Meican Ma

Education

Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Honours), University of Sydney
Software Development & Business Analytics
Expected completion: November 2026

Papers & manuscripts

1. OzCHI 2026
   Accepted for presentation

   Graphing the Everyday: A Neurosymbolic Approach to Eliciting Routines for Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions

   Second author

2. XAI for U 2026
   Accepted · Workshop at UbiComp / ISWC

   An Inspectable Neuro-Symbolic Pipeline for Routine Elicitation in Conversational Health Coaching

   Third author

3. CHI 2027
   Submitted

   Effect of an AI Coach’s Communication Style and Message Framing on Motivating Physical Activity

   Second author

Aura

Unpublished research · Details on enquiry

A voice-based AI walking coach. Exploring communication, motivation, and everyday human–AI interaction.

The research behind this project has not yet been published, so I’m keeping the full project details private for now. You’re welcome to contact me with questions or to discuss the work.

mema2458@uni.sydney.edu.au

the Absence of Devine · 神缺席

Playable demo · Independent game team · 2026

Play a creator goddess in a world of intersecting lives. Building a commercial narrative game, and exploring emotional simulation and companionship.

• Lead the engineering of a playable narrative game with a collaborative art, writing and design team.
• Use making to explore what gives characters emotional continuity and makes their relationships matter to players.
• Developing research questions about runtime discriminative AI, companionship and creative practice.

A playable demo is in place. The team’s October 2026 presentation reports 23M+ cross-platform views, 500K+ likes and 100K+ saves around the trailer’s public reception. These are social-reach figures, not player counts. Runtime discriminative AI, emotional simulation and sustained companionship form an exploratory research direction.

Discriminative AI

Ongoing research · Offline prototype · Collaboration with Yihao Dong · 2026

Exploring task-aware screen reading: what should an AI prioritise, and how can people understand and revise its choices?

• Built preliminary tools and explored early approaches in offline and simulated settings.
• Using possible failures to question what information selection makes visible and what it conceals.
• Framing research around task relevance, information omissions, interruption timing and user control.

Early technical exploration is in place. I am refining what useful, understandable and correctable assistance should mean from a person’s perspective. Research with screen-reader users remains ahead; accessibility benefits have not been established.

Prosocial Lies

Unpublished research · Details on enquiry

Exploring kindness, honesty, and social choices through game-based research.

The research behind this project has not yet been published, so I’m keeping the full project details private for now. You’re welcome to contact me with questions or to discuss the work.

mema2458@uni.sydney.edu.au

Visual Haptics

Study design · Collaboration with Ravindu Pushpakumara ↗ · 2026–27

Can sparse signals feel continuous? Exploring visual cues, tactile experience and the evidence connecting them.

• Connecting research on vision and touch to questions about richer sensations with limited physical resources.
• Developing a study design that distinguishes a person’s experience from the claims we make about it.
• Considering how expectation, confidence and interpretation shape what sensory evidence can tell us.

Literature and early study-design groundwork are in place. The research is still developing; participant findings and hardware savings have not been established.

BirdRadar

HCI / UIUX design · Implemented web prototype · Course project extended in 2026

A world in flight. Connecting bird journeys, nearby observations, illustrated keepsakes and a small action at home.

• Extended an existing course project through interaction design, interface design and frontend prototyping.
• Connected historical and nearby map exploration, bird profiles, a saved stamp collection and Lights Out actions.
• Designed explicit location controls, persistent navigation context, readable data provenance and alternatives to motion.

The prototype is implemented and published. User evaluation and ecological impact remain open questions.

Live prototype · GitHub

Acute Loss

Future inquiry · Earlier collaborative research · Supervision: Zhanna Sarsenbayeva · Looking ahead

AI, absence and unfinished conversations. Exploring imagined replies, reflective listening and the space for a person’s own understanding.

• Built an exploratory conversational prototype that helped me rethink what an imagined reply might mean to someone.
• Developed research framing and study materials, and contributed to ethics preparation.
• Want to carry forward questions about absence, representation, perceived support and a person’s own interpretation.

An earlier collaborative project produced a prototype and study materials before being archived. I now present it as a future research direction. Participant evaluation has not been conducted; no therapeutic benefit is established.