I'm Shaun Macdonald, a HCI Researcher working in the Glasgow Interactive Systems Section in the University of Glasgow's School of Computing Science. I am currently a Research Associate on the FUTUREFAUNA ERC project directed by Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas.

My research interests include animal-centered computer interaction, evocative affective haptics, emotional encounters with social robots, immersive experiences and prototyping in extended reality, accessibility and usable privacy and security.

I earned my PhD in Human Computer Interaction under the supervision from Professor Stephen Brewster and Professor Frank Pollick, investigating emotionally resonant vibrotactile comfort objects as a calming intervention for social anxiety.

Feel free to reach out to [email protected] or via my LinkedIn or BlueSky.

Latest News!

Full paper on how lifelike haptic features impact zoomorphic robot uncanniness accepted at HRI 2026!
Check out the paper here: Uncanny Touch? Investigating the Influence of Lifelike Haptic Cues on User Perceptions of a Social Robot
J Borgstedt, S Macdonald, J Bhattacharyya, F Pollick, S Brewster

Journal article on the design and free-form evaluation of a screen blocking mobile app presented at MobileHCI 2025!
Check out the paper here: SafeScreen: Evaluating a Screen-Detecting Smartphone Camera App under Benign and Adversarial Use
Shaun Macdonald, Md Shafiqul Islam, Andras Bodrogai, James Finlow, Fiona Colquhoun, John H Williamson, Mohamed Khamis

AZRAM Project Ends
After 11 months, 1 survey, 3 studies and many many augmented robot pet interactions, the AZRAM project has ended. The ZAMA Emotion Engine we developed is freely available for public robot use on the Synthiam ARC Robot Skills Store, and you can find out more about the project here.

About Me

Education

2018 - 2023

PhD in Human Computer Interaction
Thesis: Investigating Emotionally Resonant Vibrations as a Calming Intervention for People with Social Anxiety
University of Glasgow
Supervised by Stephen Brewster

2014 - 2018

BSci in Computing Science
University of Glasgow

Publications

Journal Papers

Design and Evaluation of a Collaborative XR Framework with Abstract Building Blocks for Manufacturing System Prototyping

Shaun Macdonald, Bixun Chen, Yuanjie Xie, Rami Ghannam

Electronics, vol. 15(5), MDPI, 2026, p. 1040

Beyond Mute and Block: Adoption and Effectiveness of Safety Tools in Social VR, from Ubiquitous Harassment to Social Sculpting

Maheshya Weerasinghe, Shaun Macdonald, Cristina Fiani, Joseph O’Hagan, Mathieu Chollet, Mark McGill, Mohamed Khamis

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2025

Use of Online Resources by UK Undergraduate Students for Mental Health Questions

Patrizia Di Campli San Vito, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Stephen Anthony Brewster, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Peter J. Uhlhaas

International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2025

SafeScreen: evaluating a screen-detecting smartphone camera app under benign and adversarial use

Shaun Macdonald, Md Shafiqul Islam, Andras Bodrogai, James Finlow, Fiona Colquhoun, John Williamson, Mohamed Khamis

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 9(5), 2025 Sep 9

Prototyping and Evaluation of Emotionally Resonant Vibrotactile Comfort Objects as a Calming Social Anxiety Intervention

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Euan Freeman, Frank Pollick, Stephen Brewster

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, vol. 31(4), 2024 Sep 19, pp. 1-48

Conference Papers

Uncanny Touch? Investigating the Influence of Lifelike Haptic Cues on User Perceptions of a Social Robot

Jacqueline Borgstedt, Shaun Macdonald, Jacob Bhattacharyya, Frank Pollick, Stephen Brewster

HRI '26: Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interacti, ACM, 2026 Mar 18

" What you think is private is no longer"--Investigating the Aftermath of Shoulder Surfing on Smartphones in Everyday Life through the Eyes of the Victims

