email: jgjanet[at]umich.edu
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Janet Johnson
Janet Johnson
Hello! I'm a mixed-methods researcher and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, where I work with Dr. Michael Nebeling in the Information Interaction Lab. I study how we can leverage the spatial capabilities of extended reality (XR) and the analytical and generative capacities of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance collaborative intelligence and support complex teamwork. Read about our exploration of collaborative GenAI agents and what XR can bring to the table here, and join the conversation about human-AI teams at our CSCW workshop in October!
My work is grounded in the belief that human collaboration is one of our most powerful tools for tackling complex problems — and that the spaces we design for it fundamentally shape how we work together and what we can achieve. I am particularly interested in building intelligent collaborative spaces that expand access to expertise and serve as cognitive aids while balancing computational augmentation with human agency in group settings.
More broadly, I use a human-centered approach to evaluate complex socio-technical systems, explore new avenues of interactions, and create frameworks that help practitioners design more meaningful experiences for the people they serve. I received my PhD from UC San Diego, where I was advised by Dr. Nadir Weibel and was part of both the HXI Lab and the Design Lab. My dissertation focused on enhancing support for collaborative XR experiences that go beyond realism. I am also affiliated with the X Reality Safety Initiative, where I serve as an advisor and contribute to safety frameworks for medical XR. In the past, I've worked with Meta Reality Labs, PwC, Microsoft, and Juniper Networks.
Recent Projects
Recent Projects
Exploring Collaborative GenAI Agents
I am currently focused on projects that explore the design and function of collaborative GenAI Agents in synchronous group settings (view our exploratory study here).
Designing Sensory-Inclusive XR Environments
This project focuses on adapting a users XR environment to their sensory needs (details not public).
Understanding Trauma Team Dynamics during VR Simulations
This project focuses on a theory-based approach to build a computational understanding of team dynamics (details not public).
My PhD dissertation took a communication-and-cognition-first approach to enhance XR-mediated collaboration for physical tasks and uncover the unique affordances of its spatial capabilities.
Leveraging Experts’ Situated Experiences to Ease Remote Guidance in Collaborative Mixed Reality. Published at CHI 2023.
Uncovering the effects of spatial information and automated guidance to task objects. Published at CHI 2021.
An XR trauma care environment with a focus on real-time remote guidance for open surgery. This project was a collaboration with the US Naval Medical Center.
AI-driven Processes in Healthcare
Design research for integrating AI-driven decision making in healthcare with a focus on stroke detection and emergency response (details not public).
Publications
Publications
Full Papers
Full Papers
Janet G. Johnson, Macarena Peralta, Mansanjam Kaur, Ruijie Sophia Huang, Sheng Zhao, Ruijia Guan, Shwetha Rajaram, and Michael Nebeling. Exploring Collaborative GenAI Agents in Synchronous Group Settings: Eliciting Team Perceptions and Design Considerations for the Future of Work, CSCW 2025.
Shwetha Rajaram, Macarena Peralta, Janet G. Johnson, and Michael Nebeling. Exploring the Design Space of Privacy-Driven Adaptation Techniques for Future Augmented Reality Interfaces. CHI '25, Yokohama, Japan [Video].
Janet G Johnson [Dissertation]. Advancing Support for XR-Mediated Remote Collaboration on Physical Tasks, 2023. [Defense Slides].
Janet G Johnson, Tommy Sharkey, Iramuali Cynthia Butarbutar, Danica Xiong, Ruijie Huang, Lauren Sy, and Nadir Weibel. UnMapped: Leveraging Experts' Situated Experiences to Ease Remote Guidance in Collaborative Mixed Reality. CHI '23, Hamburg, Germany [Teaser Video, Talk].
M.D. Tadlock, E.J. Olson, D. Gasques, R. Champagne, M.J. Krzyzaniak, S.A. Belverud, V. Ravindra, J. Kerns, P. M Choi, J. Deveraux, J. Johnson, T. Sharkey, M. Yip, N. Weibel, K. Davis Mixed reality surgical mentoring of combat casualty care related procedures in a perfused cadaver model: Initial results of a randomized feasibility study. Surgery 2022.
Chen, Chen, Janet G. Johnson, Alice Charles, Kemeberly abd Lee, Ella T. Lifset, Michael Hogarth, Alison A. Moore, Emilia Farcas, and Nadir Weibel. Understanding Barriers and Design Opportunities to Improve Healthcare and QOL for Older Adults through Voice Assistants. ASSETS '21, Virtual Event, USA.
