Collaborative Sensemaking with AI: From In-Situ Context to Human Understanding

PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


Title: "Collaborative Sensemaking with AI: From In-Situ Context to Human
Understanding"

by

Mr. Junze LI


Abstract:

Most human-AI collaborative systems for understanding human experience cast AI
as a post-hoc analyst: experience is first captured, and only afterward handed
to the system for analysis once the moment has passed. While effective for
summarizing what was recorded, this paradigm renders the understanding of
experience retrospective rather than in-situ, verbal rather than multimodal,
and solitary rather than shared. In each case, the subjective context that
gives an experience its meaning, when and where it occurred, what was felt,
what went unsaid, decays in memory, slips beneath what can be put into words,
or is misread in private interpretation before analysis can even begin.

Drawing on theories of sensemaking, this thesis argues that post-hoc analysis
has become an implicit and largely unexamined constraint on how AI supports
the study of human experience. I propose moving beyond it by repositioning AI
as a proactive, in-situ scaffold that recovers subjective context as
experience unfolds: inferring it from multimodal signals, presenting it for
human verification, and feeding it back to support sensemaking, while leaving
the construction of meaning to people.

This thesis presents three human-AI collaborative systems that instantiate and
evaluate this repositioning in real user research settings. DiaryHelper anchors
memory in longitudinal diary studies by enriching sparse in-situ logs with
inferred contextual cues. InsightBridge aligns mental models in synchronous
interviews through real-time information synthesis and shared visual
communication. SenseFusion reconstructs affective experience in retrospective
think-aloud by fusing multimodal sensor data into interpretable cues of
users' inner states. Through system design, implementation, and empirical
evaluation, this thesis shows how moving beyond post-hoc analysis enables a
richer and more faithful understanding of subjective experience, and outlines
design principles for AI that scaffold rather than supplant human sensemaking,
with implications reaching beyond HCI to the future of work and research.


Date:                   Tuesday, 9 June 2026

Time:                   10:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:                  Room 3494
                        Lift 25/26

Committee Members:      Dr. Xiaojuan Ma (Supervisor)
                        Dr. Wei Wang (Chairperson)
                        Dr. Chaojian Li