Habiba Farzand, Shaun Macdonald, Karola Marky, Mohamed Khamis

MUM 2025 - 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, ACM, 2025

Dancing with Data: Privacy Compromises of Egyptian Women Reconciling Westernized Social Media Sharing with Local Cultural Values

Mennatallah Saleh, Shaun Macdonald, Cristian Sturm

INTERACT 2025: 20th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2025 Sep 10

Perspectives on DeepFakes for Privacy: Comparing Perceptions of Photo Owners and Obfuscated Individuals towards DeepFake Versus Traditional Privacy-Enhancing Obfuscation

Mohamed Khamis, Rebecca Panskus, Habiba Farzand, Marija Mumm, Shaun Macdonald, Karola Marky

MUM '24: Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, 2024 Dec 2

Evaluating Transferable Emotion Expressions for Zoomorphic Social Robots using VR Prototyping

Shaun Macdonald, Robin Bretin, Salma Elsayed

23rd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), IEEE, IEEE, 2024 Oct

Soothing Sensations: Enhancing Interactions with a Socially Assistive Robot through Vibrotactile Heartbeats

Jacqueline Borgstedt, Shaun Macdonald, Karola Marky, Frank Pollick, Stephen Brewster

2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN), IEEE, 2024 Sep 22

“Pikachu would electrocute people who are misbehaving”: Expert, Guardian and Child Perspectives on Automated Embodied Moderators for Safeguarding Children in Social Virtual Reality

Cristina Fiani, Robin Bretin, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Mohamed Khamis, Mark McGill

CHI '24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM SIGCHI, 2024 Apr 1

Increasing Heart Rate and Anxiety Level with Vibrotactile and Audio Presentation of Fast Heartbeat

Ruoqi Wang, Haifeng Zhang, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Patrizia Di Campli San Vito

ICMI 2023 - International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ICMI 2023 - International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 2023 Oct 9

In the Quest to Protect Users from Side-Channel Attacks – A User-Centred Design Space to Mitigate Thermal Attacks on Public Payment Terminals

Karola Marky, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Yasmeen Abdrabou, Mohamed Khamis

USENIX Security Symposium , USENIX Security '23, 2023 Aug 9

Keep it Real : Investigating Driver-Cyclist Interaction in Real-World Traffic

Ammar Al-Taie, Yasmeen Abdrabou, Shaun Macdonald, Frank Pollick, Stephen Brewster

Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23), 2023 Apr 28

The Impact of Thermal Cues on Affective Responses to Emotionally Resonant Vibrations

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Frank Pollick, Stephen Anthony Brewster

ICMI 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 2022, pp. 259--269

User Preferences for Calming Affective Haptic Stimuli in Social Settings

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Euan Freeman, Stephen Brewster, Frank Pollick

ICMI 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, vol. 9781450384, 2021, pp. 387--396

Eliciting Emotion with Vibrotactile Stimuli Evocative of Real-World Sensations

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Stephen Brewster, Frank Pollick

ICMI 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Utrecht, 2020, pp. 125--133

Book Chapters

The Future of Tactile Haptics: Emerging Technologies and Novel Applications

Patrizia Di Campli San Vito, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Graham Wilson, Euan Freeman, Stephen Brewster

Springer Handbook of Human Computer Interaction

WIP, Demo and Workshop Papers

AZRA: Extending the Affective Capabilities of Zoomorphic Robots using Augmented Reality

Shaun Macdonald, Salma Elsayed, Mark McGill

Companion of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (RO-MAN 2025), 2025 Aug 25

Beyond Aesthetics: Evaluating Response Widgets for Reliability & Construct Validity of Scale Questionnaires

Habiba Farzand, David Al Baiaty Suarez, Thomas Goodge, Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Karola Marky, Mohamed Khamis, Paul Cairns

CHI EA '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM SIGCHI, 2024 Apr 1

