Debaleena Chatterjee*, Ph.D.

Design.
Experience.
Change.

I am a computer scientist turned human-computer interaction researcher.

I like to make that distinction because I never thought of “users” during my years of training as an engineer. I would build things—and that was it. Did anyone use it? How was their experience? Could their experience be better? These questions never crossed my mind.

So I have spent the last decade asking those questions—and continue to think about them. Computers keep awing us with their prowess every day. But how will people use them? How will people benefit from them? How will society, culture, economy, and policies change because of them? How will we change? I ask these questions in my work—currently focusing on mobile UIs, mid-air gesture input, virtual humans, and inclusive design.

I believe good design creates better experiences that can ultimately change people’s behavior.

Connect with me on

Read my articles on

*Chatterjee is short for Chattopadhyay, also the Anglicized variant of the original Sanskrit.

Meet my Team

As a faculty in the Computer Science department at the University of Illinois Chicago, I work with a talented bunch of Ph.D. students. Read more about their work on my ResearchGate or Google Scholar.

More details about my research are in my full academic CV.

Ja Eun Yu

Working on ways to support older adults navigate feature-rich mobile UIs with voice input

Pantea Habibi

Examining lateral asymmetry in mid-air, touchless interactions, and how it affects user experience

Nina Sakhnini

Designing virtual humans for human-in-loop mental health assessments and interventions

Hasti Sharifi

Investigating how to help seniors give and get mobile technology support just in time

What's New?

June 2023

Hasti’s paper on modeling senior technology learning preferences was accepted at the MobileHCI conference.

April 2023

Ja Eun was awarded the College of Engineering Graduate Student Award for Exceptional Research Promise.

February 2023

Hasti’s paper discussing a cross-cultural study of relational maintenance in tech caregiving was accepted as an LBW at the ACM CHI conference.

January 2023

Hasti successfully defended her prelims proposal.

January 2023

Ja Eun’s paper on making feature-rich mobile UIs accessible to older users was accepted at the ACM CHI conference.

January 2023

I am teaching CS 594, UX research methods in Spring. Enrollment is capped at 40.

December 2022

Ja Eun successfully defended her prelims proposal.

September 2022

Pantea successfully defended her prelims proposal.

August 2022

I am teaching CS 422, UI design and development, this Fall. Enrollment is capped at 61.

May 2022

Nina’s paper reviewing smartphone fact-checking apps was accepted at the ACM MobileHCI conference.

Old but Gold

2018

Honorable mention for Nina at Ubicomp 2018. Read more

2017

$1.5M NIH grant: Improving patient experience at discharge from hospital. Read more

2016

Named the Indiana University Graduate School 2016 IUPUI Chancellor’s Scholar. Read more