Research and Publications

Go to Google Scholar for a full list of my papers. They do a better job organizing my publications than I could, or care to.

As an HCI researcher, my work is very multidisciplinary. My research broadly draws from the fields of participatory design, social computing, learning sciences, data science, and information visualization. These research directions are not mutually exclusive and often feature significant overlap. You can use the filters below to explore my projects.

Research Seminar

Generative AI in Undergraduate Education

Temple HCI Lab research seminar on teaching programming with and without AI.

Research Talk

Problem Framing and Design Structure

A talk about design goals, solution spaces, and how problem framing shapes innovation.

Filters:
all
participatory design
just-in-time learning
reflection and sensemaking
Helping or Homogenizing? GenAI as a Design Partner to Pre-Service SLPs for Just-in-Time Programming of AAC
Helping or Homogenizing? GenAI as a Design Partner to Pre-Service SLPs for Just-in-Time Programming of AAC

Studying when AI support helps AAC design and when it over-homogenizes communication options

C. Zastudil, C. Holyfield, C. Kapp, K. Hamilton, K. Baru, L. Newsam, J. A. Smith, S. MacNeil
ACM ASSETS 2025
All Roads Lead to ChatGPT: How Generative AI is Eroding Social Interactions and Student Learning Communities
All Roads Lead to ChatGPT: How Generative AI is Eroding Social Interactions and Student Learning Communities

How AI-mediated help-seeking is reshaping classroom social support

I. Hou, O. Man, K. Hamilton, S. Muthusekaran, J. Johnykutty, L. Zadeh, S. MacNeil
ACM ITiCSE 2025
Exploring the use of Generative AI to Support Automated Just-in-Time Programming for Visual Scene Displays
Exploring the use of Generative AI to Support Automated Just-in-Time Programming for Visual Scene Displays

Using generative AI to create more relevant, context-aware AAC communication options

C. Zastudil, C. Holyfield, C. Kapp, X. Crosland, E. Lorah, T. Zimmerman, S. MacNeil
ACM ASSETS 2024
Generating Code Explanations using Large Language Models
Generating Code Explanations using Large Language Models

Constructing design galleries via feature extraction and semantic clustering

S. MacNeil, A. Tran, D. Mogil, S. Bernstein, E. Ross, F. Huang
ACM ICER 2022, ACM SIGCSE 2023
ProbMap: Automatically constructed design galleries
ProbMap: Automatically constructed design galleries

Constructing design galleries via feature extraction and semantic clustering

S. MacNeil, Z. Ding, K. Quan, Z. Huang, K. Chen, S. Dow
ACM UIST 2021
ProbLib: Helping Novices to Frame Better Problems
ProbLib: Helping Novices to Frame Better Problems

Scaffolding to structurally decompose the problem framing process

S. MacNeil, Z. Ding, K. Quan, T. Parashos, Y. Sun, S. Dow
ACM C&C 2021
End-User Design in Canvas
End-User Design in Canvas

A mixed-methods analysis of Canvas LMS Design Ideas

S. MacNeil, Z. Ding, A. Boone, A. Grubbs, S. Dow
ACM CSCW 2021
CoNotate: Adaptive Query Suggestions Support Learning
CoNotate: Adaptive Query Suggestions Support Learning

Using context from designers' notes to inform search

S. Palani, Z. Ding, A. Nguyen, A. Chuang, S. MacNeil, S. Dow
ACM CHI 2021
The Active Search Hypothesis
The Active Search Hypothesis

A study of creative workers' notetaking and searching behaviors

S. Palani, Z. Ding, S. MacNeil, S. Dow
ACM CHIIR 2021
D4SD: Design for San Diego
D4SD: Design for San Diego

A regional civic designathon

S. MacNeil, B. McInnis, J. Taylor, S. Dow, E. Hekler, M. Morris
In Progress
Curri: Visualizating the Curriculum
Curri: Visualizating the Curriculum

Visualizing students' pathways through the curriculum

S. MacNeil, M. Dorodchi, E. Al-Hossami, A. Benedict, MJ Mahzoon, D. Desai
ASEE 2020, IEEE FIE 2018
IneqDetect: Visualizing Student Conversations
IneqDetect: Visualizing Student Conversations

Supporting group reflection in contingent contexts like collaboration

S. MacNeil, K. Kiefer, D. Takle, B. Thompson, C. Latulipe
ACM CompEd '19
Reflection Analytics
Reflection Analytics

Integrating affect into learning analytics

FIE '18, FIE '19
Educational Design Patterns
Educational Design Patterns

Mapping out our departments' teaching patterns

N. Dehbozorgi, S. MacNeil, ML Maher, M. Dorodchi
FIE '18, Book Chapter '20
Nature Net: Designing with and for the Crowd
Nature Net: Designing with and for the Crowd

Studying Design Cognition in Online Crowd Innovation

S. MacNeil, S. Abdellahi, ML Maher, J. Kim, MJ Mahzoon, K. Grace
DCC '18
Nature Net
Nature Net

Participatory design and citizen science

H. Killen, T. Clegg, J. Kim, S. MacNeil, J. Preece, ML. Maher, T. Yeh
In Progress
Dimensional Reasoning
Dimensional Reasoning

An app for dimensionalizing conceptual spaces

S. MacNeil, J. Okerlund, C. Latulipe
ACM C&C '17, ACC ICCC '17
Distributed Lightweight Teams
Distributed Lightweight Teams

Studying face-to-face and online collaboration

S. MacNeil, C. Latulipe, A. Yadav
ACM ICER '15, ACM SIGCSE '16
BRIDGES
BRIDGES

A system for visualizing data-structure assignments

completed
Visualization Mosaics
Visualization Mosaics

A framework for building visualization dashboards

S. MacNeil, N. Elmqvist
Computer Graphics Forum '13