Hi, I'm Kapil!

I'm a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine, advised by Anne Marie Piper and Erik Sudderth. My research in human-computer interaction and machine learning aims to develop systems that make accessing visual information interactive and more reliable for blind and low-vision people.

I completed my Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior (TSB) at Northwestern University, advised by Haoqi Zhang and Darren Gergle. My dissertation argued that the next generation of workers must develop effective work practices for self-directing their work process, not just domain- or job-specific skills. I conceptualized and built Situated Practice Systems that provide workers with practice support that help them understand issues in their work practice and scaffolds opportunities to devleop effective practices, which existing workplace systems largely lack in favor of task support (e.g., task tracking; resource management). Technically, my research introduces computational abstractions to model situated work practices which help workers specify how a machine should track and surface tailored practices to workers in the relevant contexts across a workplace (e.g., at weekly planning meetings).

My research draws from the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Social Computing, the Learning Sciences, Management and Organizational Sciences, and Artificial Intelligence. I take a socio-technical approach to system design, where I consider how new technologies reflect an organization's work processes and social structures, and study how they are affected by the introduction of the technology. I leverage a variety of methods, including design research, UX methods (e.g., ethnography, large-scale surveys, prototype testing, etc.), qualitative analysis (e.g., thematic analysis), and quantitative analysis (e.g., factor analysis, regression, multilevel models).

Conference and Journal Publications

What Remotely Matters? Understanding Individual, Team, and Organizational Factors in Remote Work at Scale

Kapil Garg, Diego Gómez-Zará, Elizabeth Gerber, Darren Gergle, Noshir Contractor, and Michael Massimi.
CSCW 2025

Orchestration Scripts: A System for Encoding an Organization’s Ways of Working to Support Situated Work

Kapil Garg, Darren Gergle, and Haoqi Zhang.
CHI 2023

Understanding the Practices and Challenges of Networked Orchestration in Research Communities of Practice

Kapil Garg, Darren Gergle, and Haoqi Zhang.
CSCW 2022

Opportunistic Collective Experiences: Identifying Shared Situations and Structuring Shared Activities at Distance

Ryan Louie, Kapil Garg, Jennie Werner, Allison Sun, Darren Gergle, Haoqi Zhang
CSCW 2020

4X: A Hybrid Approach for Scaffolding Data Collection and Interest in Low-Effort Participatory Sensing

Kapil Garg, Yongsung Kim, Darren Gergle, Haoqi Zhang
CSCW 2019

Workshop Publications

Supporting Workers in Developing Effective Collaboration Skills for Complex Work
Evey Huang, Kapil Garg, Diego Gómez-Zará, Julie Hui, Chinmay Kulkarni, Michael Massimi, Elizabeth Churchill, and Elizabeth Gerber.
Workshop organizer

CSCW 2023

Dissertation

Situated Practice Systems: Developing Worker’s Capabilities for Complex Work in Networked Workplaces

Kapil Garg
September 2024