About

Kexue Shirley Fu

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate working at the intersection of HCI and AI at City University of Hong Kong, where I work with Prof. RAY LC, Prof. Shengdong Zhao, and Prof. Qinyuan Lei. I was also a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, working with Prof. Toby Jiajun Li, and a Research Scientist Intern at Adobe Research.

Research interests

I study how people develop ideas and create new forms of media through multimodal human-AI collaboration workflows. I am interested in studying and designing world model interfaces and steerable agentic workflows that enable people to create and shape interactive experiences that adapt to their actions and evolving goals. I am also interested in evaluating models’ ability to interpret, act on, and adapt to changing interfaces.

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News

[Oct 2026] My first-author paper has been accepted by TOCHI! My first journal paper, finally accepted after a long review process! 🎉

[Oct 2026] I will attend UIST '26 in Detroit, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸. Looking forward to catching up with friends and meeting new people! ✈️ 🤝

[March 2026] Will join Adobe Research as a Research Scientist Intern in San Jose ☀️. Super excited for this opportunity! 🌉 💻

[March 2026] SpatialBalancing accepted by DIS '26 (21% acceptance rate)! More details will come soon.

[March 2026] Will attend CHI'26 in Barcelona 🇪🇸🇫🇷. Hope to catch up with friends and meet new people there! ✈️ 🤝

[January 2026] Vistoria being accepted by CHI‘26! Thanks to very supportive mentors and co-authors! 🎉 🎉 🎉

[August 2025] Start my visiting scholar at University of Notre Dame, working with Prof. Toby Jiajun Li at SaNDwich Lab 🥪. Looking forward to this new Journey! 🤝

[May 2025] "From Temporal to Spatial" win Honorable Mention in DIS 25. Congrats to my co-authors! Our hard work pays off! 🎵

[May 2025] "RetroChat" win Honorable Mention in C&C 25. Congrats to my co-authors! 📖 💬 💬

[April 2025] Attend CHI'25 in Yokuhama, Japan. ✈️ 🍣

[April 2025] One co-authored full paper "From Temporal to Spatial: Designing Spatialized Interactions with Segmented-audios in Immersive Environments for Active Engagement with Performing Arts Intangible Cultural Heritage" has been accepted by DIS 25. 📄 🎵

[March 2025] One co-authored full paper "RetroChat: Designing for the Preservation of Past Chinese Online Social Experiences" has been accepted by C&C 25. 📝

[February 2025] One co-authored full paper "A Constructed Response: Designing and Choreographing Robot Arm Movements in Collaborative Dance Improvisation" has been accepted by CSCW 25. 🤖

[January 2025] One co-authored full paper "Becoming My Own Audience": How Dancers React to Avatars Unlike Themselves in Motion Capture-Supported Live Improvisational Performance" has been accepted by CHI 25. 🎭 💃

[September 2024] Submit 2 co-author full papers and 1 workshop to CHI'25. Hope to hear good news and thanks to my co-authors! 🙌

[September 2024] Pass my qualification exam. Now I am a PhD candidate! 🎉

[May 2024] Fly to Hawaii to attend CHI'24 and travel for several days. Hope to meet new friends and see old friends! 🌺 🏝️

[April 2024] Attend and present my work at GBA pre-CHI event. 📢

[April 2024] My first-author pub "Being Eroded, Piece by Piece": Enhancing Engagement and Storytelling in Cultural Heritage Dissemination by Exhibiting GenAI Co-Creation Artifacts" has been accepted to DIS'24. Congrats to my co-authors! 🎊

[April 2024] Our workshop "Dreamscaping: Supporting Creativity By Drawing Inspiration from Dreams" was accepted by Creativity & Cognition'24. 💭

[March 2024] Our Late-breaking Work "Sit on me please": Investigating Perception of Furniture Robotic Movements Using Video Prototyping was accepted by CHI'24. 🛋️

[February 2024] Being selected as a Volunteer for Creativity & Cognition'24. 🤝

[October 2023] Being selected as a Virtual Volunteer for CHI PLAY'23. 🌐

[April 2023] Attend CHI'23 in Hamburg, Germany to give a full paper presentation on-site. 🇩🇪

[March 2023] My first-author pub "I Am a Mirror Dweller": Probing the Unique Strategies Users Take to Communicate in the Context of Mirrors in Social Virtual Reality has been accepted to CHI'23. Congrats to my co-authors! 🪞

Research & practice

Publications

Multimodal Interfaces for Developing Ideas

MoMix: Sketches as Mutable Anchors for Navigating and Experimenting with Design Materials on Infinite Canvases

Under review (first author)

Demo PDF
CHI

Vistoria: A Multimodal System to Support Fictional Story Writing through Instrumental Image-Text Co-Editing

Kexue Fu, Jingfei Huang, Long Ling, Sumin Hong, Yihang Zuo, RAY LC, Toby Jiajun Li

Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

Website Doi

Human-AI Collaboration for Science Communication

TOCHI

Crafting Memorable Science Stories: Harnessing the Power of Narrative Peaks in Online Science Videos

Kexue Fu, Yawen Zhang, Hiu Man Ho, Wenzhe Hu, RAY LC, Qinyuan Lei, Shengdong Zhao

Accepted, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)

PDF
DIS

Spatial Balancing: Designing an LLM-Powered Spatial Externalization Interface for Iterative Science Communication Writing

Kexue Fu, Jiaye Leng, Yawen Zhang, Jingfei Huang, Yihang Zuo, Runze Cai, Zijian Ding, RAY LC, Shengdong Zhao, Qinyuan Lei

Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '26)

Demo Doi Arxiv
CHI

RevTogether: Supporting Science Story Revision with Multiple AI Agents

Yu Zhang, Kexue Fu, Zhicong Lu

Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '25)

PDF Doi