CHI2026 Workshop on Tools for Thought:

Understanding, Protecting, and Augmenting Human Cognition with Generative AI — From Vision to Implementation

April 2026 in Barcelona

News

We’re accepting submissions to our CHI 2026 workshop!
2025 Workshop Synthesis
2026 Human Computer Interaction Journal Special Issue CFP

CHI 2026 Workshop Key Dates

Deadline for submissions: Thursday, February 12 2026 AoE
Notifications of acceptance: Wednesday, February 25 2026

About

GenAI radically widens the scope and capability of automation for work, learning, and creativity. While impactful, it also changes workflows, raising questions about its effects on cognition, including critical thinking and learning. Yet GenAI also offers opportunities for designing “tools for thought” (TfT) that protect and augment cognition. Such systems provoke critical thinking, provide personalized tutoring, or enable novel ways of sensemaking, among other approaches.

How does GenAI change workflows and human cognition? What are opportunities and challenges for designing GenAI systems that protect and augment thinking? Which theories, perspectives, and methods are relevant? This workshop aims to develop a multidisciplinary community interested in exploring these questions to protect against the erosion, and fuel the augmentation, of human cognition using GenAI.

This workshop is a follow-up to the CHI 2025 Tools for Thought workshop, which brought together 56 participants with 34 accepted submissions, culminating in a workshop synthesis and an HCI journal special issue on tools for thought. While last year’s workshop focussed on mapping the field, this edition moves towards developing operational frameworks, principles, and tools.

For more details, see our workshop proposal.

Feel free to join our Discord server, where you can ask questions, or discuss the topics of this workshop.

Workshop Themes

We invite contributions to our three core themes addressing questions such as:

TfT Strategies: Design and Usage

How can GenAI be designed and applied as a tool for thought?
- What are promising design strategies, including interface mechanisms, interaction designs, and design patterns that protect or augment human cognition?
- What are effective usage strategies where AI is used to help people think, learn, create, and work better, even for general-purpose tools like ChatGPT that are not specifically designed as TfT?
- How can we systematise specific examples into tangible, transferable strategies across domains and contexts?
- What are useful framings for the role of GenAI (e.g., AI as provocateur or facilitator) that inspire effective design and usage?
- Can we theoretically ground these strategies and provide empirical evidence for their effectiveness?
TfT Outcomes: Definition and Measurement

What are the outcomes of tools for thought, and how do we measure them?
- What counts as a “good” outcome for the people using a TfT? How do we define desirable outcomes beyond task performance?
- How can we capture intermediary outcomes that are relevant for a workflow and thought process (e.g., artefacts like notes or diagrams that scaffold thinking)?
- How can TfT be designed so that they avoid skipping over intermediary artefacts and outcomes that are important to the human thought process (e.g. for sensemaking, divergent thinking etc.)?
- How do we measure cognitive outcomes such as understanding, learning, critical thinking, and metacognitive engagement?
- What role do task outcomes (performance) play, and how do we balance them with cognitive goals?
- What evaluation methods are appropriate for capturing the richness of cognition—including process tracing, artefact analysis, cognitive assessments, and longitudinal studies?
- How can we account for context-dependent and qualitative dimensions of cognitive change?
TfT Experience and Adoption

How can tools for thought achieve successful adoption and integration into people’s workflows?
- What makes a good experience in a TfT, and how is it adequately balanced with the friction that might be required to support cognitive engagement?
- How could the value of a TfT and the additional cognitive effort it might involve be communicated?
- How might we foster people’s intrinsic motivation to use AI in ways that support improved cognitive outcomes?
- How might we manage trade-offs between productivity and cognitive outcomes to maximise successful integration and sustained use?
- Are there strategies that resolve possible tensions between productivity and cognitive outcomes, allowing users to achieve both?

What to Submit

Your submission should address at least one of the three themes above.

A workshop submission consists of:

Workshop paper: Up to 4 pages (excluding references) using the 2-column ACM format
Miro board “mini poster”: A filled-out Miro board template based on your contribution

We encourage drawing from and building upon existing theories where possible—such as from cognitive, behavioural, and educational/learning sciences.

Submissions can take diverse forms, including but not limited to:

Novel design concepts or prototypes
Empirical studies and evaluations
Theoretical frameworks and design principles
Usage strategies and case studies
Measurement techniques and methodologies
Critical reflections and provocations

We generally encourage contributions that are oriented towards operationalisation, meaning that they provide clear paths to implementation and use—be it for a study design, evaluation approach, or TfT interface design—and/or that they are targeted at existing AI tools/uses and in which ways they are (or are not) a TfT.

How to Submit

Submission Requirements:

Workshop paper:
- Prepare your article according to the ACM article template with ‘sigconf’ style (\documentclass[sigconf,screen] {acmart}), or ACM primary article template if using Microsoft Word (Word template instructions). For details, see: https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions
- Upload the PDF and the source files of your workshop paper (LaTeX source or Word document) via the submission form.
“Mini poster”:
- Make sure you have a Miro account (you can create one for free).
- Open the Miro board template.
- Make sure that you are logged into your Miro account.
- Create a copy of the Miro board template by following the instructions on the board. (Note that you won’t be able to create a duplicate if you aren’t logged into your Miro account.)
- Once you have created a duplicate in your own account, fill out your copy of the template.
- We created this sample Miro board to give you an idea of how a ‘mini poster’ could look like upon submission.
- Please note that the Miro board should be mainly seen as a “scaffold” to help you reflect on your ideas (such as for a new AI tool) from different angles that are related to the workshop’s goal of further operationalising TfTs. Don’t worry too much if it should not be that straightforward for you to fill out all of the template elements. It is also fine if you just state why some of the elements/aspects might not be that relevant for your idea/contribution (e.g. for the type of AI tool you propose).
- When you are done with your mini poster, create a sharing URL and export it as a PDF. Please follow the instructions on the Miro board for how to do this and include both the URL and PDF in your submission.
Number of attendees: Confirm the number of authors planning to attend (min. 1 and max. 2).
Personal statement: Prepare a max. 150-word personal statement for the attending author(s).

