Aaron Pengyu Zhu
💡🌲🌀🔧🖌️
[May 2026] A co-organized workshop was accepted for NordiCHI ‘26 🇫🇮. My first workshop!
[Apr 2026] My first solo-authored paper has been conditionally accepted to DIS ’26! Although it’s a PWiP, it means a lot to me! I am also happy to serve this community again as an SV! See you at NUS 🇸🇬!
[Mar 2026] I was invited as a guest speaker to share in NUS ID 5357 Interdisciplinary Ways of Knowing about More-than-Human research in HCI and our latest research on Daoism & Reflection! Slides are Here:)
[Mar 2026] One short paper was accepted by ACM Interactive Health’ 26!🇵🇹
[Jan 2026] My first first-authored full paper is accepted by CHI’26, see you in Barcelona 🇪🇸!
[Nov 2025] Our research received the Excellent Poster Award at the Tech for Good: Driving Social Impact conference hosted by NUS and Tencent!
[Sep 2025] I was invited by Tencent’s Tech for Good Programme to visit its headquarters in Shenzhen for three days of tours and exchanges (it was also my first time experiencing a typhoon).
[Jul 2025] I showed a poster and volunteered at DIS'25 in Madeira 🇵🇹! Also, I made a zine!
[Apr 2025] I attended CHI'25 in Yokohama 🇯🇵 (Attended a workshop)!
[Jan 2025] I joined the JEDI Lab at the Department of Design, National University of Singapore
About Me
🔈 I am actively seeking for 2027 Fall Ph.D. position! Please feel free to contact me about any potential openings!
Hi, I am Aaron, a design researcher at the National University of Singapore who applies ethnographical, PD, critical methods, and STS theories.
My research explores three interconnected areas:
Non-Western Onto-Epistemologies in HCI
How non-Western epistemological and ontological traditions (e.g., Daoism, indigenous Chinese craft practices) and the communities that embody these ways of knowing and being are marginalized, co-opted, or absorbed into productivity-oriented logics of progress within dominant Western-centric ideology in HCI; and how to critically leverage their generative potential as alternative frameworks for technological imagination and design practice.
Care and Rest as Resistance Practice
How care and rest, often rendered invisible within neoliberal sociotechnical systems and infrastructures, can be understood as subtle yet deeply political forms of everyday resistance. This line of inquiry examines how these practices unfold, are performed, and potentially challenge the embedded values and ethical orientations of broader sociotechnical systems.
More-than-Human (MtH) Participatory Action Research/Design
How to engage marginalized communities (e.g., urban village in China| WiP) through participatory design approaches and MtH theorizations that identify, mobilize, and reconfigure MtH entities which are often marked as dirty and out of place, treating them not as deficits but as assets, to rehearse and enact community relationality in contexts marked by infrastructural precarity and socioeconomic instability.
I received my Master's degree in Design at the National University of Singapore, advised by Prof. Janghee Cho, and I earned my B.E. in Interaction Design from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) in Beijing, China, advised by Prof. Xiaochao Xi.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers
Toward Pluralizing Reflection in HCI through Daoism. (CHI’ 26) [PDF] [Website]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu, Kristina Mah, and Janghee Cho.
Text Readability of Smartphone in Dark Mode: Effects of Font Type, Font Weight, and Color. (HCII 2023) [PDF]
Junxiang Chen, Aaron Pengyu Zhu, Jing Yun, Baixuan Tian, Yalan Yang, and Na Liu.
Extended Abstract
Design Without Goal: Listening, Silence, and Emergence in Practice (NordiCHI’ 26 Adjunct)
Kristina Mah, Janghee Cho, Aaron Pengyu Zhu, Wendy Qi Zhang, Tse Pei Ng, Angella Mackey, Jonas Fritsch, Claudia Núñez-Pacheco, and Yoko Akama.
Whose Innovation? Whose Heritage?: Postcolonial Tensions and Meta-Research Agendas about Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Research in HCI (DIS’ 26 Companion) [PDF]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu.
Designing for Youth Digital Wellbeing Through an Ethics of Care Lens (ACM Interactive Health 2026)
Janghee Cho, Aaron Pengyu Zhu, and Mengyuan Zhu.
Unveiling the Invisible Work of Migrant Care Workers in Aged Care Homes: Implications for Future Care Technologies. (DIS’ 25 Companion) [PDF]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu, Yiming Yao, Haiyue Lu, Tse Pei Ng, Celeste Seah, Janghee Cho, Yiying Wu, and Jung-Joo Lee.
Workshop Position Papers (lightly peer-reviewed)
Wu-Wei(無為) as Liquid Resistance: A Daoist Perspective on Critical Design (DIS’ 26 Workshop on Relating Otherwise: Pluriversal Pathways for Reworlding More-than-Human Design) [PDF]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu and Janghee Cho.
Hacking the Forest: Displacement, Care and More-than-human Infrastructure (CHI’ 26 Workshop on Designing with Forest Stories) [PDF]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu, Yuanning Han, and Janghee Cho.
Tao-Technology for Teen Mobile Use: Harmonizing Adaptation, Autonomy, and Reflection (CHI’ 25 Workshop on Mobile Technology and Teens) [PDF]
Aaron Pengyu Zhu and Janghee Cho.
Service
* For Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews
Program Committee: ICHEC (2025)
Reviewer: ACM DIS (2026*), ACM CHI LBW (2026*), ACM DIS PWiP (2026)
Volunteer: ACM DIS (2025, 2026)