James Simpson

Human–Computer Interaction · Artificial Intelligence

Designing better ways for people and AI to work together

Postdoctoral Researcher in Human–Computer Interaction at Philipps-Universität Marburg

Explore my research →
01User Science for AIVisit project site ↗
02Intelligent Interaction TechniquesComing soon

Research programme

My research bridges user science and intelligent interaction design to create AI systems that people can understand, trust, and use effectively.

01

User Science for AI

Developing stronger methods, measures, and theory for understanding how people experience and work with AI.

Explore User Science for AI
02

Intelligent Interaction Techniques

Designing new ways to explore, steer, and work with large language models beyond the conventional chat box.

Coming soon

Publications

Research publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

  1. 2026

    James Simpson, Gaurav Patil, Hamish Stening, Ayman Bin Kamruddin, Daniel Somerville, Sigrid Seage, Patrick Nalepka, Mark Dras, Simon G. Hosking, Rachel W. Kallen, Michael J. Richardson, and Deborah Richards. Can an AI agent lead human teams? Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 7, 100278.View paper

  2. 2022

    James Simpson, Patrick Nalepka, Rachel W. Kallen, Mark Dras, Erik D. Reichle, Simon G. Hosking, Christopher Best, Deborah Richards, and Michael J. Richardson. Conversation dynamics in a multiplayer video game with knowledge asymmetry. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1039431.View paper

Conference and workshop publications

  1. 2026

    James Simpson. Is CUI a Dated Way of Saying LLM? In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’26). Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  2. 2026

    James Simpson, Hamish Stening, Patrick Nalepka, Gaurav Patil, Ayman Bin Kamruddin, Mark Dras, Rachel W. Kallen, Simon G. Hosking, Michael J. Richardson, and Deborah Richards. Who is Behind the Voice? User Reasoning About Agency and Capability in a Multi-Party Conversational Interface. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’26). Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  3. 2025

    James Simpson, Hamish Stening, Gaurav Patil, Patrick Nalepka, Mark Dras, Rachel W. Kallen, Simon G. Hosking, Michael J. Richardson, and Deborah Richards. When Words Fall Short: The Case for Conversational Interfaces that Don’t Listen. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’25), 550–560. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  4. 2025

    James Simpson, Hamish Stening, Patrick Nalepka, Mark Dras, Rachel W. Kallen, Simon G. Hosking, Michael J. Richardson, and Deborah Richards. Towards Teams being Led by a Conversational Agent. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’25), Article 43, 1–17. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  5. 2023

    James Simpson. Has Wizard of Oz Testing Passed Its Use by Date? In Proceedings of the CSCW 2023 Workshop Supporting User Engagement in Testing, Auditing and Contesting AI. 5 pages.View paper

  6. 2023

    James Simpson. Is AI Mimicry Leading to Disappointment? In Proceedings of the CSCW 2023 Workshop Understanding and Mitigating Cognitive Biases in Human-AI Collaboration. 3 pages.View paper

  7. 2023

    James Simpson, Patrick Nalepka, Hamish Stening, Mark Dras, Rachel W. Kallen, Deborah Richards, and Michael J. Richardson. How do People Perceive Collaborative Conversational Agents? In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 3379.View paper

  8. 2023

    James Simpson. Towards Collaborative Conversational User Interfaces for Team Training. In Companion Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI ’23 Companion), 211–213. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  9. 2022

    James Simpson, Michael J. Richardson, and Deborah Richards. A Wizard or a Fool? Initial Assessment of a Wizard of Oz Agent Supporting Collaborative Virtual Environments. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI ’22), 299–301. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  10. 2022

    James Simpson, Hamish Stening, Patrick Nalepka, Mark Dras, Erik D. Reichle, Simon G. Hosking, Christopher J. Best, Deborah Richards, and Michael J. Richardson. DesertWoZ: A Wizard of Oz Environment to Support the Design of Collaborative Conversational Agents. In Companion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 188–192. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  11. 2022

    James Simpson and Cassandra Crone. Should Alexa be a Police Officer, a Doctor, or a Priest? Towards CUI Relationships Worth Having. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’22), Article 20, 1–5. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  12. 2021

    James Simpson, Patrick Nalepka, Cassandra Crone, Rachel W. Kallen, Mark Dras, Erik D. Reichle, Simon G. Hosking, Christopher Best, Deborah Richards, and Michael J. Richardson. Tip of the Finger or Tip of the Tongue? The Effects of Verbal Communication on Online Multi-Player Team Performance. In Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. 5 pages.View paper

  13. 2021

    James Simpson and Deborah Richards. Taming the Interaction Jungle: Embodiment is All You Need. In Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’21). 4 pages.View paper

  14. 2021

    James Simpson and Cassandra Crone. Can Alexa be a Team Player? In Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’21). 4 pages.View paper

  15. 2020

    James Simpson. Are CUIs Just GUIs with Speech Bubbles? In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’20), Article 23, 1–3. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  16. 2020

    James Simpson, Franziska Gaiser, Miroslav Macík, and Timna Breßgott. Daisy: A Friendly Conversational Agent for Older Adults. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’20), Article 33, 1–3. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  17. 2019

    James Simpson. How is Siri different than GUIs? In Companion Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI ’19), 145–146. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

  18. 2011

    James Simpson and Michael Terry. Embedding Interface Sketches in Code. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’11), 91–92. Association for Computing Machinery.View paper

Teaching

Learning HCI by doing HCI.

Course taughtWiSe 2025/26 · SoSe 2026

User Research for Interactive Systems

This hands-on seminar introduces students to the practical methods used to study how people interact with technology. Students develop research questions, design and run user studies, collect and analyse quantitative and qualitative data, and communicate their findings in a seminar presentation and research paper.

The course covers research ethics and data privacy, experimental design, participant sampling, usability testing, questionnaires, interviews, automated and rapid user-research methods, and the reporting of empirical findings.

View the course archive
Planned course

Interaction Techniques Seminar

Planned course

Human–Computer Interaction

About

I study the space between what AI can do and what people need it to do.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Philipps-Universität Marburg. My work draws together human–computer interaction, conversational interfaces, user research, and intelligent systems.

I completed my PhD at Macquarie University, where I investigated how AI agents can coordinate task-directed conversations with human teams.

Philipps-Universität Marburg