Sarah Schömbs
Sarah Schömbs
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Contact me at: s.schombs [at] unimelb.edu.au
Hi there!
I am a PhD student in HCI at the University of Melbourne, focusing on designing agents for impactful human-centred risk communication. My research examines how embodied agents can act as novel interfaces for risk communication, given their promising features (social presence, physicality, agency) and anticipated roles in supporting everyday tasks. I aim to make risk information more accessible and to enhance users’ understanding of risk in human-agent interaction. Building on this, my current research includes AI agents more broadly, exploring risk communication and alignment in agentic systems, including multi-agent systems. I like to explore unconventional, novel solutions to turn risk communication from a dry, technical process into something engaging, intuitive, and meaningful. I like to think of my research as human-centred risk communication with a twist - whether it’s mapping probabilities onto robot movements, or exploring an agent’s face as a visualisation interface. By making abstract risks tangible and understandable, I aim to push the boundaries of HCI and design systems that are not only transparent and trustworthy but also capable of supporting informed and appropriate decisions and risk responses. Beyond my PhD, I am interested in critical tech, sustainability and mental health.
Beyond research, I actively contribute to the academic community as AC for CHI'25 LBW, Sustainability Co-Chair for HRI 2025, and co-organiser of the "Sustainability-4-HRI, HRI-4-Sustainability" workshop at HRI’25. I was invited to the CHI'25 Doctoral Consortium and HRI 2025 Pioneers. My work has been supported by fellowships and scholarships, including the Diane Lemaire Scholarship (2024), Google Travel Grant (2024), and Rowden White Scholarship (2023). As a Wattle Program Fellow on global sustainability leadership, I lead an action project designing social media interventions to support Gen Z’s well-being in the context of climate change.
#Human-Agent Interaction
#Risk Communication
#Transparency
#Decision-Making
Publications
Publications
S. Pareek, S. Schömbs, E. Velloso, J. Goncalves. "It’s Not the AI’s Fault Because It Relies Purely on Data": How Causal Attributions of AI Decisions Shape Trust in AI Systems. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2025 (CHI’25), to appear. (Honorable Mention)
Communicating Internal and External Risks in Human-Robot Interaction
S. Schömbs (2025). Communicating Internal and External Risks in Human-Robot Interaction. In Companion of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '25), to appear.
Designing Embodied Agents for Impactful Human-Centred Risk Communication
S. Schömbs (2025). Designing Embodied Agents for Impactful Human-Centred Risk Communication. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '25), to appear.
User Willingness to Engage with AI-Generated Influencer Content
C. Sew, S. Schömbs, R.M. Kelly, J. Goncalves (2025). User Willingness to Engage with AI-Generated Influencer Content. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’25 LBW), to appear.
OfficeMate: Pilot Evaluation of an Office Assistant Robot
Jiahe Pan, Sarah Schömbs, Yan Zhang, Ramtin Tabatabaei, Muhammad Bilal, Wafa Johal. 2024. OfficeMate: Pilot Evaluation of an Office Assistant Robot. In Companion of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '25), to appear.
Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and Embodiment
Schömbs, S., Pareek, S., Goncalves, J., & Johal, W. (2024). Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and Embodiment. n Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024 (CHI’24), 2024.
FaceVis: Exploring the Robot's Face for Affective Visualisation Design
Schömbs, S., Pan, J., Zhang, Y., Goncalves, J., & Johal, W. (2024). FaceVis: Exploring a Robot's Face for Affective Visualisation Design. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024 (CHI’24), 2024.
Exploring Data Agency and Autonomous Agents as Embodied Data Visualizations
Schömbs, S., Goncalves, J., & Johal, W. (2023). Exploring Data Agency and Autonomous Agents as Embodied Data Visualizations. Poster presented at VIS '23: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
Schömbs, S., Klein, J., & Roesler, E. (2023). Feeling with a robot—the role of anthropomorphism by design and the tendency to anthropomorphize in human-robot interaction. Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
➡️ The paper has been selected as one of the best articles published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI in 2023; IF 3.4 and top 4% of papers accepted.
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