Serena Guo knows technology can help people connect with one another.
That may sound counterintuitive in a world where computers, whether on desks or in pockets, dominate our attention and often serve to discourage social interaction. But Guo believes that thoughtfully designed technologies can do just the opposite, sparking human connections that never would have happened otherwise. And her research is bearing that out.
By harnessing a unique interdisciplinary background across architecture, social psychology and robotics, Guo has led creative projects that leverage technology, including custom-designed robots, to encourage social interaction rather than prevent it. “I treat our living environment, and space in general, as an interface,” Guo explained. Her arrival at the Information School and CDIS reflects UW–Madison’s place as an emerging national leader in human-centered research at the nexus of design, technology and society.
From Architecture to Algorithms
Guo’s path to the Information School was deliberately multidisciplinary. After earning her bachelor’s in architectural design from the University of Hong Kong, she spent two years designing spaces in a rural village. She then pursued a professional architecture degree at Columbia, worked at a VR startup in New York, and completed her PhD in Information Science at Cornell with a minor in social psychology.
“Interdisciplinary research helps bring in different expertise, and as designers we act as sort of cooks in the kitchen, trying to bring the ingredients together,” Guo said. Throughout her journey, one theme has remained constant: the blending of the digital and the physical through spatial experience. Her approach, known as “research through design,” uses design itself as a vehicle to produce knowledge. Rather than analyzing current situations, “I imagine the possible futures of our world,” she explained. “We use this method to envision how technology can work in the future and how people might react to it.”
Interdisciplinary research helps bring in different expertise, and as designers we act as sort of cooks in the kitchen, trying to bring the ingredients together.
Serena Guo
Guo said she was drawn to UW–Madison specifically for the Information School’s position “at the intersection of information design and society” and its commitment to human-centered and ethically grounded practice that allows her to pursue both technical depth and social impact.
Human connection in a screen-centric world
Walk through any airport terminal, campus building or library, and you’ll see people hunched over phones, absorbed in the digital world. Guo noticed this pattern and wondered if, instead, technology could be made to subtly encourage the human-to-human connections people often avoid.
One of her recent projects, MirrorBot, emerged from a simple question: What if we could see strangers’ faces without sitting right across from them? Could that help expand the realm of opportunity for small, yet potentially meaningful, social interactions—even if just a glance or a smile? The custom-designed robot, developed with collaborators at Cornell, uses mirrors and screens to reflect the images of strangers across a room to each other, creating unexpected visual connections. When deployed at Cornell, people took pictures, made faces, and engaged with it in ways both delightful and destructive, providing valuable lessons about how we respond to technologies that disrupt our spatial routines. Guo is exploring opportunities to deploy similar interventions on the UW–Madison campus.
Another creative project Guo led, SocialStools, earned an honorable mention for best paper at a major human-computer interaction conference and took a similar approach to MirrorBot. The installation turned people into part of a physical interface, using light and music that changed as strangers moved closer or oriented toward or away from each other.
“There’s strong value in connecting with strangers, even just a smile or just a wave,” Guo said. “They lighten up your day and create a sense of belonging in the world and also in a community.”
Guo’s work adds a new element to the iSchool’s broad research portfolio: creative exploration into ways the physical and virtual worlds can converge, creating something greater than the sum of its technological parts. “I think technology is more of a method, not the final goal,” she said. “Theoretically, we want to help create an ideal world, and technology can help us achieve that.”
Building the future
Guo is already making her mark on campus through both teaching and research. She is the instructor for LIS 613 (User Experience Design 3), a graduate course where students engage in hands-on activities and semester-long projects, learning how to conduct user studies and translate findings into design decisions. “I really like learning-by-doing as a teaching methodology,” she said.
She’s also collaborating with the Computer Sciences Department’s People and Robots Laboratory, led by Professor Bilge Mutlu, participating in weekly lab meetings and discussions with PhD students. This kind of cross-departmental collaboration makes UW–Madison fertile ground for innovative research.
Her advice to students and researchers reflects the background she brings to the iSchool: “Build the world that you want to live in for the future. Think deeply about what types of experience you value.”
Guo’s work exemplifies the Information School’s commitment to research and education that addresses real human needs at the intersection of technology and society. The premise is increasingly urgent. In our rush toward digital futures, we risk losing something essential about human experience: our embodied, social nature as humans. Her research suggests we don’t have to choose between technological progress and human connection. With thoughtful design, we can have both. The future she’s building is one where technology helps the spaces we inhabit become active participants in bringing us together rather than keeping us apart.