Writing
Human to Intelligent System: A Design Diagnostic
Designing AI for a vulnerable population is not designing software. The user faces a system with no needs, no memory limits, and authored values. Eight properties that change when one side of the relationship has been engineered, walked through one patient's nine minutes with Basion.
Making Futures Playable: Role-Based Virtual Reality Career Exploration to Promote Student Imagination and Creative Self-Efficacy
Hanieh Khaleghian, Robert LiKamWa, Ed Finn
Frontiers in Virtual Reality
A VR platform using embodied role-play, narrative, and game-based learning to develop imagination and creative self-efficacy. Pilot study found statistically significant gains over traditional lecture.
MESH Model: An Analysis of Roles, Responsibilities, and Dependencies in Student-Powered XR Production
Rachael Kaye, Hanieh Khaleghian, Skye Lucking, Ed Finn, Robert LiKamWa
iLRN 2026
A framework for structuring student-powered XR production teams across seven guild roles — PM, Narrative, UI/UX, 3D Modeling, Audio, Dev, and QA — with a dependency map for managing real interdependencies in academic XR pipelines.
WIRED The Big Interview — San Francisco
Six hours at WIRED's Big Interview in San Francisco — Daniela Amodei on giving AI a values document, Matthew Prince on the internet's broken compensation model, Dr. Eric Topol on the missing metric in medicine, and a manifesto asking the question Silicon Valley stopped asking.
Adobe AI VIP Community — Talk & Adobe MAX 2025
On being invited into Adobe's AI VIP Community for designers, presenting on AI and creative identity, and what Adobe MAX confirmed: the most important variable in how AI shapes design is the people who refuse to let it define them.
Nail Salon, Humanity, and the Thing After Us
A meditation on flesh, touch, and nostalgia — watching an old woman enter and wondering how long humanity stays in fashion.
Imagined Arcade: XR Game Toolkit for Co-imagining Career Futures with Students, Subject Experts, and AI
Hanieh Khaleghian, Julianna Piechowicz, Nathan Anderson, Arvin Edouard, Robert LiKamWa
HCI International 2025 Conference (HCII)
A workshop system enabling interdisciplinary teams to collaboratively design mixed-reality mini-games about future careers — integrating ideation cards, AI co-creation, and ready-made VR templates.
UPSCALE — AI + Design + Creativity Conference Reflection
UPSCALE felt less like a conference and more like a rehearsal for a near-future studio where AI agents sit beside us at the table.
Transforming Rare Disease Care Through AI — Design Thinking Workshop at UC Berkeley
Hanieh Khaleghian, Mohsen Hejrati
Co-led with Dr. Mohsen Hejrati. A workshop at UC Berkeley on AI solutions for the rare disease community — and what design thinking has to offer when the problem isn't really rarity, but invisibility.
Perfecting the Interdisciplinary Storm: Immersive Narrative Development Workflows
Rachael Kaye, Austin Porter, Christine Moore, Neha Balamurugan, Hanieh Khaleghian, Robert LiKamWa
Springer CCIS 2271, iLRN 2024 Revised Selected Papers
A scalable workflow for interdisciplinary immersive narrative development — four roles, an evolved ADDIE/R2D2 framework, and Bloom's taxonomy applied to a three-part meteorology hurricane lab.
Imagined Realities: My Design Journey
From a childhood in the Middle East where imagination was an escape, to a Masters in Fictional Architecture at Städelschule, to leading Career XRcade — a reflection on what it means to be a metamodern nomad prototyping futures.
CXR Framework — Student-Driven Collaborative Platform for Immersive Career Exploration
Hanieh Khaleghian, Julianna Piechowicz, Rachael Kaye, Robert LiKamWa
iLRN 2024 Conference
Introduces Career XRcade: a design framework enabling college teams to create VR Career Lands for secondary students, with Cybersecurity and Esports environments. iLRN 2024 Conference.
Building Career Lands — Collaborative Design Workflows Showcased at IEEE VR 2024
Hanieh Khaleghian, Robert LiKamWa
IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, Orlando
Presents the CXR Framework: a toolkit that lets multidisciplinary college teams co-create VR Career Lands filled with mini-games, puzzles, and narrative NPCs. IEEE VR, Orlando.
Letter 19: Who is Who? Decoding the Abyss of the Frankenstein Paradox
A metafictional letter from Nika — confined to Arcosanti, denying that her AI creation Saoshyans has taken over the writing. On authorship, identity, and human-AI coexistence.
The Pop-up City: A Proposal For Augmented Reality As a New Urban Layer
AR is adding a fifth social layer to cities — navigational, artistic, game, and historical sublayers overlaid on physical space. A vision of the Pop-Up City: an equitable, imaginative homeland for all.
The Functions of Imaginary Worlds in the Time of Crisis
Written during pandemic quarantine: on how speculative fiction, VR, and imaginary worlds prepare us for uncomfortable futures, empower marginalized voices, and give legitimacy to plural realities.