Tip: Filling out the mini poster template before or during the process of writing the workshop paper may help you structure the latter and include some of the aspects the poster template—but this is of course completely up to you.

Please note: Accepted submissions will be published on the workshop website. At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop (and at most two authors may attend).

Submission: Click here to proceed to the submission form.

What Happens After Acceptance

The organisers will thematically cluster the Miro board mini posters to form participant groups for collaborative work during the workshop. Before the workshop, participants will be asked to read the submissions (especially the mini posters) of their group members to enable focused and productive discussions.

Workshop Format

This will be a 180-minute workshop organised around small group work:

Quick pitches: Groups among themselves present each other’s Miro board to kick-off the conversation
Collaborative work: Groups will work on tangible outputs of their choice (e.g., new frameworks, design principles, measurement techniques, theory development, or even low-fidelity TfT prototypes in a mini-hackathon style)
Group pitches: Each group will present their results to all participants

We aim for 45 participants to foster rich discussion and meaningful collaboration.

Important Information

Submission deadline: Thursday, February 12, 2026 AoE

Notification of acceptance: Wednesday, February 25, 2026 AoE

Camera-ready: Thursday, March 26, 2026 AoE

Questions? Contact us at [email protected]

Organizers

Tony Zhang
Postdoctoral researcher at TU Munich, researching educational generative AI tools for learner curiosity and active engagement, and AI-based decision support tools.
Nick von Felten
Psychologist and doctoral researcher at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, investigating human and AI biases and designing AI tools calibrated to human cognitive tendencies.
Leon Reicherts
Postdoctoral researcher at the University of St. Gallen, previously part of the "Tools for Thought" team at Microsoft Research, researching how (Gen)AI tools affect human cognition, particularly decision-making and learning.
Lev Tankelevitch
Senior Researcher in Microsoft Research, within the Tools for Thought group. His research explores how to augment human agency in collaborative knowledge work, including using metacognition as a lens to understand and improve human-AI interaction, and to design GenAI systems that improve intentionality in collaboration. He has a background in applied behavioural science, having previously worked at the Behavioural Insights Team, and in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
Zhitong Klara Guan
PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, researching how Generative Interactive Information Retrieval can be conceptualized, designed, and evaluated to augment essential human cognitive skills.
Sean Rintel
Senior Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research, co-leading the "Tools for Thought" project, focusing on AI collaboration and intentional meetings.
Yue Fu
PhD candidate at the University of Washington Information School, with her research focusing on understanding how generative AI affects human cognition and learning.
Jessica He
UX Designer at IBM Research, where she is a member of the Human-AI Collaboration team. Her work focuses on leveraging design to bridge the gap between user expectations and emerging AI technologies, encompassing topics including AI attribution, risk mitigation, and enhancing knowledge work. She focuses on designing transparency mechanisms and co-creative workflows that encourage critical engagement with generative AI tools and outputs.
Ken Holstein
Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His research explores how AI systems can augment human expertise in real-world design and decision-making. He has received awards for his papers at top HCI and AI conferences, including CHI, and has co-organized workshops on related topics.
Advait Sarkar
Researcher at Microsoft, affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and honorary lecturer at University College London. He studies the effects of Generative AI on knowledge work, programming, and data analysis. He leads a research agenda on enhancing critical thinking with GenAI. His article "AI Should Challenge, Not Obey" was featured as a cover story in Communications of the ACM.
Gonzalo Ramos
Independent researcher working at the intersection of HCI, Design, and AI to extend people's agencies and capabilities. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto's DGP lab and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He was a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Senior Design Technologist and UX Scientist at Amazon.
Anuschka Schmitt
Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics. Her research examines how AI-based systems augment human work, focusing on balancing productivity gains with work motives and long-term outcomes like knowledge preservation. She uses experimental and trace data methods in her work.
Anjali Singh
Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. Her research focuses on developing and examining learning technologies that support critical thinking, agency, and metacognitive engagement, integrating empirical lab and field studies with design-based research to create personalized, scalable, and interactive systems for learning and information seeking.
Haotian Li
Researcher in Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) with a Ph.D. and B.Eng. from HKUST. His research interest is in understanding and enhancing human-AI collaboration for creativity and productivity using techniques from HCI and AI.
Srishti Palani
Senior Researcher at Tableau Research. She researches at the intersection of Cognitive Science, Human-Centered AI and Human-Computer Interaction. Her research investigates how people think and behave while exploring, sensemaking and being creative with Generative AI and information on the Web. She studies how people interpret, use, and evaluate AI for complex cognitive tasks like data analysis, decision-making, and creativity, and develops interactive intelligent tools based on these insights.
Peter Dalsgaard
Full Professor and director of the Centre for Digital Creativity at Aarhus University. He explores digital technologies from a human-centered perspective, focusing on how humans use technology to think and create in new ways. His research combines studies of real-life use of digital systems in creative processes, experiments with prototypes of new digital technologies, and the development of theories to understand the role and nature of digital tools in creative processes.