Interrupting Autopilot
2026
Can a nudge you barely notice pull you out of a doomscroll? We tested heat, cold, haptics and audio as subconscious interruptions to mindless phone use.
- Wearables & Biosignals
- My role
- Built the hardware pipeline used to deliver and test all four modalities.
- Stack
- Wearable actuation · Thermal and haptic hardware · User study
- Outcome
- Published as a poster at CHI EA '26. Second author.
What I built
The study compared four sensory interruptions — heat, cold, haptics and audio — as ways to break an autopilot habit like doomscrolling, without needing the person’s conscious attention first. The interesting part is the trade-off between them: what you notice is not the same as what you will put up with.
My role. I built the hardware pipeline used to deliver and test all four modalities.
Outcome
Published as a poster in the Extended Abstracts of CHI ’26 (10.1145/3772363.3798497). Second author.