Human-Computer Interaction Talk Series: Dr. Yung-Ju (Stanley) Chang, "Building Intelligence Around Limited Human Attention: Our Research Trajectory Toward Attention-Aware Agentic System."

Abstract: Human attention has become an increasingly scarce resource in everyday digital life. People are constantly exposed to notifications, messages, news updates, social media content, and AI-generated information, all competing for limited attentional capacity. In this talk, I will share our research trajectory around human attention, highlighting how attention has served as a primary focus across our work over the past decade. I will organize this body of work around five main directions: 1) protecting attention from unnecessary interruptions, 2) utilizing attention during opportune moments, 3) guiding attention toward important information, 4) saving attention by delegating routine work to intelligent agents, and 5) tracking attention through smartphone behavior. I will highlight representative projects that illustrate how we have approached each of these directions. Building on this trajectory, I will discuss how these lines of work are shaping our current and future exploration of agentic systems centered on human attention.

Bio: Yung-Ju (Stanley) Chang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and a Joint Research Fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He leads the Agentic Intelligence for Mobile Engagement and Experience (AIMEX) Lab. His research spans mobile attention and multitasking, mobile media consumption, human–agent interaction, mobile crowdsourcing, social media influencers, and digital wellbeing. He collaborates across disciplines and has worked closely with scholars in communication to understand how people engage with different forms of media content.