometimes mobile interaction have their own apps that use non-standardised, icons, sounds or notification frameworks. When put together, the current forms of smart technology do not blend, they cannot interface one-another, and most importantly, as end-users we have to learn how to interact with them each time, one by one.

This project is built around developing a new interface paradigm that we call smart implicit interaction. Implicit interactions stay in the background, thriving on data analysis of speech, movements, and other contextual data, avoiding unnecessarily disturbing us or grabbing our attention. When we turn to them, depending on context and functionality, they either shift into an explicit interaction - engaging us in a classical interaction dialogue (but starting from analysis of the context at hand) - or they continue to engage us implicitly using entirely different modalities that do not require an explicit dialogue - that is through the ways we move or engage in other tasks, the smart objects responds to us.


Publications

A current publication list can be found on Google Scholar here, below was scraped in January, 2026.



Autonomous Last Mile: Speculative Futuring in Virtual Reality

— 2025

by K Karlgren, N Soltani, A Rostami, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 2025 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media …

Alignment and Repair Work in Extended Reality: Facilitators' Participants' and Spectators' Practices in VR Demonstrations

— 2025

by N Petersson, D McMillan, H Verhagen, J Solsona Belenguer

Proceedings of the 28th International Academic Mindtrek Conference, 143-154

MR-Monitor: Mixed-Reality Monitoring of Urban Maps Through Hand-Based Interactions

— 2025

by K Dudeja, D McMillan, L Quintero

Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Information Technology …

Understanding Security and Privacy Practices Around Internet of Things Devices

— 2025

by A Andersen, A Rostami, M Glöss, D McMillan

International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 3-16

Correction to: XR Experience Design and Evaluation Framework

— 2025

by E Malakhatka, C Gkoumas, A Rostami, D McMillan, S Sateei, K Avetisova

Human-Technology Interaction: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Perspectives …

XR Experience Design and Evaluation Framework

— 2025

by E Malakhatka, C Gkoumas, A Rostami, D McMillan, S Sateei, K Avetisova

Human-Technology Interaction: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Perspectives …

Diversity and Inclusion in Focus at ACM IMX 2024

— 2025

by A Rostami, D McMillan, S Raviselvam, S Chan

ACM SIGMultimedia Records 17 (1), 1-1

Uncovering older adults’ digital repertoires for designing conversational scenarios: graphic transcript as a design method

— 2025

by DMM Sanna Kuoppamäki, Mikaela Hellstrand

Digital Repertoires: Embedded and everyday technologies in later life, 139-164

Cooking with agents: Designing context-aware voice interaction

— 2024

by R Jaber, S Zhong, S Kuoppamäki, A Hosseini, I Gessinger, DP Brumby, ...

Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Bodywork at Work: Attending to Bodily Needs in Gig, Shift, and Knowledge Work

— 2024

by D Yadav, K Karlgren, R Shaikh, K Helms, D Mcmillan, B Brown, ...

Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

(Re) Framing the'Smart'Fridge: Configurable Technology for Activist Food-Sharing Communities

— 2024

by K Berns, K Karlgren, AR Menon, C Rossitto, J Tholander, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 1-15

Between Trust and Identity: Form, Function, and Presentation

— 2024

by M Lee, D McMillan, I Torre, JE Fischer, Y Ruitenburg

Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, 1-4

Proceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences

by A Rostami, D McMillan, J Hook, I Viola, J Nishida, HT Maddali, A Clay

ACM

IMXw'24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences Workshops

by A Rostami, D McMillan, J Gutiérrez, C Jost

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

IMX'24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences

by A Rostami, D McMillan, J Hook, I Viola, J Nishida, H Teja Maddali, A Clay

IMX'24: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences …

Welcome from the ACM IMXw 2024 Chairs

by A Rostami, D McMillan, J Gutiérrez, C Jost

ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Feminist human-robot interaction: Disentangling power, principles and practice for better, more ethical HRI

— 2023

by K Winkle, D McMillan, M Arnelid, K Harrison, M Balaam, E Johnson, ...

Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot …

Designing multi-modal conversational agents for the kitchen with older adults: a participatory design study

— 2023

by S Kuoppamäki, R Jaberibraheem, M Hellstrand, D McMillan

International Journal of Social Robotics 15 (9), 1507-1523

Sleep Planning with Awari: Uncovering the Materiality of Body Rhythms using Research through Design

— 2023

by K Karlgren, D Mcmillan

Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Human-Robot Conversational Interaction (HRCI)

— 2023

by D McMillan, R Jaber, BR Cowan, JE Fischer, B Irfan, R Cumbal, ...

Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot …

A special interest group on developing theories of language use in interaction with conversational user interfaces

— 2023

by PR Peña, PR Doyle, EY Ip, G Di Liberto, D Higgins, R Mcdonnell, ...

Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing …

Why is my Agent so Slow? Deploying Human-Like Conversational Turn-Taking

— 2023

by MP Aylett, É Székely, D McMillan, G Skantze, M Romeo, J Fischer, ...

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction …

From self-tracking to sleep-hacking: online collaboration on changing sleep

— 2022

by K Karlgren, B Brown, D McMillan

Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction 6 (CSCW2), 1-26

“Rewind to the Jiggling Meat Part”: Understanding Voice Control of Instructional Videos in Everyday Tasks

— 2022

by Y Zhao, R Jaber, D McMillan, C Munteanu

Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Designing for extreme sleepers: Rethinking the rhythms of sleep technology

— 2022

by K Karlgren, D McMillan

Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference, 1-17

The normal natural troubles of virtual reality in mixed-reality performances

— 2022

by A Rostami, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Kintsugi vr: Designing with fractured objects

— 2022

by A Rostami, K Karlgren, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media …

Cross-Modal Repair: Gaze and Speech Interaction for List Advancement

— 2022

by R Jaberibraheem, D McMillan

CUI 2022: 4th Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, Glasgow, United …

Boosting robot credibility and challenging gender norms in responding to abusive behaviour: A case for feminist robots

— 2021

by K Winkle, GI Melsión, D McMillan, I Leite

Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot …

Designing Kitchen Technologies for Ageing in Place: A Video Study of Older Adults' Cooking at Home

— 2021

by S Kuoppamäki, S Tuncer, S Eriksson, D McMillan

Proceedings of the ACM on interactive, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous …

Leaving the butler behind: The future of role reproduction in CUI

— 2021

by D McMillan, R Jaber

Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, 1-4

Conversational user interfaces on mobile devices: Survey

— 2020

by R Jaber, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, 1-11

Designing with gaze: Tama--a gaze activated smart-speaker

— 2019

by D McMillan, B Brown, I Kawaguchi, R Jaber, J Solsona Belenguer, ...

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3 (CSCW), 1-26

Against ethical AI

— 2019

by D McMillan, B Brown

Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019, 1-3

Patterns of gaze in speech agent interaction

— 2019

by R Jaber, D McMillan, JS Belenguer, B Brown

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Conversational User …

The Effect of Interaction Using Gaze Input / Output on Smart Speaker

— 2019

by I Kawaguchi, H Kuzuoka, D McMillan

The Transactions of Human Interface Society 29 (3), 269-278

Voice-based conversational ux studies and design

— 2018

by S Reeves, M Porcheron, JE Fischer, H Candello, D McMillan, M McGregor, ...

Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing …

Text in talk: Lightweight messages in co-present interaction

— 2018

by B Brown, K O'hara, M McGregor, D Mcmillan

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 24 (6), 1-25

Musicians' initial encounters with a smart guitar

— 2018

by C Rossitto, A Rostami, J Tholander, D McMillan, L Barkhuus, C Fischione, ...

Proceedings of the 10th nordic conference on human-computer interaction, 13-24

Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

— 2018

by Y Fernaeus, D McMillan, A Girouard, J Tholander

TEI'18, Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied …

The Smart Data Layer.

— 2018

by M Sahlgren, E Ylipää, BAT Brown, K Helms, A Lampinen, D McMillan, ...

AAAI Spring Symposia

Situating wearables: Smartwatch use in context

— 2017

by D McMillan, B Brown, A Lampinen, M McGregor, E Hoggan, S Pizza

Proceedings of the 2017 chi conference on human factors in computing systems …

Bio-sensed and embodied participation in interactive performance

— 2017

by A Rostami, D McMillan, E Márquez Segura, C Rossito, L Barkhuus

Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded …

Friendly but not friends: Designing for spaces between friendship and unfamiliarity

— 2017

by A Lampinen, D McMillan, B Brown, Z Faraj, DN Cambazoglu, C Virtala

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and …

Connecting citizens: designing for data collection and dissemination in the smart city

— 2017

by D McMillan

International Conference on Internet Science, 119-131

Implicit interaction through machine learning: Challenges in design, accountability, and privacy

— 2017

by D McMillan

International Conference on Internet Science, 352-358

Design fiction for mixed-reality performances

— 2017

by A Rostami, C Rossitto, L Barkhuus, J Hook, J Laaksolahti, R Taylor, ...

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference extended abstracts on human factors …

The smartwatch in multi-device interaction

— 2017

by D McMillan

International Conference of Design, User Experience, and Usability, 275-287

Internet Science: 4th International Conference, INSCI 2017, Thessaloniki, Greece, November 22-24, 2017, Proceedings

by I Kompatsiaris, J Cave, A Satsiou, G Carle, A Passani, E Kontopoulos, ...

Springer

Glimpses of the future: designing fictions for mixed-reality performances

— 2017

by A Rostami, C Rossitto, D McMillan, J Spence, R Taylor, J Hook, ...

interactions 25 (1), 46-51

Internet Science

— 2017

by I Kompatsiaris, J Cave, A Satsiou, G Carle, A Passani, E Kontopoulos, ...