Janet G Johnson, Danilo Gasques, Tommy Sharkey, Evan Schmitz, and Nadir Weibel. Do You Really Need to Know Where “That” Is? Enhancing Support for Referencing in Collaborative Mixed Reality Environments. CHI '21, Yokohama, Japan. [Video, Slides]
Danilo Gasques, Janet G Johnson, Tommy Sharkey, Yuanyuan Feng, Ru Wang, Zhuoqun Robin Xu, Enrique Zavala, Yifei Zhang, Wanze Xie, Xinming Zhang, Konrad Davis, Michael Yip, and Nadir Weibel. ARTEMIS: A Collaborative Mixed-Reality System for Immersive Surgical Telementoring. CHI '21, Yokohama, Japan.
W. Xie, Y. Liang, J. Johnson, A. Mower, S. Burns, C. Chelini, P. D'Alessandro, N. Weibel, J.P. Schulze. Interactive Multi-User 3D Visual Analytics in Augmented Reality. IS&T The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality '20, San Fracisco, CA, USA.
Janet G. Johnson, Evan Schmitz, Venktesh Ramnath, and Nadir Weibel. Nurture-Empower-Support: A Human-Centered Approach to Understand and Support ICU Families. PervasiveHealth '19, Trento, Italy. [Slides]
Janet G. Johnson, Danilo Gasques Rodrigues, Madhuri Gubbala, and Nadir Weibel. HoloCPR: Designing and Evaluating a Mixed Reality Interface for Time-Critical Emergencies. PervasiveHealth '18, New York, NY USA. [Slides]
Position Papers, White Papers, and Extended Abstracts
Position Papers, White Papers, and Extended Abstracts
Macarena Peralta, Ruijie Sophia Huang, Yelnaz Rysbek , Michael Nebeling, Janet Johnson. Toward Sensory-Inclusive XR: Creating Adaptive and Stim-Friendly Environments for Neurodivergent Users. Position paper at the workshop on Building an Inclusive and Accessible Metaverse for All, CHI '25, Yokohama, Japan.
Janet G. Johnson, Steven Rick. The Promise and Peril of Collaboration: Fostering Appropriate Reliance When Problem-Solving with GenAI. Position paper at the Tools for Thought Workshop, CHI '24, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Janet G. Johnson, Jens Emil Grønbæk. Embracing Asymmetries for Inclusivity in Collaborative MR. Position paper at the Designing Inclusive Future Augmented Realities Workshop, CHI '24, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Janet Johnson, Julia Scott, Richard Price. Immersive Healthcare & AI: Finding the balance between innovation, and shared responsibility, a Roundtable Report based on the Metaverse Safety Week 2023, XRSI
Charles, K., Chen, C., Johnson, J., Lee, A., Lifset, E., Hogarth, M., Weibel, N., Farcas, E., Moore, A. How might an intelligent voice assistant address older adults' health-related needs?. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society '21, NJ, USA (abstract)
Chen, C., Mrini, K., Charles, K., Johnson, J., Lee, A., Lifset, E., Hogarth, M., Moore, A., Nakashole, N., Weibel, N., Farcas, E. VOLI: Voice Assistant for Quality of Life and Healthcare Improvement in Aging Populations. Smart Health in the AI and COVID Era, NSF Smart and Connected Health (SCH) '21, Virtual Workshop.
Nadir Weibel, Danilo Gasques Rodrigues, Janet G. Johnson, Thomas Sharkey, Zhuoqun Xu, Xinming Zhang, Michael Yip, and Konrad Davis. ARTEMIS: Mixed-Reality Environment for Immersive Surgial Telementoring. CHI '20 Extended Abstracts, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Janet G. Johnson, Khalil Mrini, Michael Hogarth, Alison Moore, Ndapa Nakashole, Nadir Weibel, and Emilia Farcas. Voice-Based Conversational Agents for Older Adults. Position Paper at Conversational Agents for Health and Wellbeing, CHI '20, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Farcas, E., Hogarth, M., Johnson, J., Moore, A., Mrini, K., Nakashole, N., Weibel, N. VOLI: Voice Assistant for Quality of Life and Healthcare Improvement in Aging Populations. Advancing Health Through Science Workshop, NSF Smart and Connected Health(SCH) '20, Alexandria, VA, USA.
K.L. Davis, D. Gasques, Y.Zhang, W. Xie, J. Johnson, Y. Feng, Z. Xu, J. Riback, T. Sharkey, M. Yip, N. Weibel. ARTEMIS, Augmented Reality Technology to Enable reMote Integrated Surgery: A Review of Technical Consideration and Study Design. MHSRS '19, Orlando, USA.
Danilo Gasques Rodrigues, Janet G. Johnson, Thomas Sharkey, and Nadir Weibel. PintAR: Sketching Spatial Experiences in Augmented Reality. DIS '19, San Diego, USA. (Demo)
Thomas Sharkey, Janet G. Johnson, Danilo Gasques, and Nadir Weibel. I Want to Be a Surgeon! Role Playing for Remote Surgery in Mixed Reality. Workshop on Interactive Systems for Healthcare, CHI '19, Glasgow, UK.
Janet G. Johnson, Evan Schmitz, Venktesh Ramnath, and Nadir Weibel. Designing Family-Centered Aids for the Intensive Care Unit. CHI '19 Extended Abstracts, Glasgow, UK. [Poster]
Danilo Gasques Rodrigues, Janet G. Johnson, Thomas Sharkey, and Nadir Weibel. What You Sketch Is What You Get: Quick and Easy Augmented Reality Prototyping with PintAR. CHI '19 Extended Abstracts, Glasgow, UK.
Danilo Gasques, Janet G. Johnson, and Nadir Weibel. Real-time guidance for cardiopulmonary resuscitation in Mixed Reality. PervasiveHealth '18, New York, NY USA. (Demo)
Teaching, Events, and Service
Teaching, Events, and Service
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching Staff for Nadir Weibel's Human-Centered AI, 2022
Teaching Assistant for Nadir Weibel's Towards Human-Centered AI, Fall 2021
Teaching Assistant for Nadir Weibel's Ubiquitous Computing, Fall 2017, 2018, and 2019
Teaching Assistant for Nadir Weibel's Human-Computer Interaction for Health (HCI4H), Winter 2019, Spring 2021 and 2022
Teaching Staff on Scott Klemmer's Interaction Design Specialization on Coursera, Aug 2017 - Aug 2019
Teaching Assistant for Scott Klemmer's Advanced Interaction Design, Spring 2017
Academic Service and Organizing
Academic Service and Organizing
Program Committee member for the Interaction Beyond the Individual Subcommittee for CHI 2026.
Program Committee member for the Understanding People - Statistical and Quantitative Methods Subcommittee for CHI 2025.
Program Committee member for ISMAR 2024 and 2025.
Track Chair for Medical XR and Immersive Healthcare at the Metaverse Safety Week 2022.
Organized a hybrid Empathic Computing Workshop at IEEE VR 2022 with Dr. Mark Billinghurst and Dr. Arindam Dey.
Web co-chair for UbiComp and ISWC 2020.
Program Committee member for CHI 2023 Late-Breaking Work.
Reviewer for CHI, CSCW, IEEE VR, VRST, SUI, CHI Play, TEI, MobileHCI, and ISWC.
Invited Talks and Guest Lectures
Invited Talks and Guest Lectures
2025
Invited talk on Augmenting Collaborative Problem-Solving: Opportunities and Challenges for GenAI in Group Settings at the HCI Community Talk Series at Microsoft Research Cambridge (Remote).
Guest lecture on Designing for Collaboration for Vitaliy Popov's Teamwork in Healthcare (LHS680) at UofM.
2024
Invited talk on XR and AI in Collaborative Work for UMSI's Theme Year Talk - Future of Work.
Guest lecture on Designing Collaborative GenAI Agents in XR for an Yukang Yan's HCI course at the University of Rochester.
Panel member for New Frontiers in XR at the UofM Innovation Summit 2024.
Panel member for Collective Creativity with the Collective Intelligence Journal 2024.
2023
Lecture on Research Methods in HCI for UC San Diego's Design Lab Internship Lecture Series.
Guest lecture on Designing Spatial Collaborative Interfaces for UC San Diego's Human Computer Interaction (COGS 120).
2022
Invited talk on Designing Collaborative Experiences in eXtended Reality at Adobe's HCI/Viz Research Seminar 2022.
Lecture on Research Methods in HCI for UC San Diego's Design Lab Internship Lecture Series.
2019
XR Demo at Remote Collaboration in XR, Filene’s big.bright.minds. Irvine, CA.
Demo at Introduction to Augmented Reality, Women in STEM, San Diego Science & Engineering Fair San Diego, CA.
Talk and demo at Mixed Reality and HCI Research, Harvey Mudd Research Open House Claremont, CA.
2018
AR prototyping guest lecture for UC San Diego's Cognitive Design Studio (COGS 102C).
Invited talk at Video Games to the Rescue! with Dr. Nadir Weibel, Fleet Science Center San Diego, CA.
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