📅Date and time: February 10, 2026, 13:30-16:30
📍Location: Sanjo Conference Hall 2F, Hongo Campus, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (Doors open at 13:20) / Online streaming available
The 1st Animāre Seminar invites three researchers (Jingyi Li, Jane L. E, Shm G. Almeda) from overseas and welcomes Kumiyo Nakakoji (Future University Hakodate) as a moderator to discuss research on creativity support tools. Learn more about Animāre here.
The speakers are prominent researchers in the CHI and UIST communities within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In addition to presenting technically strong research contributions, they have continuously engaged in critical discussions and published work that reflect on the roles information technologies may play in relation to creative cultures. In this seminar, we will collectively approach these questions from diverse perspectives.
Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of computer science at Pomona College, where they direct the Doodle Lab. Their research in understanding and building creativity support tools pushes how they can be designed towards more equitable power dynamics.
Recently, Jingyi has been working on "artistic support tools", which are tools for supporting artistic goals and as art practice. Jingyi is so excited to be in community with creative practitioners and hopeful to make new connections and collaborations!
Jane E is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at National University of Singapore, where she leads the Palette Lab. Her work broadly looks at how to design computational tools that can support users in developing their own domain expertise, asking “what should — and shouldn’t — tools be doing to support human creativity?”
With her mentees, she has recently been expanding to explorations in accessibility & plurality, education, healthcare, and nature conservation. Jane is incredibly excited and honored to have this opportunity to meet and learn from everyone!
Shm Garanganao Almeda is a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. They are an artist and computer scientist researching Creativity Supportive Ecosystems: they develop novel design probe systems, and use them to research how creative communities function within broader social, cultural, and economic contexts.
Their recent work focuses on using historical and cultural art data and learning from traces of creative activity. One of Shm's favorite creativity support systems is Hatsune Miku. They are so excited to expand their creative community, and for all that we can learn from one another!
Jun Kato is a toolsmith researcher and serves as the principal investigator of the Animāre project, which aim to support creativity and production in the anime industry. He works as a senior researcher at AIST and as a technical advisor at Arch Inc., an anime production and planning company. He was a visiting scientist at Université Paris-Saclay in 2024.
His research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focuses on studying creative practices and on building and deploying creativity support tools in the wild.
Kumiyo Nakakoji is a Professor in the Department of Media Architecture at Future University Hakodate, Japan. Her research spans Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Cognitive Science, and Design Studies, focusing on interactive systems that support human intellectual and creative activities. She has long investigated how externalized representation (i.e., sketches) can elicit new ideas through feedback from the representations themselves, a process her research group conceptualizes as amplifying representational talkback, and has proposed the framework of Knowledge Interaction Design.
Her recent work includes the Stats.Hakodate project, a collaborative research initiative conducted with students and local participants, which explores Collective Creativity by examining how individual inspirations (mini-c creativity) emerge even from ostensibly value-neutral statistical tables, and how these inspirations are expanded through dialogue and mutual reference, ultimately developing into collective knowledge creation.
This seminar is a continuation (equivalent to the seventh session) of the "AIST Creative HCI Seminar" series held in 2023. We plan to continue providing opportunities for researchers, engineers, and creators from Japan and abroad to gather and work towards realizing a reciprocal anime co-creation environment.
| Time | Content |
|---|---|
| 13:20 | Doors open |
| 13:30 | Introduction to the Animāre Project and Seminar (Jun) |
| 13:45 | [Invited talk] Power, Norms, & Radical Humility: Towards Artistic Support Tools (Jingyi) |
| 14:15 | [Invited talk] Artistic Vison: Interactive Computational Guidance for Developing Expertise (Jane) |
| 14:45 | [Invited talk] Stepping into Artistic Worlds: Creativity Support Tools as Community & Cultural Interventions (Shm) |
| 15:15 | Introduction to the Panel Discussion: Supporting Creativity (Kumiyo) |
| 15:30 | Panel session (Jingyi, Jane, Shm, Jun, and Kumiyo) |
| 16:20 | Closing |
Please find the squared "2" icon in the campus map that points to Sanjo Conference Hall.
Upon arriving at Sanjo Conference Hall, please proceed to the large conference room on the 2nd floor.