Springer International Publishing

Internet Science: Proceedings

— 2017

by I Kompatsiaris, J Cave, A Satsiou, G Carle, A Passani, E Kontopoulos, ...

4th International Conference, INSCI 2017, Thessaloniki, Greece, November 22 …

Smartwatch in vivo

— 2016

by S Pizza, B Brown, D McMillan, A Lampinen

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Five provocations for ethical HCI research

— 2016

by B Brown, A Weilenmann, D McMillan, A Lampinen

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems …

The IKEA Catalogue: Design fiction in academic and industrial collaborations

— 2016

by B Brown, J Bleecker, M D'adamo, P Ferreira, J Formo, M Glöss, M Holm, ...

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group …

Data and the City

— 2016

by D McMillan, A Engström, A Lampinen, B Brown

Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

The tablet computer as a family canvas

— 2016

by M Glöss, D McMillan, C Cycil, K Tollmar

Searchable objects: Search in everyday conversation

— 2015

by B Brown, M McGregor, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative …

From in the wild to in vivo: Video Analysis of Mobile Device Use

— 2015

by D McMillan, M McGregor, B Brown

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer …

Repurposing conversation: Experiments with the continuous speech stream

— 2015

by D McMillan, A Loriette, B Brown

Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing …

Pick up and play: understanding tangibility for cloud media

— 2015

by D McMillan, B Brown, A Sellen, S Lindley, R Martens

Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous …

Living with Listening Services: Privacy and Control in IoT

— 2015

by D McMillan, A Loriette

International Conference on Internet Science, 100-109

100 days of iPhone use: understanding the details of mobile device use

— 2014

by B Brown, M McGregor, D McMillan

Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Human-computer …

Improving consent in large scale mobile HCI through personalised representations of data

— 2014

by A Morrison, D McMillan, M Chalmers

Proceedings of the 8th Nordic conference on human-computer interaction: Fun …

100 days of iPhone use: mobile recording in the wild

— 2014

by M McGregor, B Brown, D McMillan

CHI'14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2335-2340

Categorised ethical guidelines for large scale mobile HCI

— 2013

by D McMillan, A Morrison, M Chalmers

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Deliverable 6.1: Overview of user needs analysis, plus draft catalogue of design responses to needs analysis

— 2013

by C Marsden, T David Barrett, E Pavan, M Ciurcina, G Arata, A Mantelero, ...

EINS Consortium

EINS-D6. 1 Overview of user needs analysis, plus draft catalogue of design responses to needs analysis

— 2013

by C Marsden, B Zevenbergen, T David-Barrett, E Pavan, M Ciurcine, ...

Unknown

A hybrid mass participation approach to mobile software trials

— 2012

by A Morrison, D McMillan, S Reeves, S Sherwood, M Chalmers

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems …

Mass participation user trials

— 2012

by DC McMillan

University of Glasgow

Ethnography for Large Scale User Trials

— 2012

by D McMillan, M Chalmers

LARGE, 15

Ethics, logs and videotape: ethics in large scale user trials and user generated content

— 2011

by M Chalmers, D McMillan, A Morrison, H Cramer, M Rost, W Mackay

CHI'11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2421-2424

Informed consent and users' attitudes to logging in large scale trials

— 2011

by A Morrison, O Brown, D McMillan, M Chalmers

CHI'11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1501-1506

A Comparison of Distribution Channels for Large-Scale Deployments of iOS Applications

— 2011

by D McMillan, A Morrison, M Chalmers

International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI) 3 (4), 17

Ethics, logs and videotape

— 2011

by M Chalmers, D McMillan, A Morrison, H Cramer, M Rost, W Mackay

CHI'11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Ethics, logs and videotape [CHI Workshop organisers and extended abstract]

— 2011

by M Chalmers, D McMillan, A Morrison, H Cramer, M Rost, W Mackay

Further into the wild: Running worldwide trials of mobile systems

— 2010

by D McMillan, A Morrison, O Brown, M Hall, M Chalmers

International Conference on Pervasive Computing, 210-227

Experiences of mass participation in Ubicomp research

— 2010

by A Morrison, S Reeves, D McMillan, M Chalmers

Proceedings of the Workshop on Research in the Large

iPhone software distribution for mass participation

— 2010

by D McMillan

Ubicomp’10 workshop on Research in the large: Using App Stores, Markets and …

Mass Participation in Evaluation and Design

— 2010

by Alistair Morrison, Stuart Reeves, Donald McMillan, Scott Sherwood, Owain ...

Proceedings of Digital Futures

Eyespy: supporting navigation through play

— 2009

by M Bell, S Reeves, B Brown, S Sherwood, D McMillan, J Ferguson, ...

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems …