Linda Hirsch

Welcome

My name is Linda Hirsch, and I am a Postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz, CA, USA, at the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience and the Computational Media department.
In my current position, I develop technological interventions to enhance climate resilience and support adaptation, utilizing a community-centered design approach.

In my previous positions, I developed design strategies and interactive technology solutions to enrich socio-cultural awareness and connectedness toward meaningful human-environment interaction. This includes a variety of projects with tangible interfaces, VR, and AR.

Please consider my industry CV or academic CV for further details.

The Latest Project: A Collaborative Flood Resilience Game

A collaboration with the Seymour Center and the Center of Coastal Climate Resilience in Santa Cruz, CA, USA.

Our game playfully increased participants' awareness of local resources and support networks while empowering them to engage in flood resilience-related measures.

#Specials

Guest lecture at the University of Bamberg about the contextualization of urban interfaces - hosted by Patrick Fischer.

Talking about my experience at CHI Play'23 at Spielsinn, a podcast by Philip Weber and Benjamin Linz.

Former Project Selection From My Dissertation ( 2019-2023 )

Affordances of Traces

Interactive Cementery

Morally Embedded AR

Inattentional Blindness

My research explores context-dependent natural design strategies to increase socio-cultural awareness and connectedness. This includes traces of use, material explorations, and UX.

Traces in VR

Shaping Concrete

Do Touch This!

AR Social Connectedness

Publications & Scientific Work Examples

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

MJ Johns, Linda Hirsch, Yiyang Lu, Bridget Ho, Anna Toledo, Tristyn Lai, Krithik Dhandapani, Edward F Melcer, Katherine MJ A Playful Wildfire Simulation System in Two Minigames. M. Johns, L. Hirsch, Y. Lu, B. Ho, A. Toledo, T. Lai, K. Dhandapani, E. F. Melcer, K. Isbister.
In CHI Play'25. 10.1145/3744736.374919

Designing Doable and Locally-adapted Action Cards for an Interactive Tabletop Game To Support Bottom-Up Flood Resilience. L.Hirsch, J. Fey, K. Isbister.
In CHI Play EA'25. 10.1145/3744736.3749360

Designing Safer Touch Displays.
L.Süsslin, V. Mäkelä, F. Alt, L.Hirsch.
In MuC'25. 10.1145/3743049.3743083

Contextualizing Public Interfaces for Meaningful Human-Environment Interactions with Traces in Use.
L.Hirsch, M. Hoggenmüller, L. Bekker, S. Sridharan, A. Butz, C. George.
In ToCHI (Journal). 10.1145/3762809

Social MediARverse: investigating users’ social media content sharing and consuming intentions with location-based AR.
Linda Hirsch, F. Mueller, M. Kruse, A. Butz, R. Welsch.
In Springer Virtual Reality (Journal). 10.1007/s10055-025-01188-z

HCI for Climate Resilience: Developing an Individual and Community Focused Framework through a Grounded Theory Approach.
L.Hirsch, D. Hwang, M. Johns, K. Isbister.
In DIS'25. 10.1145/3715336.3735695

Translating Social Dilemmas into Gameful Designs for Wildfire Resilience.
M. Johns, Y. Nidam, M. Escarce Junior, L. Hirsch, Y. Lu, B. Ho, A. Toledo, M. Seif El-Nasr, S. Collier, E. F. Melcer, and K. Isbister.
In CHI EA'25 . 10.1145/3706599.3720171

Tracking Construction Defects with Augmented Reality and Building Information Modeling.
U. Riedlinger, L. Oppermann, L. Hirsch.
In CONVR'24.

Exploring an XR Indoor Navigation System for Remote Collaboration.
R. Bhattacharyya, L. Hirsch, L.Oppermann.
In VRST'24. 10.1145/3641825.3689688

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Advances to Re-Contextualize Cultural Heritage toward Multiperspectivity, Inclusion, and Sensemaking
L.Hirsch, S. Paananen, D. Lengyel, J. Häkkilä, G. Toubekis, R. Talhouk L. Hespanhol
In Applied Science ISSN 2076-3417 10.3390/app14177652 Appl. Sci. (ISSN 2076-3417)
Integrating Crowd and Machine Learning in an Intelligent Interface: A Case Study of Oil Spill Detection in Satellite Images
R. M. Amin, F. Chen, L. Hirsch, C. Ou, T.V. La, A. Butz
In AVI '24: Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces https://doi.org/10.1145/3656650.3656680

My Heart Will Go On: Implicitly Increasing Social Connectedness by Visualizing Asynchronous Players’ Heartbeats in VR Games
L.Hirsch, F. Müller, F. Chiossi, T. Benga, A. Butz
In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction https://doi.org/10.1145/3611057

