hsimao@lasige.di.fc.ul.pt

Hugo Simão

MSc Student

I am an Industrial Designer and Academic Researcher focused on IoT technology and Human-Robot Interaction studies regarding the perception of the impact and acceptance in humans. For this, my approach is essentially User-Centered Design and Research Through Design. I am currently finishing my MSc where the main topic is the development of a small robot to help people with Alzheimer’s in their routine management.

Publications

Workspace Awareness for Mixed-Visual Ability Children Collaborating in Tangible Programming Activities

Filipa Rocha, Hugo Simão, João Nogueira, Isabel Neto, Tiago Guerreiro, Hugo Nicolau

CHI 2025 ‑ ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April, 2025

'I Want to Send a Message to My Friend': Exploring the Shift of Agency to Older Adults in HRI

Hugo Simão, David Gonçalves, Ana C. Pires, Lúcia Abreu, Alexandre Bernardino, Jodi Forlizzi and Tiago Guerreiro

International Journal of Social Robotics 2024 ‑ IJSR

TACTOPI: Exploring Play with an Inclusive Multisensory Environment for Children with Mixed-Visual Abilities

Ana Pires, Lúcia Abreu, Filipa Rocha, Hugo Simão, João Guerreiro, Tiago Guerreiro, Hugo Nicolau

IDC 2023 ‑ ACM Interaction Design and Children, June, 2023

Value Sensitive HRI

Hugo Simão, Alexandre Bernardino, Jodi Forlizzi, Tiago Guerreiro

HRI Workshops 2022 ‑ Longitudinal Social Impacts of HRI over Long-Term Deployments @ HRI 2022, March, 2022

SmartFeeding4Kids: a Digital Platform for Nutritional Behaviour Change of Parents of Young Children

Diogo Branco, Sergio Alves, Hugo Simão, Ana C. Pires, Ana Gomes, Ana Pereira, Luísa Barros, Tiago Guerreiro

ICGI 2021 ‑ International Conference on Graphics and Interaction, November, 2021

Projects

Photo taken from the Workshop with children. Two visually impaired children perform a goal-directed programming activity using a map located on the table. The activity consists of moving the robot to reach the duck. The map is made of 4 EVA foam tiles with two different colors. The child on the right is concentrated in arranging the blocks while the children at the left are touching the duck after the robot reached the duck. This child is smiling and has much of his body on the table.

Inclusive education

We aim to develop technological solutions to enable an inclusive education for children with mixed abilities. We have mainly developed enhanced tangible objects for the acquisition of abstract concepts, such as mathematics or computational thinking. Besides the benefit of decreasing cognitive load and reinforcing understanding, manipulatives also support collaboration, making children more prone to divide, explore and share supporting cooperative actions.

Photo taken to a 2 years-old girl who is smiling and pointing to the camera.

Personalized Digital Interventions

We seek to tailor and personalize digital interventions to increase users motivation and adherence to the interventions. To this end, is crucial to gather a deep understanding of the intervention, context of use, benefits and difficulties associated and to accede to the mental models (goals, needs, motivations, etc) of the users.

The robot Baxter with his arms extended and a blind person feeling its hands

HRI for Health & Accessibility

Robots have a very particular set of skills. Skills that have been acquired over a vast amount of reasearch. Skills that make them powerful tools to leverage for social inclusion, accessibility and interaction.