HCI & Design
X
Social Justice & Sustainability
I am a PhD candidate in Digital Media (expected in Sep/Oct 2025) at the Interactive Technologies Institute, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and as an affiliated PhD student at CMU/HCII within the scope of CMU Portugal. My PhD research examines the evolving relationship between design activities and labor. On one hand, I investigate the gig economy and platform work through ethnographic methods, aiming to identify, interpret, and critically discuss the central role of workers and labor within design processes. On the other hand, I explore how design strategies can improve the lived experiences of marginalized working communities, as well as how designers navigate corporate environments to advocate for worker justice. I am an interdisciplinary design researcher who develops flexible design approaches to pragmatically navigate the power dynamics that designers encounter within real-world organizational settings, while addressing issues of social justice and sustainability.
I am currently supervised by Prof. Nuno Jardim Nunes (Ulisboa) and co-supervised by Prof. John Zimmerman (CMU) and Prof. Valentina Nisi (Ulisboa). My dissertation committee includes Prof. Paul Hekkert (TU Delft), Prof. Min Kyung Lee (UT Austin), and Prof. Ana Viseu (NOVA). Prior to my PhD, I’m a service and interaction designer with a Master’s Degree in Arts in Design from Tongji University, Shanghai, China. I hold a keen interest in sustainability and have previously engaged in projects related to sustainability and digital social innovation, collaborating with Prof. Francesca Valsecchi (Tongji Ecology and Cultures Innovation Lab).
Research Interest: Design, HCI, RtD, Service Design, Labor Design, Social Justice and Sustainability
I am open to collaborating with diverse designers and researchers. Please reach out via shuhao.ma@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
Selected Publications
- Valentina Nisi, Paulo Bala, Vanessa Cesário, Shuhao Ma, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2025. Speculating Migrant Possible Worlds through Magic Machines. Accepted by CSCW 2025. DOI
- Shuhao Ma, Zhiming Liu, Valentina Nisi, Sarah E Fox, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2025. Speculative Job Design: Probing Alternative Opportunities for Gig Workers in an Automated Future. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25), April 26-May 1, 2025, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI
- Shuhao Ma. 2024. Advancing HCI and Design Methods to Empower Gig Workers. In Companion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 37–40. DOI
- Shuhao Ma, John Zimmerman, Sarah Fox, Valentina Nisi, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2024. “My Sense of Morality Leads to My Suffering, Battling, and Arguing”: The Role of Platform Designers in (Un)Deciding Gig Worker Issues. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (Copenhagen, DK) (DIS ’24). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI
- Shuhao Ma, Paulo Bala, Valentina Nisi, John Zimmerman, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2023. Uncovering Gig Worker-Centered Design Opportunities in Food Delivery Work. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) (DIS ’23). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 688–701. DOI
- Shuhao Ma, Valentina Nisi, John Zimmerman, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2023. Mapping the Research Landscape of the Gig Work for Design on Labour Research. In Proceedings of IASDR 2023: Life-changing Design (Milan, Italy) (IASDR ’23). Design Research Society. DOI
- Cesário, Vanessa, Paulo Bala, Shuhao Ma, and Valentina Nisi. 2023. Fostering social inclusion: empathic approaches for Migrant-Centred Design. In Proceedings of IASDR 2023: Life-changing Design (Milan, Italy) (IASDR ’23). Design Research Society. DOI | MEMEX
- Valentina Nisi, Catia Prandi, Shuhao Ma, Marta Ferreira, Hugo Nicolau, Augusto Esteves, and Nuno Nunes. 2023. The design of Tecnico GO!: catering for students’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemics. Multimedia Tools and Applications. DOI | MARE
- Shuhao Ma, Valentina Nisi, Augusto Esteves, Catia Prandi, Hugo Nicolau, Gianni Tumedei, Joao Nogueira, Francesco Boschi, and Nuno Nunes. 2021. Crowdsensing-enabled service design for floating students during the covid-19 pandemic. In Congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research, pp. 943-959. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. DOI | MARE
Research Experience
- 2024 October – 2025 April Visiting PhD Student, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, CMU, USA
- 2020 September – Present Research Assistant, Interactive Technologies Institute, LARSyS, Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal
- 2016 – 2019 Research Assistant, Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Lab, Tongji University, Shanghai, China (now Ecology and Cultures Innovation Lab)
- 2018-2019 Visiting Studnt in Interaction Design, University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria
Academic Sevice
Program Committee
- DIS Zine Chair: 2025
- CHI LBW Associate Chair: 2025
- CSCW Associate Chair: 2025 (July and October Cycle)
Reviewers
- CHI Reviewers: 2024*, 2025**
- DIS Reviewers: 2024*, 2025***
- CSCW Reviewers: 2024, 2025
- IASDR Reviewers: 2021, 2023
- * Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews
Teaching Experience
- 2021 – Spring/BA TA in Environmental Ethics (CIEE Shanghai, Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers University)
- 2021 – Spring/BA TA in Sustainability and Anthropocene (CIEE Shanghai, Pennsylvania State University)
- 2020 – Fall/BA TA in Sustainability and Anthropocene (CIEE Shanghai, Babson College and Syracuse University)
- 2019 – Fall/MA TA in Data Visualization (Tongji University)
Awards
- 2021 CMU Portugal Affiliated Ph.D Scholarship (Portugal)
- 2018 OeAD Ernst Mach Grant for studying at an Austrian university of applied sciences (Austria)
Industry Experiences
- 2018 Interaction Designer Internship @WeChat / Tencent, Guangzhou, China
- 2017 – 2018 UX Product Manager Internship @PinAnTech, Shanghai, China
Education
- 2021-2025 PhD in Digital Media, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal
- 2016-2019 MA in Design, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
- 2012-2016 BE in Industrial Design, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China