hsimao@lasige.di.fc.ul.pt

Hugo Simão

MSc Student

I am an Industrial Designer and Academic Researcher focused on IoT technology and Human-Robot Interaction studies regarding the perception of the impact and acceptance in humans. For this, my approach is essentially User-Centered Design and Research Through Design. I am currently finishing my MSc where the main topic is the development of a small robot to help people with Alzheimer’s in their routine management.

Publications

Exploring how a digitized program can support parents to improve their children's nutritional habits

Diogo Branco, Ana C. Pires, Hugo Simão, Ana Gomes, Ana Pereira, Joana Sousa, Luísa Barros, Tiago Guerreiro

INTERACT 2021 ‑ International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, September, 2021

Exploring Accessible Programming with Educators and Visually Impaired Children

Ana Cristina Pires, Filipa Rocha, António Barros, Hugo Simão, Hugo Nicolau, Tiago Guerreiro

IDC 2020 ‑ ACM Interaction Design and Children

Carrier-pigeon Robot: Promoting Interactions Among Older Adults in a Care Home

Hugo Simão, Ana Cristina Pires, David Gonçalves, Tiago Guerreiro

HRI 2020 ‑ Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '20 Companion)

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DOI
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🏅 Best paper award

MATY: Designing An Assistive Robot for People with Alzheimer’s

Hugo Simão, Tiago Guerreiro

CHI 2019 ‑ In The CHI EA '19 Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Projects

Photo taken from the Workshop with children. Two visually impaired children perform a goal-directed programming activity using a map located on the table. The activity consists of moving the robot to reach the duck. The map is made of 4 EVA foam tiles with two different colors. The child on the right is concentrated in arranging the blocks while the children at the left are touching the duck after the robot reached the duck. This child is smiling and has much of his body on the table.

Inclusive education

We aim to develop technological solutions to enable an inclusive education for children with mixed abilities. We have mainly developed enhanced tangible objects for the acquisition of abstract concepts, such as mathematics or computational thinking. Besides the benefit of decreasing cognitive load and reinforcing understanding, manipulatives also support collaboration, making children more prone to divide, explore and share supporting cooperative actions.

Photo taken to a 2 years-old girl who is smiling and pointing to the camera.

Personalized Digital Interventions

We seek to tailor and personalize digital interventions to increase users motivation and adherence to the interventions. To this end, is crucial to gather a deep understanding of the intervention, context of use, benefits and difficulties associated and to accede to the mental models (goals, needs, motivations, etc) of the users.

The robot Baxter with his arms extended and a blind person feeling its hands

HRI for Health & Accessibility

Robots have a very particular set of skills. Skills that have been acquired over a vast amount of reasearch. Skills that make them powerful tools to leverage for social inclusion, accessibility and interaction.