Writing
Essays, research, fiction, and reflections
Nail Salon, Humanity, and the Thing After Us
A meditation on flesh, touch, and nostalgia — written in real time at a nail salon, 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.
March Innovation Workshop — Transforming Rare Disease Care Through AI (Berkeley University)
Hanieh Khaleghian, Mohsen Hejrati
Co-led with Mohsen Hejrati. A workshop at Berkeley exploring how AI can transform care and research for rare diseases.
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
Documents a rapid-prototyping pipeline joining meteorologists, XR developers, and narrative designers to build data-driven VR simulations. Centers on Hurricane Heroes — translating storm-tracking datasets into interactive narrative.
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.
Function of Speculative Design in Envisioning Alternative Worlds of the Future
How speculative design enables 'design fiction' — freed from commercial constraints, it sparks unrestricted thinking across possible, plausible, and preferable futures.
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.