Jiarong Yu
Programme:
Design - MPhil/PhD
Start date:
September 2023
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
Designing Human–Human–AI Interaction for STEAM Learning
Biography
Jiarong Yu is a doctoral researcher in Interaction Design at the School of Design. She is a member of the Creativity, AI and the Human research cluster at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and the AI & Arts group at the Alan Turing Institute. Her research sits at the intersection of human-AI interaction, multimodal AI systems, embodied interaction and STEAM education. She asks how AI can support, rather than replace, the ways people create and learn together.
Her practice-based doctoral research centres on Co-STEAM, a multimodal AI system for collaborative, embodied STEAM learning, combining system design and immersive environments with empirical deployment studies. Alongside her doctoral work, her AI-enhanced immersive practice includes I & AI: Mirror, a spatial installation and performance funded by Immersive Arts UK. Her work has also been supported by UKRI CoSTAR and the Innovate UK Immersive Tech Network.
Before her PhD, Jiarong completed a Master's in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, building on earlier studies in data representation and information architecture. Working as an interaction designer and creative technologist under the name 6Liè, she has collaborated with organisations including the Edinburgh Science Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Beauty of Science, Cryptic, the Institute for Design Informatics, CCTV's Science and Education Channel, Tencent Ethereal Audio Lab and China Aerospace × WeChat. Her sensory-interactive works have been exhibited across the UK and continental Europe, China, Singapore and Japan, at venues including the National Museum of Scotland, UK House, Civic House, Bayes Centre, Inspace and Whitespace Gallery.
Research interests
- Human-AI interaction
- Multimodal AI systems
- STEAM Education
- Embodied, spatial and sensory interaction
- Immersive environments and installations
- Practice-based HCI methods
- Research through Design
At the Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Jiarong has tutored on Design with Embodied Data and Design Robotics (2023–2026), supporting students in interaction design, physical computing and creative technology projects.
Before her PhD, she led interaction design curriculum and teaching at design education centres in Beijing (2022–2023). She built challenge-based, problem-solving STEAM curricula from the ground up, set teaching standards and managed teaching teams.
Her teaching draws directly on her research into embodied and collaborative STEAM learning. She favours studio-based, hands-on learning, in which students build knowledge through making, performing and reflecting with technology. She is particularly interested in STEAM approaches to AI education and AI literacy, and in how generative AI can be brought responsibly and meaningfully into STEAM learning spaces while keeping students' own judgement, authorship and embodied experience at the centre.
Beyond formal teaching, she has led transdisciplinary co-design workshops and curated community exhibitions involving participants from STEM and arts backgrounds, and co-led a PhD hub session on AI in practice-based research at the Design Research Society's 2026 conference.
Research
Research
Co-STEAM is a multimodal AI system for collaborative, embodied STEAM learning. Deployed across pilot and formal learning sessions, it explores how AI can stay at the periphery of group activity, supporting learners and their interactions with one another without taking over.
I & AI: Mirror is an AI-enhanced spatial installation and performance that investigates how people experience and make sense of generative AI through their bodies and in shared space, and how different forms of AI presence shape human-AI relationships. Powered by Co-STEAM, it uses game-engine environments, neural style transfer and diffusion models. The project is funded by Immersive Arts UK and supported by the Institute for Design Informatics, Inspace, Cryptic and the Innovate UK Immersive Tech Network.
Earlier practice-based projects include Human–Human–AI Co-design for STEAM Futures (2024), a series of co-design workshops paired with immersive performances; Chemical Garden (2022–2023), which explored STEAM integration through embodied performance; and Crowd Reality (2022), which used wearable soft robotics to extend embodied experience in digital environments. Findings from the Human–Human–AI Co-design workshops were published at BCS HCI 2025.