Nikolas Martelaro

Hi, I'm Nik. I am an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. My research seeks to augment designers' capabilities so that we can best leverage human capacity and computation to solve society's toughest problems. My research approach integrates cutting-edge technologies, but always with a foundational understanding of designers and how we think and act. This research activity informs my educational mission to teach future designers how to work creatively and critically so they can solve complex, open-ended design challenges. My work spans design domains, blending hardware, software, and interaction design. Before moving to the HCII, I was a researcher in the Digital Experiences group at the Accenture Technology Labs. I graduated with my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford's Center for Design Research, where I was co-advised by Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju. I graduated with my B.S. in Engineering Design from the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

News

[25 Mar 2025] I was interviewed by the CMU UXA about my new Fall 2025 course The AI Augmented Designer.

[12 Mar 2025] Our paper BioSpark: Beyond Analogical Inspiration to LLM-augmented Transfer was accepted to CHI 2025! Led by Hyeonsu Kang with co-authors David Chuan-En Lin, Yan-Ying Chen, Matthew K. Hong, and Aniket Kittur. This work was done in collaboration with the Toyota Research Institute.

[26 Feb 2025] Our paper Intent Tagging: Exploring Micro-Prompting Interactions for Supporting Granular Human-GenAI Co-Creation Workflows was accepted to CHI 2025! Led by Frederic Gmeiner with co-authors Nicolai Marquardt, Michael Bentley, Hugo Romat, Michel Pahud, David Brown, Asta Roseway, Nikolas Martelaro, Kenneth Holstein, Ken Hinckley, and Nathalie Riche.

[30 Jan 2025] Our paper Inkspire: Supporting Design Exploration with Generative AI through Analogical Sketching was accepted to CHI 2025! Led by David Chuan-En Lin with co-authors Hyeonsu B. Kang, Aniket Kittur, Yan-Ying Chen, and Matthew K. Hong. This work was done in collaboration with the Toyota Research Institute.

[23 Jan 2025] Our paper Understanding the Challenges of Maker Entrepreneurship was accepted to CSCW 2025! Led by Natalie Friedman with co-authors Alexandra Bremers, Adelaide Nyanyo, Ian Clark, Yasmine Kotturi, Laura Dabbish, and Wendy Ju.

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Current Research Interests

Human-AI collaboration to support deeper design thought, with a focus on reflective practice, designerly questioning, diagrammatic thinking, and analogical thinking.

Tools to help creatives work better, with foci on systems for generating design artifacts and support for running successful creative businesses.

Collaborative design methods to engage end-users throughout design and engineering processes, with a focus on participatory field studies and simulation-based activities for designing automated physical systems.

Working With Me

Prospective Students

Students interested in the HCII Ph.D. program should apply during the next cycle in autumn. The HCII admits students at the department level. Students are then matched with faculty advisors in their first weeks on campus. If you are interested in joining my group, you are welcome to mention me in your application. I also recommend that you look into other faculty you might be interested in working with and mention them in your application. Consider why you would like to work with these faculty, what you think you can bring to their group, and what you think they could bring to your research.

Student interested in the Masters in Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) should direct their questions to the program director. Please note that our Masters program is a 1-year professional degree that prepares students for industry and is not a research-oriented program. This being said, MHCI students are welcome to join my research group for Independent Studies.

CMU Students

If you are a CMU student interested in working on one of my group's research projects, please check the HCII Independent Study list for open positions and the desired skills. My group posts new positions at the start of each semester.

If you are a student entrepreneur interested in feedback or advising for your venture, you are welcome to reach out to me via email.

Publications

Please see my Google Scholar page for my most up to date publication list.

Teaching

[Spring 2025] Rapid Prototpying of Computer Systems

[Fall 2024] Design of AI Products & Services

Colophon

This webpage is styled using Tufte CSS. The font used is ET Book. Content is authored by Nikolas Martelaro with support from Microsoft Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor using Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet.