Relational AI personas in everyday ubiquity
Embodied & Situated Design Methods for Sustainable, Plural Futures
Half‑day workshop · UbiComp/ISWC 2025 · 13 Oct 2025 · Espoo, Finland
Why attend?
Join a half‑day of hands‑on persona‑hacking and critical reflection on ubiquitous AI, perfect for researchers, designers, and technologists who want practical tools for more inclusive, sustainable agent design.
Abstract
AI agents now permeate homes, streets, and even bodies as chatbots in appliances, vision assistants in head‑mounted displays, and large‑language companions on wearables. The personas we craft around these agents shape trust, authority, energy footprints, and cultural inclusion across ubiquitous contexts. This half‑day, in‑person workshop mobilises relational design theory, feminist HCI, and ecological critique to hack, embody, and re‑situate AI personas for plural, sustainable futures. Through counter‑persona card‑storming, embodied role‑play, and situated teardown mapping, participants will create speculative artefacts and a collective zine. Outputs, optional short papers, and datasets will be published in the ACM Digital Library and an open online archive. The workshop advances UbiComp’s agenda by offering hands‑on, community‑building methods to interrogate and redesign AI personhood in the everyday computational fabric.
Topics include
Relational or more‑than‑human persona design; persona framing in ambient, wearable and spatial interfaces; energy footprints and ethics of large‑scale AI; feminist, decolonial or post‑human critiques; embodied and situated design methods.
How to participate
Attendance is open to all registered UbiComp/ISWC delegates. For archival credit, submit a two‑page position paper, design fiction or demo abstract (ACM IMWUT template) by 30 May 2025. Notifications follow 20 June; camera‑ready files are due 29 June.
Organisers
Julius Yls
Julius Yls is the lead organiser of this workshop and a Lecturer at the Institute of Creativity & Innovation (Xiamen University, China / University for the Creative Arts, UK). With over two decades of academic and industry experience across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East, his work integrates AI-driven spatial computing, digital media arts, and interactive design.
Beyond academia, he has advised the early development of technology startups focused on VR environments, AI-powered education, and creative tooling. Julius has presented and published internationally at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and Transmediale, and his creative research includes contributions to Objects in Air (University of Chicago Press).
His background in visual storytelling has also been internationally recognized, including the National Geographic Travel Photographer Award, enriching his interdisciplinary approach to design and technology. His current research explores innovative AI personas that foreground sustainability, inclusivity, and plural futures within ubiquitous computing.
Faculty of Digital Media Arts, Institute of The Creative Arts (ICI), Xiamen University, China & University of the Creative Arts (UCA), United Kingdom
julius.yls@uca.ac.uk
Dr. Kok Cheow Yeoh
Dr. Yeoh is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Indiana University Southeast (USA) and a pioneering co-founder of the Visual Communication program at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design, and Media (Singapore). As a scholar-practitioner with 20+ years of experience, he bridges academia and industry through research in visual anthropology, sociolinguistics, and interdisciplinary design innovation—work thriving at the theory-practice nexus.
His investigations explore how visual communication intersects with societal frameworks, focusing on sustainability, cultural narratives, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Published in peer-reviewed journals and exhibited globally (China, Australia, UK, US, Malaysia, South Korea, etc.), he treats travel as both methodology and mindset, advancing design research into culturally grounded solutions.
Currently expanding his impact through partnerships, he collaborates on projects that redefine boundaries between design, human-centered systems, political discourse, and ecological resilience.
School of Arts and Letters, Indiana University Southeast, USA
yeohk@iu.edu
DRAFT Schedule : TBC