Change Policy or Users ? Mitigating the Security Risks of Thermal Attacks

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Habiba Farzand, Norah Alotaibi, Md Shafiqul Islam, Mohamed Khamis

Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23), April 23-28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany, vol. 1, Association for Computing Machinery, 2023 Apr 28, pp. 1--3

Conducting and Mitigating Portable Thermal Imaging Attacks on User Authentication using AI-driven Methods

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Norah Alotaibi, Md Shafiqul Islam, Mohamed Khamis

Augmented Humans Conference (AHs '23), March 12-14th, 2023, Glasgow, United Kingdom, vol. 1, Association for Computing Machinery, Glasgow, 2023 Feb 20, pp. 12--14

Gamification of a To-Do List with Emotional Reinforcement

Shaun Alexander Macdonald, Stephen Brewster

Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA '19, 2019, pp. 1--6

Awards

2025 - Interaction Design for International Development Award - INTERACT 2025
2025 - People Make Research Nominee x 2 - University of Glasgow
2025 - EPSRC Vacation Internship Grant (~£4000)
2024 - EPSRC IAA Grant (£50,000) - Augmenting Zoomorphic Robots with Affective Interaction using Mixed Reality
2023 - People Make Research Nominee - University of Glasgow
2023 - SICSA Research Themes Award (£200) - Study Funding
2023 - Honorable Mention - CHI '23
2023 - Best Demo Award - Augmented Humans 2023
2022 - People Make Research Nominee - University of Glasgow
2022 - SICSA Travel and Registration Grant (£400) - ICMI 2022
2018 - Entrepreneurial Scotland (~$8000) - Saltire Scholarship
9 x Special Recognition for Outstanding Academic Reviews
at CHI ('24, '25, '26), CHI PLAY 2023, ISMAR 2024, DIS 2024, UIST 2025 and Mensch und Computer 2025

Talks and Professional Activities

Associate Chair - CHI '25, INTERACT `23, DIS '24, DIS '25
Poster Chair - MUM '25, MUM '26
Local Chair - ACII'24, ETRA '24

2025 - Glasgow Interactive Systems Section Seminar Speaker - Breathing Life in Zoomorphic Robots using Mixed Reality
2024 - Pint of Science Speaker - Keep Calm and Feel the Vibrations
2024 - Glasgow Women in Computing Science Seminar - Being a Carer as an Early Career Researcher
2024 - ICRA Workshop Invited Speaker - Applications and Future Directions of Affective Technologies
2024 - Glasgow Interactive Systems Section Seminar Speaker - Personalisation of Affective Interfaces
2023 - 2025 - Glasgow Women in Computing Science Seminar Series Organising Committee
2023 - Guest Seminar on Emotionally Resonant Vibrations for Social Anxiety - Abertay University (invited by Dr Salma Elsayed)

Teaching and Supervision

2026 - MSc Lecture on Applied HCI Research - University of Glasgow - HCI Design and Evaluation
2025 - Supervision of 2 Intern Projects - University of Glasgow
2022 - Current - Supervision of 7 MSci/MSc students - University of Glasgow

2025 - AI and Robotics in Society Summer Course Universitas Gadjah Mada - Affective Computing: Exploring Emotional Relationships Between Man and Machine
2025 - BSci Lecture on Augmented Reality Zoomorphic Robots - Mahidol University - Human Robot Interaction Course (invited by Dr Patrick Hung)
2025 - UPWARDS Seminar - Academic Writing for PGR/PDRAs
2024 - M/BSci Lecture on Virtual Reality - University of Glasgow - Mobile HCI Course
2023 - M/BSci Lecture on Wearable Computing - University of Glasgow - Mobile HCI Course
2022 - BSci Video Lecture on Variables and Factors - University of Glasgow - Research Methods and Techniques Course
2019 - Tutor and Laboratory Assistant - University of Glasgow - Year 1 Programming and HCI Courses

Dr Shaun Macdonald

Hi!