Brain Data Group

The CHI'26 Workshop on Future of Cognitive Personal Informatics

April 2026 - CHI'26 - Barcelona, Spain

While Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has contributed to demonstrating that physiological measures can be used to detect cognitive changes, engineering and machine learning will bring these to application in consumer wearable technology. For HCI, many open questions remain, such as: What happens when this becomes a cognitive form of personal informatics? What goals do we have for our daily cognitive activity? How should such a complex concept be conveyed to users to be useful in their everyday lives? How can we mitigate potential ethical concerns? This is different to designing BCI interactions; we are concerned with understanding how people will live with consumer neurotechnology. This workshop will directly address the future of Cognitive Personal Informatics (CPI), by bringing together design, BCI and physiological data, ethics, and personal informatics researchers to discuss and set the research agenda in this inevitable future.

Read the Workshop Paper

Submit to Take Part

To take part, you need to submit to our form. Once accepted, you must also register at CHI 2026 to attend on the day.

For the CHI 2026 workshop on cognitive personal informatics, we deviate from the classical submission-based system. We ask you in the following form to answer a set of guiding questions, which help us understand your motivation, relation, and engagement with Cognitive Personal Informatics research. We will accept submissions based on their value to stimulate discussion, contribute to answering the open questions described above, or enrich the research on CPI in general. We consider research interests on physiologically-driven interaction and cognitive state classification out of scope.

You can also optionally submit a classical workshop extended abstract, you can find details on submission requirements and publication on the submission form above.

The Workshop Plan

The aim of the workshop is to set an agenda for the community, focusing on discussing the scenarios that will motivate ongoing and future work for our community. The aim is to work together for the majority of the session, and develop Key Challenge Scenarios as a product. We will also discuss contributions to an edited book that has been invited by Springer.

Planned Workshop Structure

At the Conference. We will conduct two sessions of 75-90 minutes, i.e., one afternoon of the conference program. Exact date to be announced depending on the CHI program.

Opening

The organizers will open the workshop by briefly introducing themselves, presenting the topic, and outlining the agenda for the day.

Session 1: Shared Interests & Mapping Challenges

Short introduction session, then jumping directly into the first breakout sessions, in which small groups will work on discussing and mapping challenges for different CPI aspects.

Discussion Coffee Break

Session 2: Defining the Research Agenda and Road Map

Sketching a research agenda and road map for the most critical challenges and defining concrete next steps for research to address them.

Closing: Defining the Research Agenda and Road Map

We will end our workshop by briefly summarizing the day and discussing our publication and post-workshop

Workshop Dinner

Hybrid Options

Due to the location and timezone of the conference, and the working-group focus of the workshop plan, we do not plan to require/enable remote involvement 'on the day'.

We do welcome submissions from participants that cannot attend in person, where your paper and 5min video presentation (like all authors) will be available asynchronously around the workshop.

Organisers

Christina Schneegass

is an assistant professor for Cognition & Design at Delft University of Technology. She has evaluated EEG as a method to assess language comprehension in learning systems. Her research aims to incorporate users' cognitive processes into the design and evaluation of technology to develop systems that empower users in their increasingly complex relationship with novel technologies.

Francesco Chiossi

is a Senior researcher in Human–Computer Interaction at LMU Munich, with a background in cognitive science and a PhD in computer science. His work bridges multimodal computing, adaptive XR interfaces, and AI-driven personalization, with a focus on human-centered design and trustworthy user experiences. More recently, his research has examined how large language models and AI-mediated interactions influence user agency, privacy, and interaction design in mobile and ubiquitous contexts.

Dimitra Dritsa

is a Postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology. Her work focuses on the intersection of physiological sensing, data sensemaking, and information visualisation. She brings experience in designing algorithms and tools that enhance the sensemaking process of physiological data, such as electrodermal activity. Currently, she explores topics ranging from how information from wearables should be best presented to understanding the effects of differences between objective and subjective data on user experience.

Teodora Mitrevska

is a PhD candidate at LMU Munich. She holds a M.Sc. degree in Human-Computer Interaction from LMU Munich. Her work focuses on the usage of electrophysiological signals as a form of implicit feedback in adaptive systems. She brings expertise in classifying human perception of visual stimuli and user-intent modeling for human-in-the-loop systems (HITL). She also takes an interest in consumer devices for cognitive tracking and their integration in everyday life.

Stephen Rainey

is Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Technology at Delft University of Technology, specialising in neuroethics and neurophilosophy as part of a wider philosophy and technology agenda. He is currently exploring intersections between neurotechnologies and Artificial Intelligence, especially Large Language Models and the prospect of mind-reading technology. He applies research findings in policy advice, working with committees of the European Commission and the WHO.

Anna Cox

is a professor of HCI in UCL Interaction Centre, in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. Anna’s research focuses on understanding the relationships between the design of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and behavioural outcomes, and leveraging these relationships in the design of novel interfaces and systems to support people in work.

Max L. Wilson

is an associate professor in the MRL at Nottingham, focused on evaluating the mental workload involved in completing work tasks and created by diferences in user interfaces, using fNIRS. Max has also worked on brain-controlled movies that have toured around the world, using consumer brain devices. Max is also a member of the IEEE Brain NeuroEthics Committee.

Call for Participation

This workshop explores the future of cognitive personal informatics and spans one afternoon (2x90-minute sessions). Looking beyond classifying cognitive states, the goal of this workshop is to examine how we can design people’s interaction with consumer neurotechnologies in ways that are meaningful, ethical, and empowering, supporting reflection, agency, and well-being in everyday life. Especially in a world where wearable technology is beginning to estimate stress, and consumer neurotechnology is available at a low cost.

To participate in our workshop, we invite people to fill in the template with guiding questions on their research’s relationship to CPI, the challenges they see for the future, as well as scenarios they envision and/or are interested in working on. Submissions will be reviewed for how well the researchers’ interests align with the goals of the workshop and to what extent the answers to the guiding questions provoke discussion and contribute to a better understanding of CPI. We consider research interests on physiologically-driven interaction and cognitive state classification out of scope. Submissions should follow our template and be handed in via [our website]. The workshop will be in-person only.

Related Research Areas

We believe the following communities are central to the future of consumer neurotechnology.

Physiological I/O and Psychology

Cognitive and neuroscience perspectives are critical for the discussion of personal cognitive informatics, because they ground what we understand happens in the brain, and what is practical or desirable to actually measure to make inferences.

Personal Informatics and Digital Health

The major change, as we move on from classifcation accuracy of various states, is to focus on personal informatics. A key challenge for the future of personal cognitive informatics is bringing in this expertise and prior knowledge at its early stages.

Neuroergonomics and The Future of Work

Managing a more cognitive future of work means better understanding of our daily mental workload and better strategies for managing stress. We consider the understanding of healthy lifestyles, and good work/life balance, to be a critical view on the future of personal cognitive informatics.

NeuroEthics and Trust

The neuroethics feld concerns the ethical, legal, and social challenges that emerge through developments in neuroscience. We believe its a critical development for this area, that HCI researchers interested in trust, law, and ethics get involved with neuroethics.

Join in!

Register for CHI in order to take part on the day! Join in the discussion early by joining our Slack Community.

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