Ali Rizvi

Research statement

Reaching the other eighty percent needs a new way of working

AI has handed us the most capable tools any generation has had for improving people's lives, and we keep building them for the top 20%: big rooms, stable connections, a language the model was trained on, and not much to lose when the system gets it wrong. My research is for everyone else.

Getting there takes more than a study. It takes an artefact that outlives the paper, a field site that stays open, and a team that keeps working on it after the conference is over. Every project below was run that way.

  • Where I came from. Product at Amazon Alexa, building for 100M+ people I never met. The gap between how we designed the system and how people actually lived with it became the most interesting thing about the job - and the reason I left it for a doctorate.
  • Where I went. To see what technology like that does in a van (CHI 2021) and in small homes (Graphics Interface 2024). That became a thesis on designing for constrained spaces (2025).
  • Proteus. A deck of cards with e-ink faces, so people who are apart can still play together. 3 provisional patents, a CHI PLAY demo paper, a full paper in revision for ACM ISS 2027, and a company - Scramble Deck.
  • Bodhika Labs. Independent research with a partner school in Hyderabad. Together we showed that parents who had been avoiding their child's wellbeing report engaged with it once the screening sat inside a whole picture of the child (ACM Interactive Health 2026).
  • Next. Open. From understanding people living in small spaces to helping parents past the stigma of a wellbeing report, my research has already changed real lives. I am just taking off.

Projects

What I have worked on

2023– · CHI PLAY 2024 · ISS 2027 (in revision)

Proteus → Scramble Deck

E-ink playing cards. One deck, any game.

Role
Inventor · Founder
Design
E-ink cards, run by an app
Evaluate
Play studies, in person and remote
Implement
Three patents; Scramble Deck, a company
  • Artefact
  • Papers
  • Patents
  • Company

2025– · ACM Interactive Health 2026

Embed, don't isolate → Bodhika Labs

Telling parents hard news without labelling the child.

Role
Sole author · Lab lead
Design
Parent dashboard: strengths first, wellbeing inside
Evaluate
Co-design and card sorts with nine parents
Implement
Bodhika Labs: independent research with a partner school in Hyderabad
  • Design study
  • Dashboards
  • Partner school

2019–2025 · CHI 2021 · GI 2024

Interaction systems for constrained spaces

What small, moving places do to design assumptions.

Role
Doctoral researcher · Lead author
Design
Placemaking reframed for small, moving spaces
Evaluate
Field study with vanlifers; phenomenology
Implement
Proteus; the thesis
  • Field study
  • Thesis

2023–2026 · Springer 2026 · CSCW 2023

Experimentation at scale

A/B testing as it is actually done.

Role
Author · Instructor
Design
Funnel experiments on a live store
Evaluate
A/B tests; checkout abandonment down 8–12%
Implement
A Springer chapter; the analytics course
  • Chapter
  • Workshop paper
  • Course

2026– · DIS 2027

Supportive haptic technologies for NICU mothers

Haptic support for mothers with a baby in intensive care.

Role
Co-author
Design
Five haptic concepts for NICU mothers
Evaluate
Auto-ethnography
Implement
Paper in revision, DIS 2027
  • Paper

2020–2021

SecureCheck-N

Temperature screening at the door, on the tablet you already own.

Role
Designer · Builder
Design
An IR sensor on a stand; any tablet or phone as the screen
Evaluate
Pass or fail in a colour; adopted by senior living chains
Implement
Shipped by Secure Tech, LLC, with visitor tracking and a user guide
  • Product
  • Companion app
  • User guide

2021 · CHI 2021

An extensible ontology for voice user interfaces

A shared vocabulary for what voice interfaces do.

Role
Lead author
Design
An extensible ontology for voice interfaces
Evaluate
Discussed at a CHI 2021 workshop
Implement
Workshop paper
  • Workshop paper

Company and lab

How they relate to the research

  • Scramble Deck is a company that came out of the research. I hold a founder position, and the company is disclosed in the papers.
  • Bodhika Labs is independent research with a partner school in Hyderabad that keeps the field site open.
  • Both give me the same three things: access, scale, and a reason for the artefact to keep existing after the paper is out.

Publications

Full list

Also on Google Scholar. 3 provisional patents on the Proteus deck are on file.

Refereed papers

  • Rizvi, A. H. (2026). Embed, don't isolate: designing holistic dashboards for stigma-sensitive parent communication. Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Interactive Health Conference (IH '26).

    DOI

  • Rizvi, A. H., & Hancock, M. (2024). Small spaces, many places: a phenomenological analysis of technology-mediated placemaking in small spaces. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2024 (GI '24).

    DOI

  • Rizvi, A. H., Morayko, K., Hancock, M., & Song, A. (2021). Provocations from #vanlife: investigating life and work in a community extensively using technology not designed for them. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

  • Rizvi, A. H., Singh, L. P., & Bhardwaj, A. (2009). Human integration matrix: an adaptive framework to enhance human systems integration in new product development. PICMET '09, IEEE.

  • Rizvi, A. H., & Sachdeva, A. (2009). Optimization of retail clusters by improving individual store performance. PICMET '09, IEEE.

Accepted and under review

  • Rizvi, A. H., Schneider, O., & Hancock, M. (2027). Proteus Card Deck: affordable, scalable, and familiar deck of electronic cards. ACM ISS 2027. In revision.

  • Prakash, M., Sehl, S. G., Li, Y., Pawar, T. S., Rizvi, A. H., & MacArthur, C. (2027). Designing supportive haptic technologies for NICU mothers: an auto-ethnographic exploration. DIS 2027. In revision.

Workshop papers

  • Rizvi, A. H., Schneider, O., & Hancock, M. (2024). Proteus Card Deck: enabling remote play with a physical card deck. CHI PLAY Companion '24.

    DOI

  • Rizvi, A. H., & Hancock, M. (2023). Considerations for experimental design within funnels. CSCW 2023 workshop.

  • Rizvi, A. H., & Hancock, M. (2021). Building an extensible ontology for voice user interfaces (VUIs). CHI 2021 workshop.

Thesis and chapters

  • Rizvi, A. H. (2026). A/B Testing IRL. Textbook chapter, Springer. Forthcoming.

  • Rizvi, A. H. (2025). Towards design of interaction systems for constrained spaces. PhD thesis, University of Waterloo.

Documents

Academic CV (PDF). Research, teaching and contribution statements available on request - just email me.