An empirical study to design interactions with historical buildings used for everyday activities
L.Hirsch, D. Buschek, E. Einwächter, L. Bekker, A. Butz
In KUI '23: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Culture and Computer Science: Code and Material https://doi.org/10.1145/3623462.3624635

Feeling the temperature of the room: Unobtrusive thermal display of engagement during group communication
L.Haliburton, S. Schött, L.Hirsch, R. Welsch, A. Schmidt
In Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies https://doi.org/10.1145/3580820

Re-contextualizing Built Environments: Critical and Inclusive HCI Approaches for Cultural Heritage
L.Hirsch, S. Paananen, E. Hornecker, L. Hespanhol, T. Kuflik, T. Losev, J. Häkkilä
In IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Human-Building Interaction for Interactive Cultural Heritage Site. L.Hirsch. In Interact'23. 10.1007/978-3-031-61698-3_36

Traces in Virtual Environments: A Framework and Exploration to Conceptualize the Design of Social Virtual Environments.
L. Hirsch, C. George and A. Butz
In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2022, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2022.3203092.

A Survey of Natural Design for interaction.
Linda Hirsch, Jingyi Lui, Sven Mayer Andreas Butz. 2022.
MuC’22 Conference Proceedings

A Touch of Realities: Car-Interior-Based Haptic Interaction Supports In-Car VR Recovery from Interruptions.
Jingyi Li, Linda Hirsch, Tianyang Lu, Sven Mayer, Andreas Butz. 2022. MuC’22 Conference Proceedings

Flexibility and Social Disconnectedness: Assessing University Students’ Well-Being Using an Experience Sampling Chatbot and Surveys Over Two Years of COVID-19.
Fiona Draxler, Linda Hirsch, Jingyi Li, Carl Oechsner, Sarah Theres Völkel, and Andreas Butz. 2022.
In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 217–231. https://doi-org. 10.1145/3532106.3533537

Increasing Socio-Spatial Connectedness Among Students: A Location-Based AR Social Media Network Approach
Linda Hirsch, Ivan Graf von Silva-Tarouca, Robin Welsch
CHI 22 Extended Abstracts, April 29-May 5, 2022, 10 pages.

``What a Mess!'': Traces of Use to Increase Asynchronous Social Presence in Shared Virtual Environments
Linda Hirsch, Anna Haller, Andreas Butz, Ceenu George
In: In Proceedings of IEEE Conference '22 on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), March 12-16.

Embedded AR Storytelling Supports Active Indexing at Historical Places
Linda Hirsch, Robin Welsch, Beat Rossmy, Andreas Butz
In: In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, February 13-17

Material meets the City: New Trends in Urban Interaction Design (UIxD)
Linda Hirsch, Eleni Economidou, Irina Parschivoiu, Tanja Döring
Interactions Volume 29, Issue 1, January - February 2022

Safe-to-Touch: Tracking Touched Areas in Public Transport
L Hirsch, Y Li, H Geiger, A Butz
IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 486-489

Blend In or Pop Out? Designing an Embedded Interface for A Historical Cemetery
L Hirsch, A Butz
IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 635-645

Do Touch This: Turning a Plaster Bust Into a Tangible Interface
L Hirsch, C Mall, A Butz
Creativity and Cognition, 1-8

To See or Not to See: Exploring Inattentional Blindness for the Design of Unobtrusive Interfaces in Shared Public Places
L Hirsch, C Schneegass, R Welsch, A Butz
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Material Meets the City: Exploring Novel and Advanced Materials for the Smart Urban Built Environment
L Hirsch, E Economidou, I Paraschivoiu, T Döring, A Butz
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction

Shaping Concrete for Interaction
L Hirsch, B Rossmy, A Butz
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

A Media Architecture Approach for Designing the Next Generation of Urban Interfaces
Alexander Wiethoff, Marius Hoggenmueller, Beat Rossmy, Linda Hirsch, Luke Hespanhol, Martin Tomitsch

2020

Unobtrusive Interfaces for Historical and Culturally Sensitive Places
L Hirsch
Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Affordances Based on Traces of Use in Urban Environments
L Hirsch, B Rossmy, F Bemmann, A Butz
Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction

2019

Designing interactive interfaces by keeping the natural beauty of public places
L Hirsch
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Bodystorming exteroceptive stimulation to train body awareness
L Hirsch
Mensch und Computer 2019-Workshopb and Publication

2018	Influencing body awareness through interactive technology in physical training: A design-oriented research in equestrian vaulting with an excursion into neuromuscular biofeedback L Hirsch

2017	Investigating design implications towards a social robot as a memory trainer L Hirsch, A Björsell, M Laaksoharju, M Obaid Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Human Agent Interaction, 5-10