Crosslingual Information Seeking for Quality of Life

Language shapes how people navigate everyday life. For those living in linguistically diverse societies, difficulties in mastering the majority language can lead to diminished well-being. Through sustained involvement with various language communities in the DC region, my students and I advance empirical understanding of the everyday information-seeking challenges these communities face. We also collaborate with stakeholders across sectors — including physicians, journalists, and interpreters — to envision technology designs that can enhance their quality of life.

Zhang, Y., Nguyen-Le, Phuong-Anh., Singh, Kriti., Gao, G. The News Says, the Bot Says: How Immigrants and Locals Differ in Chatbot-Facilitated News Reading. CHI 2025. [PDF].

Xiao, Y., Hancock, C., Agrawal, S., Mehandru, K., Salehi, N., Carpuat, M., Gao, G. Sustaining Human Agency, Attending to Its Cost: An Investigation into Generative AI Design for Non-Native Speakers’ Language Use. CHI 2025. [PDF].

Mehandru, K., Agrawal, S., Xiao, Y., Gao, G., Khoong, E., Carpuat, M., Salehi, N. Physician Detection of Clinical Harm in Machine Translation: Quality Estimation Aids in Reliance and Backtranslation Identifies Critical Errors. EMNLP 2023. [PDF].

Gao, G., Zheng, J., Choe, E.K., Yamashita, N. Taking a Language Detour: How International Migrants Speaking a Minority Language Seek COVID-Related Information in Their Host Countries. CSCW 2022. [PDF].

Fluid Language Choice in Multilingual Teamwork

Modern work benefits from the consolidation of informational resources that would otherwise be dispersed across languages. However, being a non-native speaker of the common work language often limits individuals, as well as the teams they are part of, from unlocking their full potential. My research group develops behavioral insights and design guidelines to foster productivity in collaborative work that features fluid language choice over time. Our recent focus especially considers what "coordination with AI" means for task completion and interpersonal dynamics in multilingual settings.

Chen, Y., Xiao, Y., Zinat, K.T., Yamashita, N., Gao, G., Liu, Z. Comparing Native and Non-Native English Speakers’ Behaviors in Collaborative Writing through Visual Analytics. CHI 2025. [PDF].

Xiao, Y., Chen, Y., Yamashita, N., Chen, Y., Liu, Z., Gao, G.. (Dis)placed Contributions: Uncovering Hidden Hurdles to Collaborative Writing Involving Non-Native Speakers, Native Speakers, and AI-Powered Editing Tools. CSCW 2024. [PDF].

Zhang, Y., Owusu, D.A., Carpuat, M., Gao, G. Facilitating Global Team Meetings Between Language-Based Subgroups: When and How Can Machine Translation Help? CSCW 2022. [PDF].

Gao, G., Fussell, S.R. A Kaleidoscope of Languages: When and How Non-Native English Speakers Shift Between English and Their Native Language during Multilingual Teamwork. CHI 2017. [PDF].

Non-Verbal Exchanges via Emerging Technologies

Non-verbal exchange constitutes another essential aspect of human communication, one that is increasingly afforded and augmented by emerging technologies in creative ways. I have been supervising multiple student-initiated projects in this domain. The publications below showcase three examples from this serendipitous line of work: gesture usage for professional networking in social VR, haptic sensing for human-robot interaction serving the elderly, and emoji as tacit signals for effective collaboration via GitHub.

Chang, V., Williams-Piece, C., Peng, H., Gao, G.. Verisimilitude as Boon and Bane: How People Initiate Opportunistic Interactions at Professional Events in Social VR. CSCW 2025. [PDF].

Antony, V., Jeon, C., Li, J., Gao, G., Peng, H., Ostrowski, A.K., Huang, C.M. The Design of On-Body Robots for Older Adults. HRI 2025. [PDF].

Zhou, Y., Lu, X., Gao, G., Mei, Q., Ai, W. Emoji Promotes Developer Participation and Issue Resolution on GitHub. ICWSM 2024. [PDF].