Lenia Margariti

My PhD project unpacks the experiences of the building occupants in smart office buildings (during and post-COVID), focusing on the use of data for wellbeing in that context. Through design research, I am exploring how physical interfaces can enhance data awareness and occupants’ wellbeing in the buildings for work. Throughout my PhD I have worked with wearables & ambient sensors, employed design research & mixed methods for collecting & analysing data, developed software and hardware, and prototyped with soft materials to create interactive artifacts. I have worked in IDEA FAST project - user experience evaluation of wearable health devices – and in Microsoft Research – research intern in Future of Work, investigating inclusion in remote & hybrid meetings.

I am interested in the design of technologies that address the spatial context and the experiences in it, bringing my academic background in architecture and professional experience in UX/UI together. In the past I have worked as an Architect, Designer; and, following an intensive digital upskilling course, as a Digital Transformation Analyst. Through my last job I have gained experience in Design Thinking, UI/UX design, front-end development, and prototyping in AR/VR.

My broader research interest in Smart Buildings, Ambient Intelligence, Adaptive Architecture, and Human-Building Interaction brought me in Open Lab; working primarily with Prof David Kirk. Other research & design interests include 3D/2D data visualization, soft robotics and prototyping AR/VR (spatial UX).

Publications

Eleni .K. Margariti, Ridita Ali, Remco Benthem de Grave, David Verweij, Jan Smeddinck, David Kirk, 2021. Understanding the Experiences of Remote Workers: Opportunities for Ambient Workspaces at Home. Frontiers in Computer Science 3, 673585. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.673585

Eleni Margariti, Sean Rintel, Brendan Murphy, and Abigail Sellen. 2022. Automated mapping of competitive and collaborative overlapping talk in video meetings. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’22 Extended Abstracts), April 29–May 05, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10. 1145/3491101.3519612

Eleni Margariti, David Kirk. 2022. ActuAir: Exploring Physicalizations of Air Quality at the Workplace. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Workshops & Symposia, April 29–May 05, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. [Presentation Paper]. https://www.softrobotics.io/chi22

Eleni Margariti, Vasilis Vlachokyriakos, and David Kirk. 2023. Understanding occupants’ experiences in quantified buildings: results from a series of exploratory studies. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581256