XR & Situated Interaction
Exploring immersive and spatial interfaces that respond to people's activity, context, and intent while preserving agency and presence.
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION · XR · HUMAN-CENTERED SYSTEMS
Haofan He.
Building interactive systems
around lived experience.
B.Eng. Student · Hunan University
Research Assistant · CUHK-Shenzhen
01 / ABOUT
From lived situations to
working interactive systems.
I am an undergraduate student in Industrial Design at Hunan University and a Research Assistant at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
My work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, extended reality, and human-centered intelligent systems. I study how interactive technologies can understand the situations people are in and provide support that is timely, comprehensible, and under meaningful human control.
Across health and education, I combine formative research, co-design, end-to-end prototyping, and user studies. My recent projects range from sensor-based respiratory training for children to patient-controlled VR experiences for dental anxiety, with a shared focus on agency, learning, and real-world use.
hehaofan@hnu.edu.cn ↗02 / INTERESTS
Questions that guide my work.
Human-Centered Intelligent Systems
Designing intelligent support that is useful in practice, understandable to its users, and grounded in real situations rather than technology alone.
HCI for Health & Wellbeing
Supporting patients, caregivers, and clinicians through interactive systems that make care more understandable, controllable, and engaging.
HCI for Education & Skill Learning
Creating interactive, embodied, and playful experiences that help people understand complex knowledge and practise skills through action.
Multimodal & Sensor-Based Interaction
Connecting physiological, behavioral, and environmental signals with people's accounts of their experience to inform adaptive interaction.
How I work · Formative studies · Stakeholder research · Co-design · Research through Design · XR and sensor-based prototyping · Mixed-method user studies
03 / RESEARCH
Building, situating, and evaluating interaction.
CHI EA ’26
HIHOBOT
An end-to-end interactive system for children's respiratory training
How can embodied, playful interaction support children's respiratory training and inhaler use? HIHOBOT combines a child-friendly robot, breathing-controlled games, MediaPipe pose recognition, and airflow sensing to provide step-by-step guidance and real-time feedback.
MY CONTRIBUTION
Conducted literature review and stakeholder research; translated formative findings into interaction requirements; designed HCI/HRI and gamified experiences; integrated pose recognition and airflow sensing for respiratory interaction.
Research approach
Stakeholder research with 20 medical staff and 26 caregiver–child dyads informed the system's interaction requirements. The design connects respiratory training, medication guidance, and sensor-based feedback in a playful experience.
HRI · Physical computing · Gamification · Stakeholder research
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · 2026
Under review · Second author02
Support at the moments that matter.
Event-contingent VR for dental anxiety
This research investigates how an immersive system can recognise meaningful moments in a care experience and respond with the right form of support. Five predefined Anxiety Events are paired with procedural guidance, sensory adjustment, breathing regulation, and emotional support, alongside always-available patient controls.
RESEARCH INVOLVEMENT
Contributed to formative stakeholder research, co-design, iterative VR prototyping, and mixed-method evaluation; helped translate event-level insights into system interventions and connect self-report, physiological, behavioral, and interview data.
Research approach
The study combines interviews with 36 stakeholders, participatory design with three dentists, patient walkthroughs with 12 participants, and a randomized study with 24 participants. Evaluation brings together self-reported anxiety, physiological measures, behavioral interaction data, and qualitative interviews.
The findings concern the complete support package in simulated dental VR; they do not establish clinical effectiveness or the effects of individual modules.
Virtual reality · Context-aware support · Emotion regulation · Patient agency · Mixed methods
Under review · Second author03
Rehearsing care before it begins.
Patient-controlled VR preparation for dental treatment
Knowing what will happen is different from knowing what it may feel like. This Research through Design study explores how immersive rehearsal can support learning about a future experience through action, with control over pace, sensory intensity, and the information patients receive.
RESEARCH INVOLVEMENT
Contributed across the Research through Design process—from event-level mapping and an informational design probe to a patient-controlled VR prototype and user evaluation—connecting formative insights with interaction decisions.
Research approach
A three-phase process moves from an Anxiety Event Map to a web-based informational probe and an immersive rehearsal prototype. Patient controls include Pause, Stop, Explain, Hide, Reduce, and Replay.
The work develops the concept of Rehearsable Care: preparation that enables patients to encounter, negotiate, and articulate future healthcare experiences.
Research through Design · Experiential rehearsal · Skill and knowledge preparation · Negotiable fidelity · Patient agency
04 / PUBLICATIONS
Publications & manuscripts.
PUBLISHED
HIHOBOT Playing the Trumpet: A Robot for Respiratory Training and Powder Drug Inhalation Monitor for Children with Asthma ↗
Xiaoyu Xie, Haofan He, Yixian Lan, and Suya Zhang
Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’26)
DOI: 10.1145/3772363.3798596MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW
On Edge in the Dental Chair: Designing VR Support for Moments of Dental Anxiety
CHI 2027 Full Paper · Under review · Second author
Investigates event-contingent VR support for specific anxiety-provoking moments during dental treatment, combining procedural guidance, sensory adjustment, breathing regulation, emotional support, and patient-controlled safety mechanisms.
Rehearsing the Unknown: Exploring Informational Preparation to Support Rehearsable Care for Pre-Treatment Dental Anxiety
CHI 2027 Full Paper · Under review · Second author
Explores how patient-controlled immersive rehearsal can complement conventional information-based preparation by allowing people to encounter, adjust, and communicate selected aspects of a future dental experience before treatment.
05 / EDUCATION
Hunan University
2023 — 2027B.Eng. in Industrial Design
Expected graduation: June 2027 · GPA: 87.08 / 100
Selected coursework
Human-Computer Interaction Design · Creative Programming · Internet Technology and Service Design · Industrial Design Modeling
Research & evaluation
Formative studies, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, co-design, qualitative analysis, usability testing, and mixed-method user studies.
Implementation & prototyping
Unity · Arduino · MediaPipe · Python · HTML / CSS / JavaScript · Figma · Rhino · KeyShot · Blender
Languages
Chinese — Native
English — Fluent · IELTS 7.0